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HISTORY
OF THE
PENINSULAR WAR.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY THOMAS DAVISON, WHITEFRIARS.

HISTORY
OF THE
PENINSULAR WAR.

“Unto thee
“Let thine own times as an old story be.”

Donne.

BY ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ. LL.D.
POET LAUREATE,

HONORARY MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SPANISH ACADEMY, OF THE
ROYAL SPANISH ACADEMY OF HISTORY, OF THE ROYAL
INSTITUTE OF THE NETHERLANDS, OF THE
CYMMRODORION, OF THE MASSACHUSETTS
HISTORICAL SOCIETY, ETC.

A NEW EDITION.

IN SIX VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET.
MDCCCXXVIII.

Ἱστορίας γὰρ ἐὰν ἀφέλῃ τις τὸ διὰ τί, καὶ πῶς, καὶ τίνος χάριν ἐπράχθη, καὶ τὸ πραχθὲν πότερα εὔλογον ἔσχε τὸ τέλος, τὸ καταλειπόμενον αὐτῆς ἀγώνισμα μὲν, μάθημα δὲ οὐ γίγνεται· καὶ παραυτίκα μὲν τέρπει, πρὸς δὲ τὸ μέλλον οὐδὲν ὠφελεῖ τὸ παράπαν.

Polybius, lib. iii. sect. 31.

CONTENTS.

HISTORY
OF THE
PENINSULAR WAR.

CHAPTER XVI.

TREATY BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND SPAIN. SURRENDER OF CORUNA AND FERROL. SITUATION OF ROMANA’S ARMY. BUONAPARTE RETURNS TO FRANCE. PROCEEDINGS AT MADRID. OPERATIONS IN CATALONIA.

♦1809. January.

Happily for the interests of Great Britain, and for its honour, which is paramount to all interests, the British government entertained more generous hopes than its General had done, and acted upon wiser views. At the very time when the Spaniards had sustained the heaviest losses, and our own army was known to be in full retreat, a treaty was signed at London between Great Britain and the Spanish nation acting in the name of Ferdinand. It proclaimed a christian, stable, and inviolable peace between the two countries, perpetual and sincere amity, and strict alliance during the war with France; and it pronounced an entire and lasting oblivion of all acts of hostility done on either side in the course of the late wars wherein they had been engaged against each other. His Britannic Majesty engaged to assist the Spaniards to the utmost of his power, and not to acknowledge any other King of Spain, and of the Indies thereunto appertaining, than Ferdinand VII., his heirs, or such lawful successor as the Spanish nation should acknowledge; and the Spanish government engaged, on behalf of Ferdinand, never to cede to France any portion of the territories or possessions of the Spanish monarchy in any part of the world. The contracting parties bound themselves to make common cause against France, and not to make peace except by common consent. It was agreed by an additional article, that as the existing circumstances did not admit of the regular negotiation of a treaty of commerce with all the care and consideration due to so important a subject, such a negotiation should be effected as soon as it was practicable; and meantime mutual facilities afforded to the commerce of both countries, by temporary regulations, founded on reciprocal utility. Another separate article provided that the Spanish government should take the most effectual measures for preventing the Spanish squadrons, in all their ports, from falling into the power of France. Before the treaty could reach Spain, the mischief against which this latter article was intended to provide had been done in the ports of Galicia.

♦Surrender of Coruña.♦

There were Englishmen at Coruña, who, when Sir John Moore was preparing to embark, doubted whether the inhabitants would protect his embarkation. In the bitterness of grief and shame they said, “should the Galicians tell us that we came into their country and by the imposing display of our well-equipped army prevented them from defending their native mountains; that they entrusted their passes to us and we abandoned them to the enemy; that disregarding any service which seemed immaterial to our own safety, we let the French occupy the approaches to their city; ... should the volunteers of Coruña tell us this (they said), and throw down their arms when they see us flying to our ships, ... we should have little right to complain of desertion or abandonment!” But the Spaniards are a more generous people than these doubts implied. Astonished indeed they were at the manner in which an army that had excited by its proud appearance the highest hopes as well as the highest admiration, had retreated through one of the strongest and most defensible countries in Europe; but severely as these hopes were disappointed, and cruelly as they suffered in consequence, they were not betrayed into one unworthy act or expression of resentment. The Governor of Coruña, D. Antonio de Alcedo, had made vigorous preparations as soon as it seemed likely that the enemy might enter Galicia. His name will be remembered as the author of a Geographical Dictionary of Spanish America, much more accurate and copious than any former work relating to those countries. It would be well for him could it be forgotten in the history of his own. While he expected that the British army would make a stand, and maintain Coruña and Ferrol at least, even if they abandoned the field, he held brave language, calling upon the inhabitants to supply stakes, beams, fascines and butts for additional works, and exhorting the women to busy themselves in providing sacks to be filled with earth. “If the French come,” said he in his proclamation, “I will take such measures that Coruña shall be not less gloriously distinguished than Gerona, Valencia, and Zaragoza. But should fortune prove adverse to us, as a chastisement from God for our sins, I will bury myself in the ruins of this fortress rather than surrender it to the enemy: thus finishing my days with honour, and trusting that all will follow my example.” Wherever in Spain a Governor was found willing to set such an example, the resolution to follow it was not wanting.

Coruña is a regular fortress, and might long have held out against any means which Marshal Soult could have brought against it. But when an English army with the sea open to them for succours did not think of maintaining it, it is not surprising that the inhabitants should have despaired of making a successful resistance. Their Governor was prepared to play the traitor; he had still however honour enough left not to propose a capitulation till the last transport was beyond the enemy’s power. Terms were then easily agreed on, the one party asking ♦Jan. 19.♦ only what the other would have imposed. Alcedo stipulated for a general amnesty; that all persons in office should retain their appointments on taking an oath to the Intruder; and that the military who took that oath might either continue in the service or receive their dismissal at their own option, such as refused the oath becoming prisoners of war. He himself set the example of swearing allegiance to Joseph Buonaparte; and soon in his own person properly experienced with what fidelity the French kept their engagements, for they presently dismissed him from his government and sent him into France.

♦Situation and strength of Ferrol.♦

Coruña and Ferrol are situated on the opposite sides of a spacious bay which receives in four deep inlets the rivers Mero, Mandeu, Eume and Juvia. Ferrol is placed in the deepest and most capacious of these inlets, and nothing which skill and expense could effect had been spared during the last half century for improving the natural advantages of the harbour, and rendering it impregnable. It had thus been rendered one of the strongest naval establishments in the world, being also one of the most commodious. To force the passage is impossible, ships having for the distance of a league to file one by one along a shore defended by forts. Equal care had been taken to protect it on the land side. There were at this time eight ships of the line in the harbour, of which three were of the largest size, ... three frigates, and a considerable number of smaller vessels. From Betanzos to Ferrol was but a march of fourteen miles farther than from Betanzos to Coruña; and it was a topic of exultation for the French, that the English in the precipitance of their flight had not marched upon Ferrol instead of Coruña, where they might have occupied a fortress strong enough to be called impregnable, and have secured the squadron. It was still fresh in remembrance that when Sir James Pulteney had landed on the coast there with a part of that army by which the French were afterwards expelled from Egypt, he deemed it more prudent to re-embark his troops without attempting any thing, than to hazard an attack against so formidable a place. It is indeed almost impossible to lay regular siege to it: the nature of the ground being such that trenches cannot be opened there.

♦Surrender of Ferrol.♦

Marshal Soult found in Coruña a battering train sufficient for making a feint of besieging Ferrol; that it would not be in his power to take it he well knew; ... but he reckoned upon the pusillanimity and treason of the commanders, and upon the fortune of Buonaparte. The population was estimated at 8000, double the number in Coruña; but the peasantry from the adjacent country had flocked thither, and there were 8000 men within its walls, burning with hatred and indignation against the French, and requiring only a leader in whom they could confide. The persons in authority they suspected, and with too much reason. One of these, the admiral D. Pedro Obregon, they displaced and threw into prison; it was only removing one traitor to make room for another. D. Francisco Melgarejo, who succeeded to the command of the squadron, opened a correspondence with the enemy by water; and the military commanders, equally ready to betray their country and their trust, sent messengers round by land at the same time. Accordingly General Mermet had no sooner made a demonstration of investing the town, than the Castles of La Palma and San Martin were abandoned to him; and as the disposition of the people was of no avail against the vile purposes of their chiefs civil and military, the town ♦Jan. 26.♦ was delivered up, upon the same terms as Coruña; a few additional articles being added, stipulating for the arrears of pay, as also that if resistance were made in any part of Galicia, no inhabitant of Ferrol should be compelled to serve against his countrymen. Obregon was then released from prison, and placed by the French at the head of the arsenal; he and the comrades of his treason took the oath of allegiance to the Intruder; and those persons who had been most active in arresting him and in promoting the national cause were seized and reserved for punishment.

♦Exultation of the enemy.♦

If the Central Junta had at one time dissembled the danger of the country (or rather partaken too much of that unreasoning confidence which was one characteristic of the Spaniards), they never attempted to conceal its disasters, nor to extenuate them. On such occasions their language was frank and dignified, becoming the nation which they represented. In announcing the loss of Coruña and Ferrol, they pronounced the surrender of those strong places to have been cowardly and scandalous, and promised to condemn the persons who had thus betrayed their duty, to condign punishment. The enemy meantime failed not to blazon forth their triumphs in this Galician campaign: to represent the battle of Coruña as a victory on their part was a falsehood, which all circumstances, except those of the action itself, tended to confirm; ... and the results of the campaign had been so rapid, and apparently so complete, as to excite their own wonder. Three British regiments, they said, the 42d, 50th, and 52d, had been entirely destroyed in the action, and Sir John Moore killed in attempting to charge at their head, with the vain hope of restoring the fortune of the day. The English had lost every thing which constitutes an army, artillery, horses, baggage, ammunition, magazines, and military chests. 80 pieces of cannon they had landed, they had re-embarked no more than 12. 200,000 weight of powder, 16,000 muskets, and 2,000,000 of treasure (about £83,000) had fallen into the hands of the pursuers, and treasure yet more considerable had been thrown down the precipices along the road between Astorga and Coruña, where the peasantry and the soldiers were now collecting it. 5000 horses had been counted which they had slaughtered upon the way, ... 500 were taken at Coruña, and the carcasses of 1200 were infecting the streets when the conquerors entered that town. The English would have occupied Ferrol and seized the squadron there, had it not been for the precipitance of their retreat, and the result of the battle to which they had been brought at last. Thus then had terminated their expedition into Spain! thus, after having fomented the war in that unhappy country, had they abandoned it to its fate! In another season of the year not a man of them would have escaped; now the facility of breaking up the bridges, the rapidity of the winter torrents, shortness of days, and length of nights, had favoured their retreat. But they were driven out of the peninsula, harassed, routed, and disheartened. The kingdom of Leon, the province of Zamora, and all Galicia, which they had been so desirous to cover, were conquered and subdued; and Romana, whom they had brought from the Baltic, was, with the wreck of his army, reduced to less than 2500 men, wandering between Vigo and Santiago, and closely pursued.... This was the most stinging of all the French reproaches. Wounded to the heart as we were that an English army should so have retreated, still we knew that wherever our men had been allowed to face the enemy they had beaten them; and that, however the real history of the battle of Coruña might be concealed from the French people, the French army had received a lesson there, which they would remember whenever it might be our fortune to encounter them again. But that we should have drawn such a force in pursuit of Romana, who, if he were taken prisoner, would be put to death with the forms of justice, by a tyrant who made mockery of justice, was of all the mournful reflections which this disastrous expedition excited, the most painful and the most exasperating.

♦Pursuit of Romana’s army.♦

At this time indeed Romana’s situation might have appeared hopeless to any but a Spaniard, and few Spaniards would have regarded it with such equanimity as this high-minded nobleman. In the virtuous determination of doing his duty to the uttermost, whatever might betide, he trusted Providence with the event, and gave way to no despondent or repining thought. A detachment under G. Franceschi had pursued his army after it had separated from Sir J. Moore at Astorga, and according to the French statements taken some 3000 men, and killed a great number before he entered the Val de Orras. The charge of completing its destruction was then transferred by Soult to M. Ney, and he dispatched G. Marchand’s division and a regiment of cavalry as amply sufficient for the intended service. Romana left his vanguard under D. Gabriel de Mendizabal to cover the Val de Orras, and the Riberas del Sil; ... one division was posted at Pueblo de Tribes and Mendoya, to support him if he should be attacked, and defend the bridge over the Bivey; the others were distributed where they could find subsistence, and at the same time afford support to the more advanced.

♦Dismay in Galicia.♦

The country was in a state of the utmost alarm. The Vizconde de Quintanilla, one of the deputies for Leon to the Central Junta, had been sent to Romana’s army, and disagreeing with him before the retreat commenced, had preceded him, in the hope of taking some measures which might be serviceable to the common cause. Manifest as it was that Sir J. Moore had given up that cause in his heart as hopeless, it had never been apprehended that he would retreat with such precipitation, and abandon Coruña and Ferrol to their fate; ports the maintenance of which was of so great importance to Great Britain as long as she took any part in the contest. Of all the Spaniards the Galicians had least reason to fear that the war would be brought to their own doors; and their consternation was extreme when they saw the enemy among them. Quintanilla repaired to Santiago, from which city the Archbishop had fled, having been insulted by the people, and dreading farther outrages from the insubordination which these dreadful times produced. As it seemed that nothing could be done for resisting the enemy, Quintanilla endeavoured at least to disappoint them of their expected booty, and proposed that the church plate should be removed. In such treasure that city was peculiarly rich, having been during many centuries more in vogue than any other place of pilgrimage in Europe; but his advice was rejected, upon the ground that the populace, who were suspicious of whatever was done, would not suffer it.

♦Romana retreats toward Monterry.♦

Romana’s was a buoyant spirit, not to be depressed by any dangers. He had read the British General rightly, but his confidence in the British character was unshaken; and in the expectation that something would be attempted upon the coast, he moved one of his divisions from Mazeda to Taboada and other villages near Lugo, for the purpose of observing and harassing the enemy. This movement was ordered the day before the battle of Coruña. On the afternoon of the 17th he was apprised that 5000 French were at St. Esteban de Ribas del Sil, three leagues from Orense, and in the night advice came from Mendizabal that he had been attacked by a detachment moving upon that city. Romana reconnoitred this force; they were plainly waiting for reinforcements, but even in their present state he was not strong enough to resist them; for as soon as he entered Galicia, the whole of the new levies had dispersed: they belonged to that province, and feeling themselves within reach of home, believed with some reason that they could provide better for themselves than it was in the power of their general and their government to provide for them.

At his last interview with Sir J. Moore it had been arranged that the British army should make its stand at Villafranca, and there defend the entrance into Galicia, while the Marquis should endeavour to collect and reform his troops upon the river Sil. But because this resolution, fatally for Sir J. Moore, had been abandoned, Romana’s left flank and rear were exposed to the enemy. They were at leisure to direct their efforts against him, and he saw that the only way of escape open for him was by Monterry. In that direction therefore he moved, and fixed his head-quarters on the 21st at Villaza, a league from that town, on the side of Portugal. Here, ♦Blake leaves the army.♦ to his surprise and displeasure, he found that Blake, who had continued with the army till this day, had left it without giving him any intimation of his departure, taken with him the officers whom he could trust, and left directions for others to follow him through Portugal. The camp-marshal, D. Rafael Martinengo, was missing also: his conduct, though irregular, was afterwards honourably explained; he had gone to collect stragglers. With regard to General Blake, serving only as an individual after he had been removed from the command, he was at liberty to retire whither and when he pleased, ... but not thus, in a manner derogatory to the commander, subversive of discipline, and injurious to the army. His disappearance, and that of the officers who followed him, increased the distrust and despondency of the troops; and the reports which they spread to excuse themselves for thus withdrawing, contributed still farther to dishearten the people. “I assure your excellency,” said Romana, when he communicated this to the war minister, “that I never gave a more trying proof of patriotism, love to my King, and gratitude to the government which in his name has conferred so many honours upon me, than in taking upon myself the command of this army in such circumstances, and retaining it, though abandoned by those who ought to have assisted me. I know not wherein this patriotism consists which is so loudly vaunted ... any reverse, any mishap, prostrates the minds of these people, and, thinking only of saving their own persons, they sacrifice their country, and compromise their commander.”

♦The French cease the pursuit.♦

The next intelligence was of Sir J. Moore’s death in action with M. Soult. The first thought which occurred to Romana was that this would not have happened if they had given battle to that very Soult at Saldaña. It was his firm persuasion that if the British force and his ill-fated troops had been united in October, they might have driven the French beyond the Pyrenees. The British had now actually embarked. Coruña and Ferrol were still points of hope; and if the governors there performed their duty, he could yet render them some service in the field. With this view he moved to cover the province of Tuy; but having reached La Guironda, he learnt in the night that the French with superior forces were at hand. His troops, though well equal to the business of harassing an enemy that should be otherwise employed, would have been lost if brought to action; he returned therefore to Oimbra, with the intention, if he should be pursued, of entering Portugal, and making through Tras-os-Montes for Ciudad Rodrigo, there to refit his army, or reinforce some other with the remnant that was left. A little respite was allowed him, for the French did not think the wreck of this army of sufficient consequence to fatigue themselves by pursuing and hunting it down. Where he and his handful of fugitives were secreting themselves they knew not, and on his part Romana knew as little what was passing in other parts of Spain.

♦Buonaparte advised that Austria is arming.♦

Buonaparte had never appeared so joyous as when he left Madrid with the expectation of surprising Sir John Moore. He had intended ♦De Pradt, 211.♦ to go to Lisbon, and the troops had actually received orders to hold themselves in readiness for beginning their march toward that capital, but the desire of encountering a British army made him change his intention; and Lisbon was thus doubly preserved from a second subjugation, for this movement interposed between the British and Portugal, and if Sir J. Moore had retreated thither, he would have abandoned Lisbon as he did Coruña. When there was no longer a hope of overtaking the English, Buonaparte stopped at Astorga; it was more consistent with his dignity that a detachment of his army should hunt them to the coast, than that he should continue the pursuit in person. Beyond that city, therefore, he would not have proceeded, even if dispatches had not reached him there which recalled him into France. He had designs against Austria, concerning which the Emperor Alexander had been deceived at Erfurt: his intention had been to complete the easy subjugation of Spain before he began to execute these further projects of insatiable ambition; but he was informed that Austria, instead of waiting for the blow, was preparing to avail herself of the advantage which the Spanish war afforded her. The news was not unwelcome to him; for he had now entertained a new train of ambitious and perfidious thoughts, which made him desirous of leaving Spain. From Astorga he turned back to Valladolid, and remained there a few days to make his last arrangements before he returned into France.

♦Change in his views concerning Spain.♦

An attachment to his family was almost the only human part of Buonaparte’s character; but when any object of aggrandisement presented itself to his all-grasping desires, that attachment stood as little in his way as the obligations of truth, honour, and justice. He had been sincere in his intention of giving Spain to Joseph, while he thought it an easy gift, and one which in its results would prove beneficial to the giver. The resistance which had been made to the intrusion, and the reverses which his arms had for a time experienced, disturbed and mortified him; and in that temper of mind which escapes self-condemnation by reproaching others, he imputed to Joseph’s flight from Madrid, as a consequence, the very spirit of resistance which had rendered that measure necessary for his own preservation. For this reason there had been no cordiality at their meeting; he had treated Joseph with disrespect, as well as coldness, and leaving him in the rear, had issued edicts by his own authority, and in his own name. This had been resented by Joseph, as far as one who was the receiver of a stolen crown could resent it: having been made King, he represented it was proper he should appear to be such; to debase him was not the way of rendering him more acceptable to a proud and high-minded nation. In addition to this there was another cause of discontent between them. Whatever country Buonaparte entered, that country was made to support his army; war was to him no expense, ... the cost fell always upon his enemies or his allies. Thus he had expected to proceed in Spain; ... but even when he was master of Madrid the intrusive government had no other revenue than the duties which were paid at his gates, and Joseph, instead of paying his brother’s armies, looked to him for the maintenance of his own court. Joseph had represented also the impolicy of continuing to exasperate the people by a system of military exactions; and Napoleon, impatient of any contradiction, instantly perceived that a King of Spain, whether of the Buonaparte or the Bourbon dynasty, must have a Spanish feeling incompatible with that entire subserviency to himself which he expected and required. Having so lately and so solemnly guaranteed the integrity of Spain, and proclaimed his brother king, he could not at once subvert his own arrangements; ♦De Pradt, 207–225.♦ but he avowed to M. de Pradt at this time that when he had given that kingdom, he did not understand the value of the present: follies would be committed, he said, which would throw it again into his hands, and he would then divide it into five viceroyalties.

♦He returns to France.♦

He apprehended no difficulty in this: any military opposition which could be attempted he despised, the more entirely because of the ease with which the Spanish armies had been dispersed, ... and the moral obstacles he was still incapable of appreciating. A dispatch reached him from Galicia, and upon reading it he said to those about him, “Every thing proceeds well. Romana cannot resist a fortnight longer. The English will never make another effort; and three months hence the war will be at an end.” One of the marshals hinted at the character of the people and of the country. “It is a La Vendée,” he replied; “I have tranquillized La Vendée. Calabria also was in a state of insurrection, ... wherever there are mountains there are insurgents; but the kingdom of Naples is tranquil now. It is not enough to command an army well, ... one must have general views. The continental system is not the same as in the time of Frederick; the great powers must absorb the smaller. The priests have considerable influence here, and they use it to exasperate the people: but the Romans conquered them; the Moors conquered them; and they are not near so fine a people now as they were then. I will settle the government firmly; I will interest the nobles, and I will cut down the people with grape-shot. What do they want? the Prince of Asturias? Half the nation object to him: ... besides he is dead to them. There is no longer any dynasty to oppose to me. They say the population is against us. Why Spain is a perfect solitude, ... there are not five men to a square league. Besides, if it ♦Jones’s Account of the War, vol. i. 165.♦ be a question of numbers, I will pour all Europe into their country. They have to learn what a first-rate power can effect.” With this flagitious determination the remorseless tyrant returned into France.

♦Professions to the Spaniards at Madrid.♦

Before he left Madrid to march against the English, an address framed by the traitors of that city in the name of the magistrates and citizens was presented to him by the Corregidor. They thanked him for his gracious clemency, that in the midst of conquest he had thought of the safety and welfare of the conquered, and forgiven all which had been done during the absence of Joseph, their king: and they entreated that it might please him to grant them the favour of seeing King Joseph once more among them, to the end that under his laws that capital and the whole kingdom might enjoy the happiness which they expected from the benevolence of their new sovereign’s character. The tyrant replied to this in one of his characteristic harangues. “I am pleased,” he said, “with the sentiments of the city of Madrid. I regret the injuries she has suffered, and am particularly happy that, under existing circumstances, I have been able to effect her deliverance, and to protect her from great calamities, and have accomplished what I owed to myself and my nation. Vengeance has had its due: it has fallen upon ten of the principal culprits; ... the rest have entire and absolute forgiveness.” He then touched upon the reforms by which he thought to reconcile the Spaniards to a foreign yoke. “I have preserved the spiritual orders, but with a limitation of the number of monks: they who were influenced by a divine call shall remain in their cloisters; with regard to those whose call was doubtful, or influenced by worldly considerations, I have fixed their condition in the class of secular priests. Out of the surplus of monastic property I have provided for the maintenance of the pastors, that important and useful branch of the clergy. I have suppressed that court which was a subject of complaint to Europe and the present age. Priests may guide the minds of men, but must exercise no temporal or corporal jurisdiction over the citizens. I have annulled those privileges which the grandees usurped during times of civil war. I have abolished feudal rights, and henceforth every one may set up inns, ovens, mills, employ himself in fishing and rabbit-hunting, and give free scope to his industry, provided he respects the laws. The selfishness, wealth, and prosperity of a small number of individuals were more injurious to your agriculture than the heat of the Dog-days. All peculiar jurisdictions were usurpations, and at variance with the rights of the nation. I have abolished them. As there is but one God, so should there be in a state but one judicial power.

“There is no obstacle,” he continued, “which can long resist the execution of my resolutions. But what transcends my power is this, to consolidate the Spaniards as one nation, under the sway of the king, should they continue to be affected with those principles of hatred to France which the partizans of England and the enemies of the continent have infused into the bosom of Spain. I can establish no nation, no king, no independence of the Spaniards, if the king be not assured of their attachment and fidelity. The Bourbons can no longer reign in Europe. The divisions of the royal family were contrived by the English. It was not the dethronement of King Charles and of the favourite, that the Duke del Infantado, that tool of England, had in view. The intention was, to establish the predominant influence of England in Spain; a senseless project, the result of which would have been a perpetual continental war. No power under the influence of England can exist on the continent. If there be any that entertain such a wish, the wish is absurd, and will sooner or later occasion their fall. It would be easy for me, should I be compelled to adopt that measure, to govern Spain, by establishing as many viceroys in it as there are provinces. Nevertheless, I do not refuse to abdicate my rights of conquest in favour of the king, and to establish him in Madrid, as soon as the 30,000 citizens which this capital contains, the clergy, nobility, merchants, and lawyers shall have declared their fidelity, set an example to the provinces, enlightened the people, and made the nation sensible that their existence and prosperity essentially depend upon a king and a free constitution, favourable to the people, and hostile only to the selfishness and haughty passions of the grandees. If such be the sentiments of the inhabitants, let the 30,000 citizens assemble in the churches; let them, in the presence of the holy sacrament, take an oath, not only with their mouths, but also with their hearts, and without any jesuitical equivocation, that they promise support, attachment, and fidelity to their king; let the priests in the confessional and the pulpit, the merchants in their correspondence, the lawyers in their writings and speeches, infuse these sentiments into the people: ... then will I surrender my right of conquest, place the king upon the throne, and make it my pleasing task to conduct myself as a true friend of the Spaniards. The present generation may differ in their opinions; the passions have been too much brought into action; but your grandchildren will bless me as their renovator; they will reckon the day when I appeared among you among their memorable festivals; and from that day will the happiness of Spain date its commencement. Thus,” he concluded, addressing himself to the Corregidor, “you are informed of the whole of my determination. Consult with your fellow-citizens, and consider what part you will choose; but whatever it be, make your choice with sincerity, and tell me only your genuine sentiments.”

There was something more detestable in this affectation of candour and generosity than in his open and insolent violence. “Consult! and consider what part you will choose, and make your choice with sincerity!”... The Spanish nation had made their choice! They had made it at Baylen and at Reynosa, at Cadiz and at Madrid, at Valencia and at Zaragoza; for life or for death; deliberately, and yet as if with one impulse, ... with enthusiasm, and yet calmly, ... had that noble people nobly, and wisely, and religiously made their heroic choice. They had written it in blood, their own and their oppressors’. Its proofs were to be seen in deserted houses and depopulated towns, in the blackened walls of hamlets which had been laid waste with fire, in the bones which were bleaching upon the mountains of Biscay, and in the bodies, French and Spaniard, which were at that hour floating down the tainted Ebro! Here, in the capital, their choice had been recorded; they who had been swept down by grape-shot in its streets, or bayoneted in the houses, they who had fallen in the heat of battle before its gates, and they who in cold blood had been sent in droves to execution, alike had borne witness to that choice, and confirmed it, and rejoiced in it with their dying breath. And this tyrant called upon the people of Madrid now to tell him their sentiments, ... now when their armies were dispersed, and they themselves, betrayed and disarmed, were surrounded by his legions!

♦Registers opened.♦

Registers were opened in every quarter, and, if French accounts could be believed, 30,000 fathers of families rushed thither in crowds, and signed a supplication to the conqueror, entreating him to put an end to their misfortunes, by granting them his august brother Joseph for their king. If this impossible eagerness had really been manifested, it could admit of no other solution than that the people of Madrid, bitterly as they detested and heartily as they despised Joseph, yet thought it a less evil to be governed by him than by the tyrant himself, ... for this was the alternative allowed them. But a census of this kind, as it is called, like those which coloured Buonaparte’s assumption, first of the consulship for life, and then of an hereditary throne, was easily procured, when neither threats, nor persuasions, nor fraud, nor violence were spared.

♦The people of Madrid take the oath of allegiance to Joseph.♦

The ceremony of voting and taking the oath was delayed till after Buonaparte’s departure, “because,” said the French journalists, “a suspicion of fear might else have attached to it. The act was now more noble, as being entirely free, ... as being confirmed by the weightiest considerations whereby a people can be influenced, their interest, their happiness, and their glory.” With such language the better part of the French nation were insulted, and the unreflecting deceived, while all knowledge of the real state of things was shut out by the vigilance of a government, conscious enough of wickedness to know that it required concealment. The votes were then exacted, the host was exposed in all the churches, and the priests were compelled to receive from their countrymen at the altar, and as they believed in the actual and bodily presence of their Saviour and their God, a compulsory oath of allegiance to the Intruder. The Catholic system has a salvo in such cases; and the same priests who administered the oath were believed by the French themselves to have released those who took it from its obligations.

♦Addresses to the Intruder.♦

The higher ranks in Madrid had shown themselves from the commencement of these troubles as deficient in public spirit as they had long been in private virtues. Scarcely an individual in that capital who was distinguished for rank, or power, or riches, had stood forward in the national cause, so fallacious is the opinion that those persons will be most zealous in the defence of their country, who have what is called the largest stake in it. Addresses from all the councils and corporate bodies of the metropolis were dispatched to Buonaparte while he tarried at Valladolid, ... all alike abject, and all soliciting that they might be indulged with the presence of their king. The Council of state, by a deputy, expressed its homage of thanks for the generous clemency of the conqueror. “What gratitude,” said he, “does it not owe you for having snatched Spain from the influence of those destructive councils which fifty years of misfortune had prepared for it; for having rid it of the English armies, who threatened to fix upon its territories the theatre of continental war! Grateful for these benefits, the Council of state has still another supplication to lay at the feet of your majesty. Deign, sire, to commit to our loyalty your august brother, our lord and King. Permit him to re-enter Madrid, and to take into his hands the reins of government; that under the benevolent sway of this august prince, whose mildness, wisdom, and justice, are known to all Europe, our widowed and desolate monarchy may find a father in the best of Kings.” D. Bernardo Yriarte spoke for the Council of the Indies. “It entirely submits itself,” he said, “to the decrees of your Majesty, and to those of your august brother, the King our master, who is to create the happiness of Spain, as well by the wisdom and the assemblage of the lofty virtues which he possesses, as by the powerful support of the hero of Europe, upon whom the Council of the Indies founds its hopes of seeing those ties reunited, which ought always to unite the American possessions with the mother country.” The Council of finance requested that it might behold in Madrid the august and beloved brother of the Emperor, expecting from his presence the felicity and repose of the kingdom. The Council of war supplicated him, through an effect of his august beneficence, to confer upon the capital the felicity of the presence of their sovereign, Joseph I. This was the theme upon which all the deputations rung their changes. The Council of marine alone adding an appropriate flattery to the same request, expressed its hope of contributing to the liberty of the seas.

♦Edicts of the Intruder before his return to Madrid.♦

Joseph meantime had exercised his nominal sovereignty in passing decrees. By one the circulation of French money was permitted till farther measures concerning it should be announced; by another all persons entitled to any salary or pension from the government were deprived of it till they should have taken the oath of allegiance to him. He made an attempt also in the autumn, before reinforcements entered Spain, to place the persons belonging to his army under civil protection: and for this purpose required that in every district occupied by the army, from eight to thirty stand of arms should be deposited in every town-house, and an equal number of the respectable inhabitants registered to serve as an escort therewith for any officer or serjeant either on his road as an invalid, or in the execution of any commission. They were also to act as a patrol, for the purpose of preventing any insults or outrages which might be offered to the military, and if men did not volunteer for this service, which would entitle them to pay and rewards, the magistracy were to fix upon those whom they deemed fit to discharge it. He created also a new military order by the name of the Orden Militar de España. The Grand Mastership was reserved to himself and his successors; and the two oldest Captains General of the Army and the Fleet were always to be Grand Chancellor and Grand Treasurer: but the order itself was open to soldiers of every rank who should deserve it. A pension of 1000 reales vellon was attached to the order, and the device was a crimson star, bearing on one side the Lion of Leon with this motto ... Virtute et Fide; on the other the Castle of Castille with Joseph Napoleo, Hispaniarum et Indiarum Rex, instituit. Decrees were also issued for raising new regiments, one to be called the Royal Foreign, and the other the first of the Irish Brigade.

♦Joseph’s entrance into Madrid.♦

On the 22d of January the Intruder re-entered that city, from which he had been driven by the indignation of a whole people. At break of day his approach was announced by the discharge of an hundred cannon; a fit symphony, announcing at once to the people by what right he claimed the throne, and by what means he must sustain himself upon it. From the gate of Atocha to the church of St. Isidro, and from thence to the palace, the streets were lined with French troops, and detachments were stationed in every part of the city, more for the purpose of overawing the inhabitants than of doing honour to this wretched puppet of majesty, who, while he submitted to be the instrument of tyranny over the Spaniards, was himself a slave. The cavalry advanced to the Plaza de las Delicias to meet him; there he mounted on horseback, and a procession was formed of his aides-de-camp and equerries, the grand major domo, the grand master of the ceremonies, the grand master of the hounds, with all the other personages of the drama of royalty, the members of the different councils, and those grandees who, deserting the cause of their country, stained now with infamy names which had once been illustrious in the Spanish annals. At the gate of Atocha the governor of Madrid was ready to present him with the keys. As soon as he entered another discharge of an hundred cannon proclaimed his presence, and all the bells struck up. He proceeded through the city to the church of St. Isidro, where the suffragan Bishop, in his pontificals, the canons, vicars, and rectors, the vicar-general, and the prelates of the religious orders, received him at the gate, and six of the most ancient canons conducted him to the throne. Then the suffragan Bishop addressed him in the only language which might that day be used, the language of servility, adulation, impiety, and treason. The Intruder’s reply was in that strain of hypocrisy which marked the usurpation of the Buonapartes with new and peculiar guilt. This was his speech:

“Before rendering thanks to the Supreme Arbiter of Destinies, for my return to the capital of this kingdom entrusted to my care, I wish to reply to the affectionate reception of its inhabitants, by declaring my secret thoughts in the presence of the living God, who has just received your oath of fidelity to my person. I protest, then, before God, who knows the hearts of all, that it is my duty and conscience only which induce me to mount the throne, and not my own private inclination. I am willing to sacrifice my own happiness, because I think you have need of me for the establishment of yours. The unity of our holy religion, the independence of the monarchy, the integrity of its territory, and the liberty of its citizens, are the conditions of the oath which I have taken on receiving the crown. It will not be disgraced upon my head; and if, as I have no doubt, the desires of the nation support the efforts of its king, I shall soon be the most happy of all, because you through me will all be happy.”

♦Edicts against the Patriots.♦

Two rows of banqueting tables were laid out in the nave of the church, where the civil and military officers of the intruder, and the members of the councils, were seated according to their respective ranks. High mass was performed by the chapel-royal, and a solemn Te Deum concluded the mockery. That done, Joseph proceeded with the same form to the palace, and a third discharge of an hundred guns proclaimed his arrival there. On the day which followed this triumphal entry, its ostentatious joy, and the affected humanity and philanthropy of his professions, he issued a decree for the formation of special military tribunals, which should punish all persons with death who took arms against him, or enlisted others for the patriotic cause: the gallows was to be the mode of punishment, and over the door of the sufferer’s house a shield was to be placed, for infamy, recording the cause and manner of his ignominious death. Any innkeeper or householder in whose dwelling a man should be enlisted for the Junta’s service should undergo the same fate; but if they gave information, 400 reales were promised them, or an equivalent reward. The very day that this decree was issued, mingling, like his flagitious brother, words of blasphemy with deeds of blood, he addressed a circular epistle to the Archbishops and Bishops of the realm, commanding them to ♦Circular epistle to the clergy.♦ order a Te Deum in all the churches of their respective dioceses. “In returning to the capital (this was his language), our first care, as well as first duty, has been to prostrate ourselves at the feet of that God who disposes of crowns, and to devote to him our whole existence for the felicity of the brave nation which he has entrusted to our care. For this only object of our thoughts we have addressed to him our humble prayers. What is an individual amid the generations who cover the earth? What is he in the eyes of the Eternal, who alone penetrates the intentions of men, and according to them determines their elevation? He who sincerely wishes the welfare of his fellows serves God, and omnipotent goodness protects him. We desire that, in conformity with these dispositions, you direct the prayers of the faithful whom Providence has entrusted to you. Ask of God, that his spirit of peace and wisdom may descend upon us, that the voice of passion may be stifled in meditating upon such sentiments as ought to animate us, and which the general interests of this monarchy inspire: that religion, tranquillity, and happiness may succeed to the discords to which we are now exposed. Let us return thanks to God for the success which he has been pleased to grant to the arms of our august brother and powerful ally the Emperor of the French, who has had no other end in supporting our rights by his power than to procure to Spain a long peace, founded on her independence.”

A heavy load of national guilt lay upon the nations of the Peninsula; and those persons, who, with well-founded faith, could see and understand that the moral government of the world is neither less perfect, nor less certain in its course, than that material order which science has demonstrated, ... they perceived in this dreadful visitation the work of retribution. The bloody conquests of the Portugueze in India were yet unexpiated; the Spaniards had to atone for extirpated nations in Cuba and Hayti, and their other islands, and on the continent of America for cruelties and excesses not less atrocious than those which they were appointed to punish. Vengeance had not been exacted for the enormities perpetrated in the Netherlands, nor for that accursed tribunal which, during more than two centuries, triumphed both in Spain and Portugal, to the ineffaceable and eternal infamy of the Romish church. But the crimes of a nation, like the vices of an individual, bring on their punishment in necessary consequence, ... so righteously have all things been ordained. From the spoils of India and America the two governments drew treasures which rendered them independent of the people for supplies; and the war which their priesthood waged against knowledge and reformation succeeded in shutting them out from these devoted countries. A double despotism, of the throne and of the altar, was thus established, and the result was a state of degradation, which nothing less than the overthrow of both, by some moral and political earthquake, loosening the very foundations of society, could remove. Such a convulsion had taken place, and the sins of the fathers were visited upon the ♦Condition of Madrid.♦ children. Madrid, the seat of Philip II., “that sad intelligencing tyrant,” who from thence, as our great Milton said, “mischieved the world with his mines of Ophir,” that city which once aspired to be the mistress of the world, and had actually tyrannized over so large a part of it, was now itself in thraldom. The Spanish cloak, which was the universal dress of all ranks, was prohibited in the metropolis of Spain, and no Spaniard was allowed to walk abroad in the evening, unless he carried a light. All communication between the capital and the southern provinces, the most fertile and wealthiest of the kingdom, was cut off. Of the trading part of the community, therefore, those who were connected with the great commercial cities of the south coast were at once ruined, and they whose dealings lay with the provinces which were the seat of war were hardly more fortunate. The public creditors experienced that breach of public faith which always results from a violent revolution. The intrusive government acknowledged the debt, and gave notice of its intention to pay them by bills upon Spanish America: for this there was a double motive, the shame of confessing that the Intruder was unable to discharge the obligations of the government to whose rights and duties he affected to succeed, and the hope of interesting the holders of these bills in his cause: but so little possibility was there of his becoming master of the Indies, that the mention of such bills only provoked contempt. While commercial and funded property was thus destroyed, landed property was of as little immediate value to its owner. No remittances could be made to the capital from that part of Spain which was not yet overrun; and the devastations had been so extensive every where as to leave the tenant little means of paying the proprietor. These were the first-fruits of that prosperity which the Buonapartes promised to the Spaniards, ... these were the blessings which Joseph brought with him to Madrid! He, meantime, was affecting to participate in rejoicings, and receiving the incense of adulation, in that city where the middle classes were reduced to poverty by his usurpation, and where the wives whom he had widowed, and the mothers whom he had made childless, mingled with their prayers for the dead, supplications for vengeance upon him as the author of their miseries. The theatre was fitted up to receive him, the boxes were lined with silk, the municipality attended him to his seat, he was presented with a congratulatory poem upon his entrance, and the stage curtain represented the ♦1809.
February.♦ Genius of Peace with an olive-branch in his left hand, and a torch in his right, setting fire to the attributes of war. Underneath was written, ♦Feb. 18.♦ “Live happy, Sire! reign and pardon!” At the very time when this precious specimen of French taste complimented the Intruder upon his clemency, an extraordinary criminal Junta was formed, even the military tribunals not being found sufficiently extensive in their powers for the work of extermination which was begun. It was “for trial of assassins, robbers, recruiters in favour of the insurgents, those who maintained correspondence with them, and who spread false reports.” Persons apprehended upon these charges were to be tried within twenty-four hours, and sentenced to the gallows, and the sentence executed without appeal.

♦False intelligence published by the intrusive government.♦

Another of the Intruder’s decrees enjoined that the Madrid Gazette should be under the immediate inspection of the Minister of Police, and copies of it regularly sent to every Bishop, parochial priest, and municipality, that the people might be informed of the acts of government, and of public events. Joseph’s ministers, under whatever self-practised delusion they entered his service, conformed themselves in all things now to the spirit of Buonaparte’s policy, and employed force and falsehood with as little scruple as if they had been trained in the revolutionary school. While they affected to inform the people of what was passing, they concealed whatever was unfavourable, distorted what they ♦1809.
January.♦ told, and feigned intelligence suited to their views. They affirmed that the English goods taken at Bilbao, S. Andero, and the ports of Asturias, would defray the expenses of the war; and that England itself was on the point of bankruptcy. Such multitudes, it was affirmed, had repaired to Westminster Hall to give bail for their debts, that it seemed as if all London had been there; numbers were thrown down by the press, and trodden under foot, ... many almost suffocated, and some were killed. Such falsehoods were not too gross for the government where it could exclude all truer information; where this was not in its power, it resorted to the more feasible scheme of exciting suspicions against England; and here the Buonapartes had a willing agent in Morla.

♦Unwillingness of the Spaniards to believe that Morla was a traitor.♦

Prone as the Spaniards were in these unhappy times to suspect any person, and to act upon the slightest suspicion, they were slow in believing that Morla had proved false. The people of Cadiz would hardly be convinced that their governor, whose patriotic addresses were still circulating among them, could possibly have gone over to the Intruder. So many measures of utility, so many acts of patriotism and of disinterested vigilance in his administration, were remembered, that the first reports of his perfidy were indignantly received; a fact so contrary to all their experience was not to be credited, and they felt as if they injured him in listening to such an accusation. He had established among them a reputation like that which a Cadi sometimes enjoys in Mahommedan countries, where his individual uprightness supplies the defects of law, and resists the general corruption of manners. A peasant, whom he had acquitted upon some criminal charge, brought him a number of turkeys, as a present in gratitude for his acquittal. Morla put him in prison, consigned the turkeys to the gaoler for his food, and set him at liberty when he had eaten them all. There was neither law, equity, nor humanity in this, ... yet it had an extravagant, oriental ostentation of justice, well calculated to impress the people with an opinion of his nice honour and scrupulous integrity. But this man, who in all his public writings boasted of his frankness and of his honourable intentions, was in reality destitute both of truth and honour; and the revolution, which developed some characters and corrupted others, only unmasked his. Early in these troubles Lord Collingwood and Sir Hew Dalrymple had discovered ♦Proofs of his prior treachery.♦ his duplicity. He had signed, and was believed to have written, Solano’s ill-timed and worse-intended proclamation, in which the English were spoken of with unqualified reprobation, and as the real enemies against whom all true Spaniards ought to unite; and when warned by Solano’s fate, he joined in the national cause, the desire of injuring that cause by every possible means seems to have been the main object of his crooked policy. When Castaños wanted the assistance of General Spencer’s corps, he threw out hints to that General that it would be required for the defence of Cadiz; though, from jealousy of the English, at that very time he prevented the Junta from bringing the garrison of Ceuta into the field, and had given it as his decided opinion that no English troops should be admitted into any Spanish fortress. And while he endeavoured to make the Junta of Seville suspicious of English interference, he recommended to the accredited agents of England, that they should interfere early and decidedly in forming a central government, and appointing a commander-in-chief, and that their influence should be strengthened by marching an army into Spain.

♦Morla’s letter to the Central Junta;♦

But the most prominent feature of Morla’s sophisticated character was his odious hypocrisy. In the letter which announced to the Central Junta the capitulation of Madrid he bestowed the highest eulogiums upon the Intruder and himself. “Yesterday,” said he, “as a Counsellor of State I saw Prince Joseph, our appointed King, and the object of the rabble’s contumely. I assure you, with all that ingenuousness which belongs to me, that I found him an enlightened philosopher, full even to enthusiasm of the soundest principles of morality, humanity, and affection to the people whom his lot has called him to command. My eulogies might appear suspicious to those who do not know me well; I suppress them therefore, and only say thus much, that the Junta, according to circumstances, may regulate its own conduct and resolutions upon this information. My whole aim and endeavour will always be for the honour and integrity of my country. I will not do myself the injustice to suppose that any of the nation can suspect me of perfidy; my probity is known and accredited, and therefore I continue to speak with that candour and ingenuousness which I have always used.” He also delivered his opinion as an individual who was most anxious for the good of the nation, that the governor of Cadiz should be instructed not to let the English assemble either in or near that city in any force; but that, under pretext of securing himself from the French, he should throw up works against them, reinforce the garrison, and secretly strengthen the batteries toward the sea. And that advices should be dispatched to the Indies, for the purpose of preventing treasure or goods from being sent, lest they should fall into the hands of these allies, who having no longer any hope of defending the cause, would seek to indemnify themselves at the expense of the Spaniards. The Junta published this letter as containing in itself sufficient proofs of perfidiousness and treason in the writer. And they observed that at the very time when this hypocrite was advising them to distrust the English, and arm against them, large sums had been remitted them from England, farther pecuniary aids were on the way, their treasures from America had been secured from the French, by being brought home in British ships, and Great Britain had given the most authentic proof of its true friendship with Spain, by refusing to negotiate with Buonaparte.

♦and to the governor of Cadiz.♦

Shortly afterwards a letter of Morla’s was intercepted, written in the same strain to D. Josef Virues, the provisional governor of Cadiz. The thorough hypocrite talked of the good which he had done in surrendering Madrid, and the consolation which he derived from that reflection; he lamented over his beloved Cadiz and its estimable inhabitants, who had given him so many proofs of their confidence and affection, and wished that he could avert the dangers that impended over them with the sacrifice of his own blood. “If it became an English garrison,” he said, “it would be more burdensome to the nation than Gibraltar, and the commerce of the natives would be ruined: much policy as well as courage would be required to prevent this. I need not,” he concluded, “exhort your excellency to defend Cadiz with the honour and patriotism which become you; but when you have fulfilled this obligation, honourable terms may save the city, and secure its worthy inhabitants.” In consequence of this letter it became necessary to remove Virues from the command, more for his own sake than for any distrust of his principles, though he had at one time been Godoy’s secretary, and though Morla had been his friend and patron. Unwilling, and perhaps unable to believe that one whom he had so long been accustomed to regard with respect and gratitude was the consummate hypocrite and traitor which he now appeared to be, Virues attempted to excuse Morla as having acted under compulsion, an excuse more likely to alleviate for the time his own feelings than to satisfy his judgement. But he felt that under these circumstances it was no longer proper for him to remain in possession of an important post: high as he stood in the opinion of his countrymen, the slightest accident might now render him suspected; and at this crisis it was most essential that the people should have entire confidence in their chiefs. He therefore gladly accepted a mission to England, and D. Felix Jones, who had distinguished himself in the operations against Dupont, was appointed governor. Instead of additional defences toward the sea, new works were begun on the land side, to protect the city against its real enemies, and Colonel Hallowell came from Gibraltar to direct them. Ammunition and stores in abundance were sent from Seville. The new governor began by taking measures of rigorous precaution. No person whatever, not even an Englishman, was permitted to go a mile beyond the city without a passport. Every Frenchman ♦Arrest and cruel imprisonment of the French at Cadiz.♦ in the place was arrested and sent on board the ships. This was intended for their own security as well as the safety of the city; for so highly were the people incensed against that perfidious nation, and such was their fear of treachery in every person belonging to it, that they purposed putting all whom they should find at large to death; and it was said that three hundred knives had been purchased at one shop, to be thus employed. Had there been leisure, or had the Spaniards been in a temper for humane considerations, these persons ought to have been supplied with means of transport to their own country; instead of which they were consigned to a most inhuman state of confinement. The property also of all French subjects, under which term the natives of all countries in subjection to France were included, was confiscated; ... and in consequence above three hundred shops were shut up, and more than as many families reduced to ruin. Thus it is, that in such times injustice provokes retaliation, wrongs lead to wrongs, and evil produces evil in miserable series.

♦Death of Florida Blanca.♦

At this juncture, when every hour brought tidings of new calamities and nearer danger, Florida Blanca, the venerable president of the Central Junta, died, at the great age of eighty-one; fatigue, and care, and anxiety having accelerated his death. When the order of the Jesuits was abolished, he was ambassador at Rome, and is believed to have been materially instrumental in bringing about that iniquitous measure; and it was under his ministry that Spain joined the confederacy against Great Britain during the American war. These are acts of which he had abundant reason to repent; but there were specious motives for both; and this must be said of Florida Blanca, that of all the ministers who have exercised despotic authority in Spain, no other ever projected or accomplished half so much for the improvement of the people and the country. Whatever tended to the general good received his efficient support, and twenty years of subsequent misrule had not been sufficient to undo the beneficial effects of his administration. It was Godoy’s intention that his exile from the court should be felt as a disgrace and a punishment; but the retirement to which it sent him suited the disposition and declining years of the injured man, and he passed his time chiefly in those religious meditations which are the natural support and solace of old age. Many rulers and statesmen have retired into convents when they have been wearied or disgusted with the vanities and vexations of the world; few have been called upon, like Florida Blanca, in extreme old age, to forsake their retirement, their tranquillity, and their habits of religious life, for the higher duty of serving their country in its hour of danger. The Central Junta manifested their sense of his worth by conferring a grandee-ship upon his heir, and all his legitimate descendants who should succeed him in ♦Marques de Astorga president of the Junta.♦ the title. He was succeeded as president by the Marques de Astorga, a grandee of the highest ♦1808.♦ class, and the representative of some of the proudest names in Spanish history. The education of this nobleman had been defective, as was generally the case with Spanish nobles, and his person excited contempt in those who are presumptuous and injurious enough to judge only by appearances. But he had not degenerated from the better qualities of his illustrious ancestry: they who knew him best, knew that he possessed what ought to be the distinctive marks of old nobility: he was generous, magnanimous, and high-spirited, without the least apparent consciousness of being so.

♦Catalonia, 1808.♦

After the fall of Madrid there was yet one quarter to which the Junta might look with reasonable hope, amid the disasters that crowded upon them. If Barcelona could be recovered, the acquisition of that most important place would balance the worst reverses which they had yet sustained. But ill fortune every where pursued them, and there was this to aggravate the disappointment, that their losses in Catalonia were more imputable to misconduct than to any want of strength. A force had been collected there fully equal both in numbers and discipline (had it been directed with common prudence) to the services expected from it. After the arrival of the troops from Portugal and Majorca, and the Granadan army, it consisted of about 28,000 regular troops, and 1600 cavalry, besides the garrisons of Rosas, Hostalrich, and Gerona, who were nearly 6000. The sea being commanded by their allies, was open to them along the whole line of coast, except at Barcelona; and the people, who have always been eminently distinguished for their activity, industry, hardihood, and invincible spirit of independence, were ready to make any sacrifices and any exertions for the deliverance of their native land. The province too was full of fortified places, and even in so defensible a country as Spain peculiarly strong by nature. But to counterbalance these advantages, there were the confusion and perplexity, as well as the distance of the Central Junta; the inexperience and rashness of those who had taken upon themselves the local government; want of science, of decision, and of ability in the generals; want of authority every where; the fearful spirit of insubordination, which on the slightest occasion was ready to break out; ... and, above all, that reckless and unreasonable confidence which had now become part of the Spanish character.

♦Siege of Barcelona.♦

There was some excuse for this confidence in the Catalans; they knew their own temper and the strength of their country; and they had obtained some signal successes before any regular troops came to their assistance. But this remembrance, and the knowledge that so large a regular force was in the field, induced a fatal belief that the difficulties of the struggle were over, and that nothing remained to complete their triumph but the recovery of Barcelona. And this, they said, might easily be effected: the enemy there were weak, in want of provisions, sickly, dispirited by defeat and desertion; the English squadron at hand to assist in an attack upon Monjuich and the citadel; and the inhabitants ready upon the first appearance of success to rise upon their invaders and open the gates. Among the French and Italians themselves, there were some, they affirmed, who would gladly forsake the wicked cause wherein they were engaged, and by contributing to deliver up these places atone for the treachery in which they had been compelled to bear a part. This was the cry of the people; and these representations were strengthened by some of the citizens, who were perpetually proposing plans contradictory to each other, and alike impracticable: the Supreme Junta represented the people but too faithfully, partaking their inexperience, their impatience, and their errors; and General Vives, surrounded by ignorant advisers, controlled if not intimidated by popular opinion, and himself altogether incompetent to the station which he filled, wasted the precious weeks in a vain display before Barcelona; not perceiving or not regarding that the possession of the city would have been useless to him while the French possessed the citadel and Montjuich; that he had no means for besieging those strong places; ... and above all, that if the French were prevented from relieving them, they must inevitably soon fall into his hands without a blow.

♦St. Cyr appointed to command the French in Catalonia.♦

Duhesme, in fact, had announced to his government that his provisions would not hold out beyond the month of December; and to throw in supplies by sea was impossible. Buonaparte was well aware of the danger, and saw in part what consequences might be apprehended from it. He knew how Barcelona had been defended in the Succession war, and had calculated that if it were now to be recovered by the Spaniards it would cost him not less than fourscore thousand lives to regain possession of it. Such a sacrifice he would have made without one compunctious feeling; but that blood might have been expended without effecting the purchase, ... for if such a siege had been undertaken, England must and would have made exertions commensurate to the occasion. That these consequences did not follow was owing to the errors and incapacity of his opponents, not to his own measures. In other cases the force which he prepared was always fully equal to the service for which it was designed; in the present, it was so inadequate, as to excite in the General, Gouvion Saint Cyr, a suspicion that failure on his part would be more agreeable to the Emperor than success. That General had belonged to the army of the Rhine, which was an original sin in Buonaparte’s eyes; and having a command in Naples he had refused to obtain addresses from the troops soliciting the First Consul to take upon himself the imperial dignity; ... an irremissible offence. Moreover, great commander as Buonaparte was, he was jealous of any victories which were not obtained when he was in the field, so that the renown might redound to himself. Indulging at once this littleness of mind, and his personal or political dislike, it was his wish that Gouvion St. Cyr should not distinguish himself by any brilliant success; at the same time he knew the miserable state of the Spanish armies, and still more of the counsels by which they were directed, well enough to rely upon his relieving Barcelona. His instructions were to effect that object, to collect considerable magazines in Figueras at the enemy’s expense; to subdue the valleys, making ♦St. Cyr, 26. 42. Do.
Pièces Justificatives, No. 7.♦ them feel the whole weight of the war, and in fine to crush the enemy: having these objects in view, every thing was left to his own discretion.

When St. Cyr arrived at Perpignan, at the end of August, the town was full of sick and wounded, for whose relief no preparation had been made, so little had any reverses been expected. He found there some Tuscan regiments, the poor Queen of Etruria’s guards, and a battalion from the Valais ... for even that country was called upon to contribute from its recesses to this insatiable tyrant’s demand for human life. These troops had been sent back from Figueras by General Reille as being quite unable to take the field, not for want of discipline only, but of equipments, arms, and even necessary clothing. So miserable was their condition, that it was deemed prudent to quarter them in remote places, and train them out of sight, lest they should excite indignation as well as commiseration in the people, who in the south of France had always been ill affected toward Buonaparte, and suffering at this time from the loss of their trade with Spain, detested the injustice of the war, and were in a temper which might have ♦St. Cyr, 19. 34.♦ produced formidable consequences if any serious invasion had been attempted on that side. During the autumn troops continued to arrive there, mostly consisting of conscripts from Genoa, Naples, and other parts of Italy: under good training they soon became good soldiers, and only less to be trusted than the French because they were more inclined to desert. These forces when collected amounted to 18,000 men. Reille had 4000 at Figueras, and 8000 were with Duhesme in Barcelona.

♦He determines upon besieging Rosas.♦

Early in November St. Cyr received orders to enter Spain, and he determined to commence his operations with the siege of Rosas. While the fine roadstead which that fortress commands was open to the English, there was scarcely a chance of throwing supplies into Barcelona by sea; to escort them by land was not possible while Gerona and Hostalrich were in possession of the Spaniards; and if those places had been taken they could not be provisioned unless Rosas also were held by the French. Rosas is situated four leagues east of Figueras, in the bottom of the bay, where the plain of Ampurdan touches ♦1808.
November.♦ the skirts of the Pyrenees. The town, containing then about 1200 inhabitants, is built along the shore, and completely commanded by the fortress; the fortress, which is an irregular pentangle, the town, and a smaller fort, called, after a custom too prevalent in Catholic countries, Fuerte de la Trinidad, forming a semi-circle round the bay. This place had sustained a most gallant siege of ten weeks in 1795 after Figueras, strong as it was, had been surrendered without defence; and when the commander, D. Domingo Yzquierdo, could maintain the almost demolished works no longer, he succeeded in embarking the remains of his garrison. ♦Marcillac. 299–313.♦ During the peace nothing had been done to repair the works, as if no future war was to be apprehended. Even after the present struggle had commenced, six months, in that supineness which belongs to the Spanish character, had been suffered to elapse without taking any measures for strengthening and securing a place of such evident importance. There were many persons, and even some members of the nearest Juntas, who were acquainted with the details of the last siege, and knew what repairs were necessary, and also what the points were which it was most material to strengthen. But their attention was wholly engrossed by local and immediate interests, and the pressing representations which the commandant of engineers repeatedly addressed to the higher authorities produced no effect. Nothing could rouse them from their dream of recovering Barcelona by force of arms.

♦Dilapidated state of that fortress.♦

The Governor, however, D. Pedro O’Daly, Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment of Ulster, as soon as he apprehended an attack had made some preparations; he ordered all strangers who had taken refuge there to depart, and sent away by sea such of the garrison as were incapable of service. The ditches were cleared, parapets formed, and guns mounted. The north angle of the fort had been demolished by the explosion of a magazine; a wall of stones without mortar was run up by the peasants; it closed the breach, but that part of the works remained useless. The stores were as incomplete as the works: there were neither measures for the powder, nor saws for the fusees, ... hats and axes were used instead. The buildings within the fort were in ruins, an old church and one other edifice being all that were serviceable. Before the former siege a line nearly half a mile in length, with some redoubts, had been formed from the citadel to that part of the mountain range which is called Puig-rom, for the purpose of covering the town; but it was now in all parts so dilapidated, that though the garrison as well as the inhabitants were aware how much they needed this additional ♦Cabañes, c. 10.♦ protection, any attempt at re-establishing it was deemed hopeless.

♦Preparations for the siege.♦

Preparations for the siege had been made at Figueras, and in order to deceive the Spaniards a report had been encouraged that the design was against Gerona. St. Cyr established his head-quarters at Figueras, and General Reille, to whom the conduct of the siege had been entrusted, encamped before Rosas with his own division and that of the Italian General Pino. General ♦Nov. 6.♦ Souham took a position between Figueras and the Fluvia, to protect the besiegers on that side against any attempt which might be made from Gerona; and Chabot was stationed nearer the frontier, the General being well aware that the opposition which he had to apprehend was not so much from regular troops as from the whole population of the country. But the measures of the Catalans were so ill-directed at this time, that the invaders suffered more from the weather, and from the gross neglect of their own government in sending them supplies, than from all the efforts of their enemies. St. Cyr was obliged to send his cavalry back into France to the neighbourhood of Beziers, that the horses might not perish for want of fodder during the siege; and when he wrote pressingly for supplies for his men, directions were sent him in return to collect and convoy provisions to Barcelona. He ♦St. Cyr, 34–41♦ was desired not to regard any reports concerning the rabble opposed to him, for it was nothing more, and the time was fixed within which the Emperor expected that he would be master of Barcelona and of the country ten leagues round. In reply to this he stated that he would not break up the siege of Rosas without positive orders; that it was sufficiently hazardous to advance leaving Gerona behind him; but if Rosas were left also, Figueras would be again blockaded by the Spaniards, and must fall, because it was not possible to store it: so that the ♦Do. Pièces Justif. 45–16.♦ only way to secure that most important fortress was to take Rosas.

♦British squadron in the Bay of Rosas.♦

However much St. Cyr and the government under which he acted differed in other points, they both knew the incapacity of the forces opposed to them, and relied upon it. They knew that there would be no difficulty in routing the Spaniards whenever they were brought to action, that nothing was to be apprehended from any combined operations, and that neither by sea or land was any such exertion as the time required to be expected from the English, ... the siege of Rosas would otherwise have been a more perilous undertaking than the march to Barcelona. The English had just force enough in the Bay to give the French an opportunity of boasting that the siege was effected in spite of them, and to show what might have been done if a flying squadron with troops on board had been on the coast ready to act wherever it might be most serviceable. Captain West was in the bay in the Excellent, with the Lucifer and Meteor, bomb-vessels; and when the enemy, having taken possession of the heights which encompass the whole bay, had driven the troops in, and the peasants from the nearest villages with them, and entered the town, these vessels bore a part in the action, and assisted in dislodging them. Five-and-twenty marines were then sent to reinforce Fort Trinidad, and the rest of the marines, with fifty seamen, went cheerfully to assist in defending the citadel. Upon this a report was spread by the enemy, who were always endeavouring to make the Spaniards jealous of their allies, that the English had taken possession of the place; and as while this report was circulated they succeeded in intercepting all communications from Rosas to Gerona, the Junta of that city wrote to Captain West, requesting an explanation of his conduct. The artifice was then discovered; but not till the end had been answered of deceiving the Junta for a time, and thus preventing them from taking such measures for the relief of the place as might have been in their power.

Reille had expected to take Rosas by a sudden attack. The commandant of the engineers had served in that same capacity at the last siege, and was therefore well acquainted with the place and with its weakness. On the evening of the 9th a breach was made in the ramparts of the citadel sufficient for twenty men abreast; but it was so dark that the enemy did not discover the extent of the mischief. Immediate intelligence was sent to the ships; one of the bomb-vessels was then stationed where it could flank the breach, and the boats appointed to enfilade the shore with carronades, while more seamen were landed to repair the damage. British seamen are made of such materials, that it is indifferent to them on what service they are employed; whether at sea or ashore, whatever is to be done by courage, activity, intelligence, and strenuous exertion, they can accomplish. The Spaniards exerted themselves with emulous alacrity, and this, against which the enemy had directed their fire as the weakest part of the works, was by their united labour placed in a respectable state of defence.

♦Disposition of the Italian troops to desert.♦

Reille now found that neglected as Rosas had been, with its feeble works, its unsupported garrison, and its insufficient stores, it was necessary to proceed against it by regular siege. Some difficulties he encountered from the state of the weather, some from the sallies which were made to interrupt him; but his greatest uneasiness arose from the desertion of the Italians, which was so frequent as to leave no doubt that in case ♦St. Cyr, 38.♦ of any serious reverse the whole division would go over to the Spaniards. The state of durance in which the Pope was held had probably offended their religious feelings, and the Tuscans perhaps in their indignation for the treatment of the Queen of Etruria felt some sympathy with the Spaniards. But Buonaparte cared not for the hearts of men, so their hands were at his service and their lives at his disposal. And such are the effects of discipline, that the Italians, who when left to themselves are the worst troops in the world, became as efficient as the best soldiers in his army. One regiment at this siege was composed of subjects turned out from others, the refuse of the whole Italian army: example, encouragement, and restraint, made them behave well in the field, ... and how they behaved out of it was a matter of indifference to their officers and the government which employed them. Two companies of Italians having been surrounded and made prisoners by the Somatenes, under an old man of seventy, (who had been a captain of Miquelets in the last war, and now acted under the orders of the Spanish commander, D. Juan Claros), St. Cyr gave orders to seize an equal number of the inhabitants, and send them into France; there to be confined till an exchange should take place; and this he did to give a humaner character to the war, upon so brutal a system had it been carried on by his predecessors. His plea was that the peasantry had entrapped his troops by leading them astray; but the Catalans did not understand upon what principle he acted, and were more exasperated than if he had pursued the old system of burning their villages, because they believed that their countrymen were thus carried off as recruits for Buonaparte’s armies in the north. Among the Italian prisoners was the wife of an officer who accompanied her husband in man’s attire.

♦Attack upon Fort Trinidad repulsed.♦

On the 16th the French attempted to carry Fort Trinidad by assault. They were repulsed; returning in greater strength, they forced the outer gate, and endeavoured to force the second; but here such a steady fire of musquetry and hand-grenades was kept up against them, that they retired a second time, leaving many of their men under the walls. Captain West expecting a third attack, reinforced the fort with a party of marines, who entered by means of a rope-ladder under an incessant fire. Nothing could be more cordial than the co-operation of the Spaniards and English at this time; but they were not strong enough to prevent the enemy from erecting batteries, which compelled the ships to keep at a distance, and a brave but unsuccessful attack from Gerona upon Souham’s division on the Fluvia was the only effort made to relieve them: on that side the Spaniards would have done more had it not been for want of cavalry. There were two regiments in Tarragona with excellent horses, but so miserably in want of equipments, that it was impossible for them to take the field; there was no money to equip them, and while they were thus remaining inactive the enemy were overrunning the Ampurdan, and carrying on the siege of Rosas at their will, because the Spaniards had no cavalry to keep them in check. The French acted with a full knowledge of the Spaniards’ embarrassments, and in full reliance upon the paralysing imbecility which such difficulties must needs produce; nevertheless St. Cyr was far from feeling at ease, knowing that Barcelona must fall unless it were speedily succoured, and that if the force which was now idly besieging it were brought to the relief of Rosas, Catalonia might speedily be cleared of its invaders, and Rousillon become in its turn the scene of invasion. It was therefore necessary to press the siege, the farthest day which had been appointed for his reaching ♦The French establish themselves in the town.♦ Barcelona being past. During the night of the 27th an attack was made upon the town; the helpless part of the inhabitants had been removed by sea at the first approach of danger; there were about 500 men stationed there, some of whom were peasants, the others part of the garrison: they defended themselves with a courage to which the French, who are seldom just to their enemies, bore witness; but they were overpowered; about 300 fell, and hardly fifty escaped into the citadel. The conquerors immediately established batteries under cover of the houses, then set fire to the houses, and cut off the communication between the citadel and the fort. They rendered it also impossible for the English to communicate with the citadel. Captain West had at this time been superseded by Captain Bennett of the Fame; and when an officer from the Marques de Lazan came on board his ship with dispatches for the governor, some lives were lost in an unsuccessful attempt at landing him.

♦Lord Cochrane throws himself into Fort Trinidad.♦

The citadel was soon in a desperate state, and the fort might have been considered so; for it was at this time battered in breach, and a passage to the lower bomb-proof being nearly effected, the marines of the Fame were withdrawn. At this juncture Lord Cochrane arrived in the Imperieuse. During the month of September this gallant officer with his single ship had kept the whole coast of Languedoc in alarm, destroyed the newly-constructed semaphoric telegraphs (which were of the utmost consequence to the numerous coasting convoys of the French) at Bourdique, La Pinede, St. Maguire, Frontignan, Canet, and Foy; demolished fourteen barracks of the gens-d’armes; blown up a battery and the strong tower upon the lake of Frontignan; and not only prevented any troops from being sent from that province into Spain, but excited such dismay there, that 2000 men were drawn from Figueras to oppose him. The coasting trade was entirely suspended during this alarm; and with such consummate prudence were all his enterprises planned and executed, that not one of his men was either killed or hurt, except one, who was singed in blowing up the battery.

♦Gallant defence of the fort.♦

Lord Collingwood, with his wonted prudence, had entrusted Cochrane with discretionary orders to assist the Spaniards wherever it could be done with most probability of success, and he hastened to the Bay of Rosas as soon as he knew of the siege, ... too late, and yet in time to signalize himself. Captain Bennett, though he had withdrawn his own men, did not alter Lord Collingwood’s orders, and Cochrane threw himself into Fort Trinidad with eighty seamen and marines, at a time when the garrison, amounting to the same number, would else have surrendered, perceiving that further resistance had been thought unavailing by the English themselves. ♦1808.
December.♦ This garrison was changed, and the new men brought with them fresh hope and unexhausted strength. Cochrane formed a rampart within the breach of palisadoes and barrels, ships’ hammock-cloths, awning, &c. filled with sand and rubbish; these supplied the place of walls and ditches. Sanson, the commandant of the engineers, pronounced the breach practicable. His opinion was relied on with the more confidence because he was well acquainted with the place; but the Captain who was ordered to lead the assault thought otherwise; he had been in the Spanish service, and in garrison at that very fort, and he said that it was not possible to enter there; nevertheless he would make the attempt if he were ordered, with the certainty of perishing in it, and leading his party to destruction. Under such circumstances it requires more firmness to give the order than to obey, ... but it is of a different kind. The order was given, and the officer perished as he had foreseen and foretold. Two of his companions escaped by the humanity of the English, who, instead of killing four men whose lives were at their mercy, suffered two to retire, while they drew up the others by a rope, to secure them as prisoners. When the breach had been rendered practicable, a more formidable assault was made. Lord Cochrane had prepared for it with that sportiveness by which English sailors are as much characterised as schoolboys. He not only stationed men with bayonets immediately within the breach, to give the assailants an immediate greeting, but he laid well-greased planks across the breach, upon which many of the French slipped and fell in endeavouring to pass; and he hung ropes there with fish-hooks fastened to them, by which not a few were caught in their retreat. The enemy suffered a severe loss on this occasion. There was in Lord Cochrane’s conduct here, and in all places, that contempt of danger which in former ages would have been imputed to a reliance upon charms, and which never fails to inspire confidence. Once, while the besiegers were battering the fort, the Spanish flag fell into the ditch: he let himself down by a rope through a shower of balls to recover it, returned unhurt, and planted it again upon the ♦The citadel captured, and the fort evacuated.♦ walls. The citadel at length having been battered in breach till it was no longer tenable, capitulated, and the garrison, marching out with the honours of war, were sent prisoners[1] into France. Two thousand men, who had given proof of steadiness and courage, were thus lost to Spain. Lord Cochrane then saw that any farther resistance in Fort Trinidad was impossible; and having maintained its shattered walls twelve days after they had been deemed untenable, he embarked all the men, and blew up the magazine.

♦St. Cyr marches to relieve Barcelona.♦

The French had thus been detained a whole month before a neglected and ill-provided fortress. But the men who so often during this war heroically defended half-ruined works, had too much reason to feel how little it availed by their exertions to gain time for generals who knew not how to use it. By the French commanders every thing was calculated, ... by the Spanish, nothing. On the day after the capitulation the conquerors marched from Rosas; on the next day the whole army was collected on the Fluvia, the cavalry having returned from France. The force disposable for the relief of Barcelona consisted of 15,000 foot and 1500 horse: more than twice their number might have been brought against them, besides the Miquelets, who were esteemed by the French themselves as the best light troops in Europe, and the whole peasantry, always remarkable for their hardihood, and now animated with a hatred of their invaders as intense as it was well-founded. To deceive an enemy who was easily deceived, St. Cyr manœuvred as if he intended to besiege Gerona. One precaution, and one only, had been effectually taken by the Spaniards: they had broken up the road along the coast, so as to render it impracticable, and any attempt at repairing it must have been made under the guns of the English squadron. Hostalrich commanded the other road, but this was not passable for artillery. He sent back his guns and his ammunition waggons to Figueras, and having reached La Bisbal, distributed to every soldier four days’ biscuit and fifty cartridges, and with ♦Dec. 12.♦ no farther ammunition than ten rounds per man more, which were carried upon mules, set off to force his way to Barcelona, sure of well storing it when he arrived there from the magazines of the besiegers.

♦He discovers a mountain path near Hostalrich.♦

Claros, who saw the enemy debouche from La Bisbal, dispatched immediate intelligence to General Vives, and taking a position with his Miquelets and a party of Somatenes at Col de la Grange, opposed their march. If this system had been well followed up, the French must soon have expended their cartridges; but every thing had been concerted on their part, and with the Spaniards in their multitude of counsellors there was neither concert nor wisdom; and so ♦Cabañes, p. ii. p. 92.♦ well were the French prepared, that they were better acquainted with the country than the Spaniards themselves. In passing near Palamos they received some shot from the English ships; it was the only part of the route they had chosen which exposed them to this danger. They encamped that night in the Val de Aro. The destination of the army could then no longer be concealed; still it was of importance to keep the Spaniards in doubt concerning its course, and St. Cyr profited by every hour which they passed in indecision. The next day he arrived at Vidreras. Lazan’s troops were seen behind them, to the right, on the heights of Casa de la Selva; and on the 14th some skirmishing took place near Mallorquinas between these troops and the rear of the French. This gave them little interruption, and no alarm: what St. Cyr apprehended was, that he should find Vives upon the Tordera, a strong position, where some bodies of Miquelets and peasantry, well posted, might have made him expend his ammunition, and easily have frustrated his design; but it was the fate of the Spaniards now never to profit by the opportunities which were offered them. Passing by Masanet and Martorell de la Selva, upon the heights which command Hostalrich, he halted his right at Grions and his left at Masanes, while search was made for a mountain path, which leading out of reach of shot from the fortress, comes into the Barcelona road beyond it. A man who had formerly kept sheep in these parts had assured him that such a path existed, in opposition to the statement of all the smugglers whom St. Cyr consulted before he left Perpignan, and it was in reliance upon his single but sure testimony that this course was taken. The officers of the staff went to look for it, and returned exhausted with fatigue, declaring that no such path was there. St. Cyr then, who had full reliance upon his informant, set out himself, and after two hours’ search discovered it, but in the attempt he had nearly fallen into the hands of a party of Somatenes.

By this path, on the 15th, the French succeeded in passing Hostalrich; they started at daybreak, and had just regained the high road when the garrison, having discovered the way which they had taken, came out and annoyed their rear. In the course of the day they lost about two hundred men by repeated attacks of the Miquelets: and the troops, harassed by these skirmishes and by a fatiguing march, in which they had to cross many torrents, would fain have halted for the night when they arrived at Puente de la Tordera. The defile of Treinta-pasos was before them six miles in length, and St. Cyr knew that if they did not pass it that night, they must fight their way through on the morrow. He urged them forward therefore, leaving a handful of men at the entrance, to keep the Miquelets in check. The Spaniards had endeavoured to impede the way by breaking up the road and felling trees across it: but they had neglected to occupy this important pass, and by eleven o’clock the whole of the French ♦St. Cyr, 52–63.♦ army bivouacqued on the plain a league from Llinas.

♦Indecision of General Vives.♦

General Vives, during the whole time that the French were before Rosas, had been occupied with the insane purpose of laying regular siege to Barcelona. From this dream he was disturbed by advices from Gerona that the firing at Rosas had ceased; and any hope which might have remained was soon put an end to by certain intelligence of its surrender from the British squadron. The Spanish Commander had taken none of the ordinary means for obtaining information of the enemy’s movements; he knew as little of their strength as of their plans: he was ill acquainted with the country, and the persons by whom he was surrounded were utterly ignorant of military affairs, and might have perplexed a firmer spirit and a clearer understanding, by their contrarious and vacillating counsels. It was a moment at which a blow might have been struck not less momentous than the battle of Baylen; for the destruction of St. Cyr’s army (and destruction must have been the consequence of defeat) would have drawn after it the recovery of Barcelona and Figueras, and effectual assistance might then have been afforded to Zaragoza. But the unreasonable hopes which he had long indulged were followed by an ominous prostration of mind. Fretted as well as embarrassed by want of money; alarmed by tidings of the rout at Tudela, and of the appearance of the enemy again before Zaragoza; still more alarmed by receiving no advices from the side of Madrid, and therefore with too much reason apprehending the worst, he had no government to look to for orders, no reliance upon others, and none ♦Dec. 11.♦ upon himself. Four days were wasted in hopeless indecision; then came intelligence at midnight from the Junta at Gerona that St. Cyr was on his march, and, having sent his artillery to Figueras, it was evident that Barcelona was his object. Immediately General Reding was dispatched with his division, consisting of about 4000 men, to oppose him. Succeeding advices left no doubt of the direction of the French; a council of war was held; Caldagues was of ♦He marches against the French.♦ opinion that the General should march against the enemy with the greater part of his force, leaving only enough to keep up the blockade: he took however not more than 5000 with him, and, having dispatched instructions to the Marques de Lazan, followed Reding, and having ♦Dec. 15. Cabañes, p. 9. c. II.♦ joined him at Granollers, set out from that place at midnight just when the French had passed without opposition through the defile of Treinta-pasos: the Spaniards as they left Granollers saw the fires of the enemy’s bivouac.

♦Rout of the Spaniards at Llinas.♦

The intention was to occupy an advantageous position between Villalba and Llinas: the artillery and the want of order in some of the raw troops impeded their march; it was morning when the head of the column arrived at Cardedeu, and before Vives could reach the ground which he had intended to take he came in sight of the enemy, and his men, after a night march of eight hours, had to draw up for battle. The French were refreshed by rest: but they had consumed their biscuit, and so much of their ammunition had been expended in skirmishing with the Miquelets, that what remained would not have been sufficient for an hour in action. St. Cyr had formed them in one column at daybreak. When the Spanish artillery began to play upon the head of that column, Pino, of whose division it was composed, sent an aide-de-camp, to ask if any change was to be made in the dispositions for battle. St. Cyr’s reply was, “We have neither time nor means to make dispositions. In this covered country it would take at least three hours to reconnoitre the enemy well, ... in less than two, Lazan might arrive to attack us in the rear, and Milans might fall upon our left. We have not a minute to lose; but must bring our whole force to bear upon the centre of their line.” Notwithstanding these orders, the first brigade deployed, and attacking the left of Reding’s division suffered considerably, and began to give way. St. Cyr, when he saw his orders disobeyed, instructed Pino to execute his original plan with the second brigade, and, changing the direction of Souham’s division, sent it to turn General Reding’s right. Two battalions were ordered to make a false attack upon the left of the Spanish position. Here the rout began. The centre was forced at the same time; and Vives and his staff, seeing all hope lost on that side, hastened to the right, where the advantage had hitherto appeared to be with Reding. But they carried panic with them; Souham’s division decided the battle in that quarter with equal celerity, and the steadiness with which some of the old troops behaved was not supported well enough to save the Spaniards from a total and scandalous defeat. It was eight o’clock when they formed for action, and before nine they were in full flight. General Vives lost his horse, and, escaping on foot across the mountains, reached Mataro, and got on board a vessel. There was an end of all order: officers and men shifted as they could, each for himself. One column alone under Colonel Ybarrola retreated unbroken; and two out of fourteen guns were brought off by a Sub-lieutenant named Uzurrun. Reding, who had been saved by the speed of his horse from close pursuit, fell in with these at Mommalo, rallied what fugitives could be collected, and retreated with them by S. Culgat, across the Llobregat to Molins de Rey. The artillery had been well served, and the French loss by their own account amounted to 600 men. Of the Spaniards 2000 are said to have been taken, of whom 800 were wounded. Their killed were about 400. The loss in men was trifling, for the fugitives dispersed in all directions, and the conquerors wasted no time in pursuit: but the most favourable ♦Cabañes, p. 3. c. 11.
St. Cyr, 63–70.♦ opportunity which presented itself to the Spaniards during the whole war was lost, ... the opportunity of cutting off a second French army, which would have drawn after it the recovery of Barcelona, and a second deliverance of Zaragoza.

♦Retreat of the Spaniards from Barcelona to the Llobregat.♦

The firing was heard at Barcelona, from whence Duhesme, seeing so large a part of the besieging force drawn off, sallied against the remainder: he was bravely received, and repulsed at all points. But when night came, Caldagues, who had been left in the command, hearing the fatal issue of the battle, withdrew behind the Llobregat, removing almost the whole of his artillery, but leaving copious magazines which Vives, with that want of discretion that characterized all his conduct, had collected at Sarrea, and which it was now impossible to save. The retreat was effected without molestation; but so miserable a scene had not for many generations been witnessed in Catalonia. The country around Barcelona was one of the most flourishing and delightful parts of the whole kingdom, bearing every mark of industry and opulence and comfort. The whole population of that vicinity followed the retreat, men, women, and children carrying upon their backs such effects as they could bear, and leaving all the rest to the spoilers. The nuns of three convents were among the fugitives: about an hundred of these poor women were so advanced in years that they were hardly able to walk, ... since childhood they had never been beyond the walls of their cloister, and now they were thus driven abroad into the world. Reding had reached Molins de Rey at midnight, and by great exertions restoring some order among the troops which he had collected in his flight, took a position upon the heights that command the bridge.

♦St. Cyr marches against them.
Dec. 17.♦

St. Cyr entered Barcelona on the following morning, ill satisfied with Duhesme for not having interposed to cut off the fugitives; and still more displeased when he found that the distress of the garrison for provisions had been greatly exaggerated, and that in consequence of these false representations he had been compelled to undertake a march so perilous that nothing but the gross incapacity of his opponents ♦Dec. 20.♦ could have saved the army from[2] destruction. He rested his men three days, and on the fourth took a position on the left bank of the Llobregat in face of the Spaniards, that they might have no time to strengthen themselves in the advantageous post which they occupied, nor to be joined by the troops under Lazan and Milans. But these officers had no intention of joining; and Reding, upon whom the temporary command had devolved, was less able than a Spaniard would have been to struggle with the difficulties in which he found himself. A Spanish General would neither have foreseen defeat nor have been cast down by it; he would have thought a change of fortune as likely as a change of weather; he would have relied upon the Saints and the Virgin, his good cause and the insuperable constancy of his countrymen. But Reding saw only the fearful realities of his situation; he knew that his own knowledge of the art of war was of no avail when he could depend neither upon officers nor men; and his sole hope was, that a speedy and honourable death might remove him from the sight of calamities which he deemed it impossible to avert. A more pitiable condition cannot be conceived, ... except that of the brave and honourable men employed against him, who from a sense of military duty served with their utmost efforts a cause which they knew to be infamously unjust, and acting in obedience to a merciless tyrant with miscreants worthy of such a master, aided and abetted crimes at which their hearts revolted ... sinning thus against God and man, against the light of conscience and against their own souls.

♦Indecision of the Spaniards. Dec. 18.♦

On the second day after the rout, Vives, who had landed at Sitges, appeared upon the Llobregat, and having approved of Reding’s dispositions, left him in the command while he went to Villafranca to take measures with the Junta for calling out the whole peasantry of the country, and for reuniting the dispersed troops. There was the difficult task of providing for the army, ... their magazines had been abandoned to the enemy, and they were in a country which now for six months had been the immediate scene of war. They were without clothes and without shelter, and a piercing wind from the mountains swept down the valley of the Llobregat. ♦Dec. 20.♦ While they were employed in felling trees and erecting huts, the alarm was given that the French were taking a position in front of them. The men were immediately placed under arms, and dispositions were made for maintaining a post strong in itself, and defended by numerous artillery. But it was soon perceived that the attack would not be made that day. St. Cyr fixed his head-quarters in the centre at San Feliu, having his left at Cornella and his right at Molins de Rey. He saw by the movements of the Spaniards that they expected the main attack would be at that place, by the bridge over which the high road passes to Tarragona, and a little way beyond branches off to Zaragoza. They had in fact made such preparations that it was impossible for the French to debouch there while the point was defended with any resolution. St. Cyr therefore ordered General Chabran to draw their attention thither during the night, and not to make any real attempt till he should see both the centre and the right of the enemy turned: for the river was fordable in several places, and the Spaniards with strange improvidence had taken no means for rendering it impassable in those points. Indeed as soon as they were satisfied that the attack was delayed till the morning, Reding held a council of war in his tent; and all who were present agreed that considering the temper of the troops after their late defeat, it would be imprudent to hazard another engagement.... Some were for retreating to Ordal, and occupying a position there; ... it was not so defensible as that which they proposed to abandon; but to men in their state of mind it seemed better, because it was at a distance: others were for retiring at once to Tarragona, where the army might be re-organized in safety. Reding himself thought it certainly advisable to retreat: but he who had no fear of death was miserably afraid of responsibility; and wanting resolution to act upon his own judgement, dispatched a courier to solicit instructions from General Vives, who was seven leagues off. Night came on; the troops were under arms, exposed to severe cold and snow; the fires of both armies were seen along their whole lines; ... an alarm was kept up at the bridge by Chabran’s division, and from time to time the Spanish batteries fired where they saw any movement on the opposite bank. At midnight no answer from Vives had arrived; and Reding, not doubting that it would confirm the opinion of the council, issued orders that the troops should be in readiness to commence their retreat as soon as it came. But Vives also sought to shift the responsibility from himself; and when his answer arrived, which was not till four in the morning, its purport was, that Reding was to retire to Ordal if he could not maintain himself on the Llobregat. Reding now felt that the night had been lost in this ruinous indecision, and finding the responsibility which he dreaded thrown back upon him, deemed it better to die where he was than commence a retreat with the certainty of being instantly and closely pursued. He made this determination known to the officers who were about his person, exhorting them to do their duty like true Spaniards, and die in defence of their country: ♦Cabañes, p. 3. c. 12.♦ they shook hands with him in pledge of their promise, and in this temper waited for the attack.

♦Dec. 21.

At break of morning on the shortest day in the year, the left wing of the French under General Souham forded the river at St. Juan d’Espi, and ascended the right bank to protect the centre, which in like manner crossed in a line from St. Feliu, opposite to the right of the Spaniards. The first brigade of the centre effected its passage before any such intention was perceived or apprehended by their opponents. The Spaniards could have given no greater proof of negligence than in leaving undefended points which were so easily defensible, and upon which the security of their position depended; but in making dispositions as soon as they discovered the enemy’s movements, they evinced a degree of skill which convinced the French that there were officers among them who would have been formidable antagonists had they commanded troops upon whom they could have relied. The first brigade, however, was in time to establish itself with little opposition upon the heights of Llors and S. Coloma; the second followed, and placed itself at the foot of those heights, masked, in column, and ready to debouch. Chabot’s troops crossed at the same ford, and marched to the left of the others, with the intention of turning the Spaniards’ right. The effect of these movements was, that the Spanish troops, dismayed, as their officers had anticipated, by the late reverses, easily gave way: the right was driven back behind the centre; that being attacked also, was thrown back upon the left toward the bridge; their retreat upon Villa Franca was cut off by Chabot: a detachment from the French right, which had crossed at a ford above the bridge, intercepted them also on the way to Martorell; and if Chabran had then forced the passage of the bridge, they would have been beset on all sides, and driven together for slaughter like wild beasts at a royal hunt in the East. Chabran, however, not willing to expose his men to a loss which might be spared, waited till Souham’s troops arrived on the opposite bank, and then debouched from the bridge. There are no troops in the world except the Spaniards, says St. Cyr, who could have escaped from such a situation. They did it by abandoning every thing, and flying every man his own way. General Reding and the officers who had pledged themselves to die with him in maintaining the position had not even an opportunity of dying afforded them, unless they had sought it like suicides. The country being craggy, wooded, and full of ravines, favoured the fugitives, so that during an active pursuit of fifteen hours not more that some 1100 prisoners were taken. Caldagues was among them, and the good service which he had performed in relieving Gerona did not exempt him now from a suspicion of having betrayed the Spaniards in favour of his countrymen. The pursuit was followed to the very gates of Tarragona, and some of the fugitives did not stop till they reached the Ebro. All the artillery, consisting of 50 pieces of cannon, was taken; and large magazines of ammunition were found at Villa Franca, to the great relief of the French, who had not enough in Barcelona for a month’s consumption. Chabran’s division established itself at Martorell, Chabot’s at S. Sadurni, Souham’s at Vendrell and upon the left bank of the Gaya, Pino’s at Villa Franca, Villa Nueva, and Sitjas. St. Cyr fixed his head-quarters at Villa Franca. Thus far he had completely succeeded in whatever he had proposed: ... there was no longer an army in the field to oppose him; Barcelona was not only relieved, but stored and rendered secure; and Zaragoza (which in a moral if not a military point of view was an object of more importance) ♦St. Cyr, 82–88.
Cabañes, p. 3. c. 12.♦ was precluded from all succour in that quarter, from whence alone an effectual effort might reasonably have been expected.

CHAPTER XVII.

MOVEMENTS OF THE CENTRAL ARMY UNDER THE DUKE DEL INFANTADO. BATTLE OF UCLES. RETREAT FROM CUENCA. CARTAOJAL APPOINTED TO THE COMMAND. PROGRESS OF THE FRENCH. SIR ROBERT WILSON ENTERS CIUDAD RODRIGO. NEGOTIATION CONCERNING THE ADMISSION OF BRITISH TROOPS INTO CADIZ.

♦1808.
December.

Sir John Moore’s movements, fatal as they were to his army and himself, and most injurious to public opinion in England, were not without some good effect, though far inadequate to the price at which it was purchased. They drew into Galicia those forces which would otherwise have taken possession of Lisbon and of Seville, and they afforded the Junta time for raising new levies and bringing new armies into the field. The spirit of the nation was in no degree abated; their numerous defeats, the loss of their capital, and the treachery of chiefs in whom they had entirely trusted, seemed rather to exasperate than dismay them; and there would have been no lack of strength had there been arms for the willing people, officers to discipline them, a government which could have provided for their support, and generals capable of directing their zeal and courage. A memorable instance of the national disposition was displayed in the little town of Luzena. According to a decree of the Junta, four men of every hundred were to be drawn for military service; all who were liable to the lot assembled, 400 in number, and when the magistrate was proceeding to ballot for sixteen, the whole 400 volunteered, and marched off that same day to join the troops at Seville.

♦Condition of Infantado’s army at Cuenca.♦

Had the British army made a stand in Galicia, as there was every reason to expect, the Duke del Infantado was to have advanced from Cuenca upon Ocaña and Aranjuez, and in conjunction with the army collected at La Carolina, under the Marques del Palacio, to have pushed for Madrid. The retreat of Sir John Moore frustrated this plan; the Duke was then ordered to remain on the defensive, and new levies were sent to reinforce him as fast as they were raised. But in the miserable circumstances of his army, increase of numbers was no increase of strength. Arms, clothing, and provision were wanting; it was alike without resources, discipline, or system; in want of efficient officers of every rank, and those which there were, were divided into cabals and factions. The province of Cuenca was the best point which could have been chosen for deriving supplies from La Mancha, Murcia, and Valencia, the two latter provinces as yet unexhausted by the war; but it was not a military position. The city stands upon high ground, where the Huecar falls into the Jucar at the skirts of Monte de S. Christobal, and it is completely commanded by the ♦Infantado, Manifiesto, 32–37.♦ heights. All that the Duke could hope for in case he were attacked was to secure his retreat, and for this purpose he occupied some eminences on the left bank of the Huecar, leaving the road to Valencia by Moya open for his artillery. The van was stationed at Jabaya, four leagues from Cuenca, in the direction of Madrid.

The Duke had acquired some reputation in the former war with France when serving as Colonel of a regiment which he had raised himself. He had now given the highest proof of devotion to his country, in accepting a command under circumstances which rendered success absolutely impossible, and yet where any disaster would compromise his reputation, and expose him to the suspicion and fury of his own soldiers. In endeavouring to restore order among the troops, and to obtain food and clothing for them, he was indefatigable; no man could have exerted himself with greater activity and zeal. The condition of his army indeed, officers as well as men, was pitiable. The military chest having been taken to Zaragoza, they were without pay; and a great proportion of those who had endured the fatigue and sufferings of the retreat were now sinking under the effects. They lay upon straw, half-naked, in that severe season, and in the keen climate of that high country, ... hundreds were perishing thus. The Duke established hospitals, collected beds from the city and from all the places within reach, appointed officers to the sole charge of seeing that the sick were supplied, and ordered the friars to attend upon them. His authority was exerted as far as it would extend, and when that failed, he begged for their support. These exertions were not without effect; the progress of disease was ♦Infantado, 42–44.♦ stopped, men and stores were obtained, subordination was restored, and with little efficient strength there was the appearance as well as the name of an army.

♦Dreams of offensive operations.♦

The Spaniards were not sensible how low they had fallen as a military people. Remembering what they had been, no lessons, however severe, could make them see themselves as they were; and this error was not confined to the multitude; it was partaken by all ranks, and seemed, indeed, inherent in the national character. It was an error which exposed their armies always to defeat, and yet as a nation rendered them invincible; ... the French could have invaded no people whom it would have been so easy to rout, none whom it was so impossible to subdue. Infantado had his full share of this delusion; he planned extensive and combined operations, such as required good troops, intelligent officers, and ready means; ... he thought of relieving Zaragoza, ... of recovering Madrid; or of pursuing the left wing of that army which was then employed against the English; ... and this with men and leaders whose incapacity was manifest upon every occasion. Upon intelligence that about 1500 French cavalry were scouring the country on both sides of the Tagus, and plundering great part of the provinces of Cuenca and La Mancha, he concerted a scheme for surprising them at Aranjuez and ♦Movement against the French at Tarancon frustrated.♦ Tarancon, sending Venegas with 4000 foot and 800 horse to attack them in the latter place, while D. Antonio de Senra, with an equal force of foot and 1000 horse, was to fall upon Aranjuez, overcome the enemy there, and intercept those who would retreat thither in their endeavour to escape from Tarancon. The attempt failed, wholly through mismanagement. Senra stopped short at El Horcajo, in fear of a detachment of French cavalry at Villanueva del Cardete, though that force had been calculated upon in the combinations of Infantado. The division with Venegas lost their way in the night and the snow; some went in one direction, some in another, ... the cavalry who were thus separated had no directions how to act; and the infantry, instead of surprising the enemy in Tarancon, were themselves surprised ♦Infantado, 45–55.♦ by them. There were, however, some good troops among them, who stood firm, and the ♦Dec. 25.♦ French, being very inferior in number, retreated with some loss to Aranjuez.

♦Venegas falls back from Tarancon to Ucles.♦

This failure had the ill effect of creating discord among the Spaniards. Infantado blamed the commanders; they reproached the officers under them; and both were willing to excuse themselves by supposing that what had failed in the execution had been planned unskilfully. Yet, as some advantage had been gained, the Duke resolved to pursue it.... The left bank being now cleared as far as Aranjuez, he hoped to take possession of that point and of Ocaña, and as in that rainy season the Tagus was nowhere fordable, his purpose was to remove the boats, break down the bridges, and place himself at Toledo. Venegas therefore was ordered to canton his troops in Tarancon, Ucles, and the neighbouring villages, preparatory to this movement, and his force was increased to 8000 foot and 1900 horse, ... the commander-in-chief retaining with himself about 10,000, of whom a third part were without arms, and a considerable number otherwise unfit for service. This ♦1809.♦ was their position at the beginning of the year. Of what was passing in other parts they were ill-informed, and the false reports which abound in such times were always on the favourable side. They believed the French in Madrid were in hourly fear that this army would appear before the capital; and that Romana had entirely destroyed the enemy at Guadarama. Some movements, however, on the part of the French about Aranjuez made Venegas resolve to fall back from Tarancon upon Ucles. He apprehended that it was their intention to attack the part of his force which was stationed at this latter place, and he resolved therefore to march his troops thither as a better position than Tarancon, and one where he might cover the army.

♦1809.
January.

Ucles is a decayed town, where the Knights of Santiago had their chief convent in the bright ages of that military order: here their banner was kept which Gregory XI. had blessed, and which the Kings of Spain delivered to every new master on his appointment: hither the knights from all the other provinces resorted when their services were required, and from hence they had set forth for the conquest of Cordoba, and Seville, and Jaen, and Murcia. To a Spaniard of these times it was a melancholy place, for the proud as well as the mournful recollections which it recalled; for here Alonso VI. had lost his only son, in the most disastrous defeat that the Christians had ever suffered from the Moors since the destruction of the kingdom of the Goths. He fell in battle with the Almoravides; and because seven Counts had died bravely in defending the Infante, the African fanatics, in their insolent triumph, called the spot where they fell the Place of the Seven Swine. This ill-omened ground was now to become the scene of an action disgraceful to the Spaniards for the facility with which they were routed, and infamous to the French for the enormous wickedness with which they abused their victory.

Venegas supposed that the French were bringing forces against him across the Tagus, by the ferry at Villamanrique. His danger was from a different quarter. Victor had marched from Toledo against Infantado’s army, knowing as little of the Spaniards’ movements as they did of his, but with such troops, that his only anxiety was to find the enemy, and bring them to action wherever they might be found. Victor himself, with General Ruffin’s division, went by way of Alcazar, and General Villate, taking the direction of Ucles, discovered the Spaniards there on the morning of the 13th. Venegas apprehended an attack on his right, or in the rear; but the French crossed the brook, and fell upon the left wing of the Spaniards, who were stationed upon some high and broken ground, commanding the convent and the town. If the general erred in not strengthening this position, the troops allowed him no time for remedying his error; they retreated precipitately to the town, and when orders came to occupy the convent it was too late; ... the enemy were within the enclosure, and fired from thence, as under cover of a parapet. The panic presently spread, the raw levies disordered those who would have done their duty, and many officers made a brave but vain sacrifice of their own lives in endeavouring to rally and encourage the men. The fugitives in one direction came upon the enemy’s artillery, under General Cenarmont, and were cut down with grape-shot; in another they fell in with Victor and the remaining part of the French army. One body, under D. Pedro Agustin Giron, seeing that all was lost, made their way desperately through the enemy in good order, and got to Carrascosa, where they found the Duke. It was a series of errors on the part of the Spaniards, and the consequences were as disastrous as they could be. The French boasted of having taken 300 officers and 12,000 men, ... the whole force, however, which Venegas had with him did not amount to this, but the loss was very great. The prisoners were marched to ♦Rocca, p. 79.♦ Madrid, and such as fell by the way from hunger and exhaustion were shot by their inhuman captors.

♦Cruelties committed there by the French.♦

Never indeed did any men heap upon themselves more guilt and infamy than those by whom this easy conquest was obtained. The inhabitants of Ucles had taken no part in the action; from necessity they could only be passive spectators of the scene. But they had soon cause to lament that they had not rather immolated their wives and children with their own hands, like the Numantians of old, and then rushed upon the invaders to sweeten death with vengeance, instead of submitting to the mercy of such enemies. Plunder was the first object of the French, and in order to make the townspeople discover where their valuables were secreted, they tortured them. When they had thus obtained all the portable wealth of the place, they yoked the inhabitants like beasts, choosing especially the clergy for this outrage, loaded them with their own furniture, and made them carry it to the Castle Hill, and pile it in heaps, where they set fire to it, and consumed the whole. They then in mere wantonness murdered above threescore persons, dragging them to the shambles, that this butchery might be committed in its proper scene. Several women were among these sufferers, and they might be regarded as happy in being thus delivered from the worse horrors that ensued: for the French laid hands on the surviving women of the place, amounting to some three hundred, ... they tore the nun from the altar, the wife from her husband’s corpse, the virgin from her mother’s arms, and they abused these victims of the foulest brutality, till many of them expired on the spot. This was not all, ... but the farther atrocities which these monsters perpetrated cannot even be hinted at without violating the decencies of language and the reverence which is due to humanity. These unutterable things were committed in open day, and the officers made not the slightest attempt at restraining the wretches under their command; they were employed in securing the best part of the plunder for themselves. The Spanish government published the details of this wickedness, in order ♦Gazeta del Gobierno, April 24, 1809.♦ that if the criminals escaped earthly punishment, they might not escape perpetual infamy.

♦Infantado collects the fugitives.♦

Infantado was severely censured for exposing his advanced guard fourteen leagues from his head-quarters, so that support was impossible; and an equal want of judgement had been shown by Venegas in not falling back upon the main body, which he knew was actually on the way to join him. The Duke left Cuenca on the morning preceding the action, and took up his quarters that night at Horcajada. Desirous to know for what reason Venegas had retreated from Tarancon, he rode forward on the 13th with his aides-de-camp, and when he reached Carrascosa, which is a league and half from Ucles, some carriers informed him that as they were leaving that town they heard firing at the outposts. Part of his troops were at Carrascosa; they had heard nothing; and the Duke was preparing to sit down to table with their general, the Conde de Orgaz, when news came that horse and foot were approaching in disorder. Immediately he mounted and rode forward; the first person whom he met was the commandant of the light troops, D. Francisco Copons y Navia, an officer in whom he had great confidence: seeing him without his battalion, he knew that some fatal blow must have been sustained, and asking what had happened, was told that the troops at Ucles were all either killed or taken. His first impulse was to rush forward, and throw himself upon the enemy’s bayonets. A timely thought of duty withheld him from this act of desperation. The troops under Giron, who had fought their way through the French, came up now in good order; with these and with such fugitives as could be brought together, he made dispositions which checked the pursuit in this direction, and retired when the evening was ♦Infantado, 119–132.♦ closing to Horcajada. They rested there during the early part of the night, and setting forward at three in the morning, reached the Venta de las Cabrejas before daybreak.

♦Retreat from Cuenca.♦

Here, while the troops were receiving their rations, the generals held a council whether they should retreat to the borders of Valencia, and take up a position for the defence of that kingdom, which was threatened on the side of Daroca; or join the Marques del Palacio in La Mancha, and if compelled, fall back to La Carolina or Despeña-Perros; or march for Zaragoza, to attack the besiegers, and raise the siege. This was gravely proposed; but the madness of making such an attempt with an unprovided, undisciplined, routed army, dispirited by a long series of disasters, and above all, by the scandalous defeat of the preceding day, was universally acknowledged. The scheme of joining Palacio, and making for the Sierra Morena, was likewise rejected, because in the plains of La Mancha they would be exposed to the enemy’s cavalry; and it was resolved without a dissentient voice to retreat into Valencia, where there were great resources for refitting and increasing the troops. This being determined, the army reached Cuenca that night, and continued its retreat on the following morning, the artillery being sent off in the middle of the night by a better road, to join them at Almodovar del Pinar. But four-and-twenty hours of the heaviest rain rendered this road also impassable; and in spite of every exertion the greater number of the guns could not be got farther than Olmedilla, one league from Cuenca, by the following midnight, and there the escort left them. The Duke, who was with the artillery himself, in hope of expediting the most difficult part of their movements, had preceded them to Tortola, where a few of the guns had arrived, and whither the rest were to be brought next day, the worst part of the road being past. He sent orders therefore that one regiment of horse and another of foot should be dispatched to Tortola, for the purpose of escorting the artillery when it should be thus brought together, and went himself to join the army at ♦Loss of the artillery.♦ Valera de arriba. On his arrival there on the evening of the 16th he found that no infantry had been sent; being barefooted and exhausted by marching in such weather, they had been deemed actually incapable of the service. Presently advice arrived that a company of the Ordenes Militares, which he had left at Tortola, had thought proper to leave the place immediately after his departure: that a party of enemy’s cavalry had come up, and that the regiment of dragoons at the very sound of the French trumpets had taken flight, abandoning the guns to them. He now ordered a battalion of infantry and the Farnese regiment of dragoons to hasten and retake them: the night was dark, the distance considerable, the roads in the worst imaginable state; and when at daybreak they came to Tortola, scarcely an hundred infantry could be mustered, the rest having lost the way, or dispersed. The dragoons behaved well, and twice made themselves masters of the guns, but to no purpose; they were embedded in the soil too deeply to be removed at once; and while they were vainly labouring there, reinforcements came up to the enemy, and many brave men were sacrificed before the regiment desisted from the attempt at saving these guns, which with such exertions had been brought thither from Tudela. Infantado knew that any farther effort, considering the state of his army, must be hopeless, and would moreover expose him to the imminent danger of having his retreat cut off, for one column of the enemy appeared to be taking the direction of Almodovar; and in fact when the Duke reached that place, it was ascertained that they were within three leagues of it. After a few hours’ rest therefore he ordered the retreat to be continued to La Motilla del Palancar, near Alarcon; and being, however unfortunate as a commander, willing to perform a soldier’s part to the last, took his station with his own family and his orderly dragoons, as an outpost, within three miles of the enemy. This had an excellent effect upon the troops; so many indeed had deserted since the rout at Ucles, that few perhaps remained except those who acted upon a sense of duty, and their movements were now conducted with more composure. Infantado remained at La Motilla till he was assured that the French had turned aside from the pursuit; removing then to Albacete and Chinchilla, he gave his troops a few days’ necessary ♦Infantado, 133–141.♦ rest, and issued directions for the better observance of discipline and order.

♦Infantado frustrates a movement of the enemy against the Carolina army.♦

On the 25th the army moved to Hellin and Tobarra, the object being to cover Murcia, call off the attention of the enemy from Valencia, and receive reinforcements from both those kingdoms and from Andalusia. Infantado was more enterprising and more hopeful than some of the generals under his command, who would have had him retreat to the city of Murcia, there to refit his troops, or take shelter even at Carthagena. The minister at war submitted to his consideration whether it would not be advisable to take up a position between the Peñas de S. Pedro and Carcelen, for the purpose of communicating with the Sierra Morena by the Sierra de Alcaraz. This the Duke thought a bad position in itself, even if it were not in a desert, and without water; and as he had ascertained that Victor was moving upon Villarrobledo with the intention of cutting off the vanguard of the Carolina army at Villarta, he took measures for averting a blow, which, if it had succeeded, would have left the passes of the Sierra Morena open to the enemy. It had been intended that this detachment, consisting of 5000 men, should have co-operated with him in his projected movement upon Toledo, which had been so fatally frustrated at Ucles; they were therefore under his command. He now ♦1809.
February.♦ sent orders that they should instantly retire to S. Cruz de Mudela, or to El Viso; and while he hastened thither himself to join them, sent off 500 horse, divided into four parties, to act as guerillas in the rear of the French. They did this with great success, imposing upon them by their rapidity and boldness: and the Duke by forced marches reached S. Cruz de Mudela in time to save the Carolina troops, the enemy having just arrived in front of them. The French, seeing a force which they had not expected, and were not in strength to attack, retired toward Toledo, leaving the open country to the Spaniards: and Infantado then communicated ♦Infantado, 180–189.♦ with General Cuesta, that he might act in concert with the army of Extremadura.

♦Infantado superseded by Cartaojal.♦

The troops had now recovered heart; the advanced guard, under the Duque del Alburquerque, gained some advantage at Mora, where, ♦Feb. 18.♦ by a well-planned expedition, he surprised the French; and Infantado thought that he had performed no inconsiderable service to his country, in having gathered up the wreck of the central army, and brought it into an efficient state, when he received an order from the Supreme Junta to give up the command to the ♦Feb. 6.♦ Conde de Cartaojal. He obeyed reluctantly, and with the feelings of an injured man. The government at that time perhaps, like the people, attributed too large a part of their disasters to the generals, and therefore appointed and displaced them upon no better ground than that of complying with public opinion. The soldiers appear to have been well satisfied with the Duke; they indeed had seen the incessant exertions which he had made for supporting them when the government could send them no supplies: but the officers were divided into cabals, and there was a strong party against him. His offended pride did not however abate his desire of continuing to serve his country in the field, and he requested permission to remain with the army as Colonel of the Royal Spanish Guards; but he was informed that this was incompatible with his elevated rank, and therefore he was ♦Feb. 12.♦ called to Seville. No inquiry concerning the rout at Ucles was instituted; the opinion prevailed that it was imputable to his error in exposing the advanced guard at such a distance from the body of his army; but the faults with which he charged Venegas were overlooked, and the government continued to place a confidence in that General, to which, in any other capacity than that of a commander, his honourable character and personal qualities entitled him.

♦Calumnies against Castaños.♦

The French, at the commencement of their revolutionary war, sent every unsuccessful general to the scaffold, the Convention in its bloody acts keeping pace with the bloodiest desires of a deceived and infuriated populace. The Central Junta contracted no such guilt, though humanity is not the characteristic of the Spaniards, and justice in state affairs had in that country for centuries been unknown. They gave ♦1809.♦ no ear to vulgar or malignant accusations; but, on the other hand, they allowed their generals no opportunity of vindicating themselves. Upon this ground Castaños, as well as Infantado, had cause to complain. The order which called him from the command of the central army during its retreat intimated no dissatisfaction at his conduct; on the contrary, it summoned him to take the presidency of the Military Junta, saying that the fate of armies depended upon the plans which were laid down for them. That restless intriguer, the Conde de Montijo, who had visited him at his head-quarters at Tudela, professed the warmest friendship towards him, and spoken of him in the language of unbounded admiration, left the army suddenly two days before the battle, and wherever he went reported that Castaños was a traitor, and had sold the country to the French. This nearly proved fatal to the General, when, in obedience to his summons, he set out to join the Central Junta, taking with him merely such an escort as his rank required: for he soon found that fifteen horse and thirty foot were not sufficient to protect him from imminent danger; the clamour which Montijo raised had spread far and wide, and they could not enter a village without preparations as serious as if they were about to engage in action. At Miguel-turra, in La Mancha, the Junta exerted themselves ineffectually to restrain the populace, who were crying out, Kill him! kill him! The members of that body, the better to secure him, gathered round his person, and accompanied him on foot; the rabble pressed upon them with blind fury, and their lives, as well as that of Castaños, would have been sacrificed, if his cavalry had not charged the multitude sword in hand, and opened the way. But the danger was not over when he had been housed; the house was beset, and it was only by the exertions of the better classes, and especially of a priest, that he was enabled to leave the place before daybreak the following morning. It became necessary for them to avoid all populous places, and take up their lodging in the smallest and most retired hamlets; and yet with these precautions his life was frequently threatened. In addition to this evil there was the uncertainty of knowing whither to direct his course: three times on his journey he found that the Central Junta had changed their place of residence; and when he finally made for Seville, it was with a belief that they had removed to Puerto de Santa Maria. Upon approaching Seville, he was ordered to take up his abode in the monastery of S. Geronimo de Buenavista, and there await the farther determination of the government. Montijo had accused him as an instrument of Tilly, engaged with him in treasonable designs, and also in a scheme for rendering Andalusia independent, and making it the head of a confederacy of ♦Castaños, Representacion, 15–18.♦ provinces. This was the mere fabrication of a man who scrupled at no means for promoting his own insane ambition, and as such the Junta received it; but they deemed it expedient to treat the general as if he were under their displeasure, lest a suspicion, which in its consequences might be most fatal to the country, should be raised against themselves.

♦His memorial to the Junta.♦

Castaños was not aware of the accusation which had been thus preferred; least indeed of all men could he have supposed that a charge of federalism would have been brought against him, who had with so much decision and effect opposed the dangerous disposition of the provincial authorities to consult their own security alone. But he complained of the injurious restraint in which he was placed, and in an able and temperate memorial appealed to his past services, showed that the defeat at Tudela was not imputable to any error or indiscretion on his part (his opinion having been over-ruled by their representative, D. Francisco Palafox), and required that his conduct might be judged of by the circumstances in which he was placed, and the actual condition of his army, not as if he had commanded 80,000 effective men. An army in the field, he said, was like a musical instrument with many keys and many registers: if these did not answer to the touch, if many strings were wanting, and the others not in tune, the best musician would be deemed a sorry performer by those who heard the broken and jarring sounds which he produced, and knew not the state of the instrument. Still, he maintained, the French were far from being able to subdue Spain. Castaños was not unsupported while he thus defended himself with the confidence of an innocent and injured man. The Junta of Seville honourably espoused his cause, and the government allowed him to remove to his own house at Algeciras, there to remain while the inquiry into his conduct which he demanded should be carried on.

♦Intrigues of Montijo.♦

Montijo was one of those men who in disordered times are intoxicated with ambition and vanity. His object in seeking the ruin of Castaños was to obtain a command for himself. He represented to the Junta that the resources by which the miracle of restoring the country might be effected could only be drawn from Andalusia; but that to call them forth activity, energy, patriotism, and above all the confidence of the public were required. Under any other circumstances he should have blushed to designate himself as the person in whom these qualifications were united, and unhappily the only person who possessed the last; but in such an emergency a good Spaniard must sacrifice even his modesty. Spain might still be saved if he were commissioned to take what cavalry he could raise, put himself at the head of the forces in La Mancha, and march upon Madrid; and he pledged his sacred word of honour that he would resign the command as soon as the French should be driven back to the Ebro.

♦1809.
January.♦ This proposal met with as little attention as it deserved; and Montijo then joined the army of Carolina, there to sow fresh intrigues, and meet with deserved humiliation.

♦Progress of the French in Castille and Leon.♦

The French themselves were at this time in such a situation, that the desultory and harassing warfare which the Junta of Seville advised at the commencement of the struggle might now have been pursued against them with great effect. A disposition in some of the marshals to disregard Joseph, and act without any deference to his wishes or commands, had shown itself before Buonaparte left Spain; the attention of the French cabinet was directed toward Austria, and the affairs of Spain were left to the intrusive government, which had in fact no control over the armies by whom alone it was to be supported. But as there was no enemy in the field alert and able enough to take advantage of the fair occasions which offered, the French commanders believed the struggle was at an end, and that they had only to march over the country and receive the submission of the inhabitants. While Victor occupied Toledo, waiting only a convenient season to disperse the hasty levies which were brought together for the defence of Andalusia, General Dorneau marched against Zamora, scaled the walls of that ancient city, and put to death those inhabitants who, in the flagitious language of the French bulletin, were called the most guilty. Castille and Leon were overrun, and wherever they went those scenes of profanation, violence, and murder were exhibited, in which Buonaparte’s soldiers were systematically allowed to glut the worst passions of corrupted and brutalized humanity.

♦New levies raised by the Spaniards.♦

Yet while the country was thus at the mercy of the French, the panic which their appearance every where excited extended nowhere beyond their immediate presence. In all places which were not actually occupied by the enemy, the local authorities acted as if no enemy had been at hand, and their own government had been as efficient as it was legitimate. The enlisting went on, and promises of speedy triumph and sure deliverance were held forth with a confidence which no reverses could shake. The fugitives from the different armies no sooner reached their own homes than they were again enrolled to be embodied, and exposed again to privations and sufferings such as those from which they had so hardly escaped. Before their strength was recruited, they were sent off to form new armies, neither better disciplined, better commanded, nor better provided than those which had been routed and dispersed. They went hungered, half naked, and cursing their fortune, without confidence in their officers, each other, or themselves, yet believing fully that the deliverance of Spain would be effected with a faith which seemed to require and perhaps very generally expected miracles for its fulfilment. Human means indeed seem to have been provided as little as if they had not been taken into the account.

♦Temporizing conduct of certain magistrates.♦

This unreasoning confidence brought with it evil as well as good. Many of those who had something to lose, and hoped that part at least might be saved by submission, took either side according as the scale inclined. When the enemy was absent, they joined the national voice, which expressed what were their real feelings: if the French appeared, they were ready to take the oaths, and act under them, as far as was necessary for their own safety or advantage, longing at the same time and looking for the day of deliverance and vengeance. In many places, the magistracy acted with no other view than that of averting from themselves and their immediate jurisdiction as much of the common misery as they could. This was particularly the case in those parts of Leon and Castille which lay most open to the enemy. The enrolment was rigorously enforced there, and men were hurried off: but any means of local defence were rather dreaded than desired. Offers of assistance were made from Ciudad Rodrigo to Ledesma and Salamanca, and both cities declined the proffered aid, as unnecessary; but in truth, because they believed it to be unavailing, and had determined not to provoke the enemy by resistance.

♦Sir Robert Wilson.♦

Ciudad Rodrigo had at that time become a point of great interest, owing to a well-timed movement of Sir Robert Wilson’s with a small body of Portugueze volunteers. This adventurous officer had been rewarded by the Emperor of Germany with the order of Maria Theresa, for a brilliant affair in which the 15th regiment of dragoons was engaged during the siege of Landrecy. He served afterwards in Egypt, and published a history of the British expedition to that country, in which work he charged Buonaparte with the massacre of his prisoners at Jaffa, and the empoisonment of his own sick and wounded. The facts were boldly denied at the time, and willingly disbelieved by Buonaparte’s admirers; they have since been substantiated by ample evidence, and by his own avowal; but the merit of having first proclaimed them was Sir Robert Wilson’s, and it marked him for an object of especial vengeance should he ever fall into the hands of the tyrant, whose true character he had been the first to expose. This rendered him more conspicuous than he would have been for his rank, which was that of Lieutenant-Colonel. Having, in pursuance of the convention, superintended the embarkation of the French at Porto, and by great exertions contributed to save them from the just fury of the populace, he applied himself with ♦He raises a Portugueze legion at Porto.♦ characteristic activity and enterprise to raising and disciplining a Portugueze legion in that city. The plan was entirely approved by Sir Hew Dalrymple, and zealously forwarded by the Bishop. Two thousand men presently presented themselves, and that number might have been increased five-fold could he have relied upon resources for them; for the alertness with which they learned our discipline, the confidence which they acquired, the pride which they felt at being displayed, and which their officers partook in displaying them, excited the emulation of their countrymen. Some jealousy was felt at Lisbon, and some obstacles were thrown in his way, upon the pretext that an invidious distinction would be occasioned between these and the other Portugueze troops. Sir John Cradock, however, when the command in that capital devolved upon him, authorised Sir Robert to act according to his own judgement. His first thought had been to embark for Carthagena, and march from thence to Catalonia. Afterwards, Asturias seemed a nearer and more important point. But after Blake’s army had been dispersed, and before Sir John Moore and Sir David Baird had formed a junction, he resolved to march toward the frontiers, thinking that he might move from Miranda or Braganza, and so to facilitate the communication between them, and cover, as far as his means permitted, the approach to the northern provinces. With this intent he marched the first division of his legion, consisting of 700 men with six pieces of cannon; they were to be followed by the second, under Baron Eben, an Hanoverian officer in the British service; and this by the third. And Sir J. Cradock had ordered a battalion of Portugueze infantry and a regiment of cavalry to join him.

♦Sir Robert goes to Ciudad Rodrigo.♦

When Sir Robert reached Lamego, he there found information, that a small British detachment which had been stationed in Ciudad Rodrigo, had, in consequence of the approaching danger, forsaken it. Always hopeful himself, and well aware of what importance it was that that position should be maintained, he left his troops, and hastened thither to consult with the Junta. It was a point from which he could act upon that division of the enemy who were then forcing their way into Extremadura, ... or, co-operate with any Spanish force that might take the field from Salamanca. The people, on their part, declared their determination to defend the place resolutely; his aid, therefore, was accepted as frankly as it was offered, and the legion accordingly advanced from Lamego through a country almost impracticable at that season. By dint of human exertion, carts and artillery were drawn up steeps which hitherto had been deemed inaccessible for carriages. Sometimes men and officers, breast-deep in the water, dragged the guns through torrents so formidable, that cattle could not be trusted to perform that service. Sometimes, where the carriages would have floated and have been swept away, the wheels were taken off, and they were slidden over on the foot-bridges. Sometimes they were hauled along causeways and connecting bridges so narrow, that the wheels rested on half their fellies upon the stones which were set edge upwards on the verge of the road. It was the first march these troops had ever made, but notwithstanding the severity of such labour, performed at such a season, and during incessant rain, not a man deserted, and there was no straggling, no murmuring amid all their difficulties: they sung as they went along, and reached their resting-place at night with unabated cheerfulness.

♦He refuses to return to Porto.♦

Sir Robert had plainly stated to the Junta that his legion was not to form part of the garrison, but that in every operation without the walls he should think it his duty to aid, and even in defence of the suburbs before the Salamanca gate, as long as his return over the bridge was assured. The Junta and the people of that city displayed a hearty willingness to co-operate with their allies in any manner that might appear most conducive to the common cause; and from that generous spirit they never departed during all the vicissitudes of the war. At first there was a fair prospect of acting offensively; but when the authorities at Ledesma and Salamanca declined the assistance which was offered them from this quarter, Sir Robert, instead of maintaining the line of the Tormes, as he had hoped to do, formed on the Agueda, having his head-quarters at San Felices. When he had marched from the coast, it was with the hope of facilitating the plans and contributing to the success of a British army perfectly equipped and disciplined, strong in itself, and confident in its commanders and its cause. He now learnt that that army was retreating with a speed which the most utter defeat could hardly have precipitated: at the same time he was privately advised to fall back on Porto. But though weak himself, he ♦Effect of his movements.♦ had already ascertained that the French in that part of Spain were not strong, that the activity and appearance of his little corps had imposed upon them a salutary opinion of his strength, and that his continuance there was of no trifling importance, not merely as covering the removal of the British stores from Almeida, but as checking the enemy’s advance in that direction, counteracting the report which they busily spread and indeed believed themselves, that the English had entirely abandoned Spain, encouraging the Spaniards, and gaining time for them to strengthen the works of Ciudad Rodrigo, and for training a brave and well-disposed people.

This became of more consequence when the Junta of that city had, in their own language, “the melancholy honour of being the only one which held out in all Castille,” Ledesma and Salamanca having, without a show of resistance, admitted the enemy. For him to obtain intelligence was as easy, owing to the disposition of the people, as it was difficult for the French. Having ascertained that they had few cavalry and only 1500 foot in Salamanca, that they were proportionally weak in the country about Zamora and Villalpando, and that they had not occupied Ledesma for want of men, he entered Ledesma, carried off, in Ferdinand’s name for the Junta of Rodrigo, the treasure and money which had been raised there for the French in obedience to requisition, and compelled them to seek and convoy what provisions they extorted from the country. They had given public notice that every person who disobeyed their requisitions should be punished with death. Sir Robert sent forth a counter-proclamation, declaring, that if this threat were effected, he would hang a Frenchman for every Spaniard. By incessant activity, attacking their posts in open day, he kept them perpetually on the alarm, and made them apprehend a serious attack on Salamanca itself. Upon that score their apprehensions would have been realized, if the whole force which Sir Robert had raised had been then at his command; or if even with such poor means as he possessed he had not been withheld by orders from Lisbon. But the ♦Part of the legion detained at Porto.♦ remaining corps of his legion had been detained at Porto, and when he had applied for them, and for clothing and military stores, he had been answered that the men were wanted for the defence of Porto itself, and that, even if stores might have been spared, they could not be sent without imminent danger from the people. It was in vain for him to represent that the measures which he had taken were those which were best adapted for the protection of Portugal, by covering her weakest side; that Portugal must be defended beyond her frontiers; that the service in which he was engaged was of all others that in which the troops might soonest acquire the discipline and experience in which the Portugueze soldiers were so notoriously deficient; that he wanted the men only; not provisions, those he could assure to them; not money, for if what had been received from England for the express use of the legion were withheld from it, he would apply elsewhere. ♦Displeasure of the authorities there.♦ Reasoning was of no avail when the danger from the side of Galicia appeared to be so near as in reality it was; and the Bishop of Porto, though he had warmly encouraged the formation of the legion, as an important measure towards restoring the military character of his countrymen, and though Sir Robert had succeeded in gaining his good opinion to a high degree, was nevertheless offended at the disrespect which seemed to be shown to him and the other Portugueze authorities, by the manner in which that officer was now acting as if wholly independent of them. From the Spanish government, however, ♦Rank given him by the Spanish government.♦ Sir Robert received as much encouragement as he could have desired in his most sanguine hopes. They gave him the rank of Brigade-General, and placed the garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo and the troops in the province at his disposal. And this proof of confidence was given at a time when a misunderstanding had arisen between the two cabinets, which might have been fatal to the common cause, if each party had not rendered full justice to the upright intention of the other.

♦1809.
February.

As soon as the dispersion of Blake’s army was known in England, the British government anticipating the disasters which would follow, considered Cadiz as the ultimate point of retreat to which the Spaniards would be driven; there, supported by that fortress on one side, and by Gibraltar on the other, they might make a stand which no force that France could bring against them could overpower. Accordingly, when Sir John Moore’s first intention of retreating was communicated, government resolved that his army should immediately be transferred to the south of Spain, for it was impossible to foresee the miserable state to which the manner of his retreat would reduce it. But the representations of that general concerning the little assistance which he received from the Spaniards, and the little patriotism which he could discover, so far influenced ministers, that they thought it improper to hazard an army in the south, unless a corps of it were admitted into Cadiz. The treachery of Morla, and the danger of similar treasons, rendered this precaution advisable. Upon this subject Mr. Frere was instructed to communicate with the Junta, and as it was not apprehended that the required proof of confidence would be refused, General Sherbrooke, with 4000 men, was ordered to sail immediately for Cadiz. He was not to require the command of the garrison, ... that might have offended the feelings of the Spaniards. If, however, the Junta should not admit him, he was then to proceed to Gibraltar, and any operations in the south were necessarily to be abandoned, though there was no intention even in that case of abandoning the cause of Spain. Sir John Cradock also was instructed to sail for Cadiz, if he should find it necessary to abandon Portugal; but he was not to take this step till he had been apprized of the determination of the Spanish government.

♦Objections of the Spanish government.♦

Before it was known that the Junta had quitted Aranjuez, Sir George Smith had been sent to Cadiz on a local mission, to provide for the possible case of British troops being necessary for the defence of that city, at a time when it might be impracticable to obtain the opinion of the central government. When the government was removed to Seville, his mission ceased with the necessity of it. He, however, not only considered it as still existing, but went beyond his instructions; informed the governor of Cadiz that he had authority to require that British troops should be admitted to garrison that place; and sent to Sir John Cradock, directing him to dispatch troops thither from Lisbon, ... a measure which was not to have been taken except at the direct solicitation of the Spanish authorities at Cadiz. And this he did without waiting for their consent, and without consulting or even communicating with the English ambassador. The Junta immediately conceived that some secret designs were on foot, with which Mr. Frere had not been entrusted, because he had not been thought a proper instrument; and that minister had the vexation of hearing the justice which they did to his frankness urged as a ground for unjust ♦Feb. 7.♦ suspicions. “Cadiz,” they said, “was not threatened, and a measure so extraordinary as that of admitting English troops there might compromise the Supreme Junta with the nation. Many would imagine that the prognostics of Morla, which the government had considered as dreams, had assumed at least an air of reality; and however the Junta might be persuaded of the purity of the motives by which Great Britain was influenced, it would not be in their power to counteract this imagination. Spain had addressed herself to Great Britain, and had obtained succours and good offices, which would for ever redound to the honour of England. Spain had opened her heart to unbounded gratitude; but never could believe that her misfortunes obliged her to this. Let the allied troops disembark in small divisions, so as to leave room for each other, proceed without delay to occupy cantonments at Xeres, Port St. Mary’s, and the neighbourhood, and then pursue their march into the interior. It would be easy to fall back upon Cadiz if that should be necessary; but that necessity was at all events very distant.” This, as the final resolution of King Ferdinand, the Junta (governing in his name) communicated to Mr. Frere: “trusting,” they said, “in his discernment and in his religious probity, that he would feel the truth of their representations, and give the most peremptory orders for the British troops to abide by what had been agreed upon, and under no pretext whatever to remain in the fortress of Cadiz.”

♦Troops arrive in the bay.♦

During these discussions, the two regiments under General Mackenzie, which Sir George Smith had so precipitately ordered from Lisbon, arrived in the bay. About the same time Mr. Frere received a copy of the instructions intended for Sir John Moore, directing him, in case he could not keep his ground in the north, to embark his troops, and carry them round either to Lisbon or to the south of Spain. These the ambassador communicated to the Junta; and at the same time informed them that the British government expected Buonaparte would have driven back the English army into Galicia, and marched himself into Andalusia to make himself master of Seville, and shut the door against every hope of succour. Expecting that he would pursue this plan, government, while it sent these instructions to Sir John Moore, dispatched the corps under General Sherbrooke, with a view of preventing at least the surrender of Cadiz, and ensuring to the auxiliary army ♦Mr. Frere’s representations to the Central Junta.♦ some safe landing-place. In such a scheme, Mr. Frere argued, there was nothing unreasonable; it did not become the British ministers to risk their army without any place of retreat from an enemy who was less formidable for his military force than for the means of corruption which he employed, ... means which the capitulation of Madrid evinced to have been not less successful in Spain than in other countries. Should the English then expose themselves to the danger arising from the enemy’s intrigues, only in deference to the injurious suspicions which that very enemy wished to excite against them in the minds of the Spanish government, ... a government to which that of his Britannic Majesty had never ceased to offer proofs of disinterestedness and of good faith? “The members of the Junta,” said Mr. Frere, “will do me the justice to admit that I have never endeavoured to promote the interests of my nation, but as being essentially connected with those of their own. If, however, I have always been guided by the same sentiments and the same views which a Spanish politician might have, I do not think it is to depart from them, if I deliver the same opinion which I should give had I the honour of occupying a place in the council of your nation; namely, that the whole policy of the Spanish government rests essentially on a persuasion of perfect good faith on the part of England, and that it is important to confirm it more and more by testimonies of mutual confidence, and by avoiding the slightest appearance of distrust between government and government.”

One other point Mr. Frere adverted to, which, though less important, was of great weight. The precariousness of commerce, occasioned by the supposed insecurity of Cadiz, was prejudicial to the finances of Spain. There was no longer a place in the peninsula where British goods could be deposited; and the government was therefore under the necessity of cutting off all mercantile intercourse between the colonies and the rest of the civilized world, or of affording to foreign commerce a security which it could not find in the sole protection of a Spanish garrison. On this head he appealed to the custom-house registers, and to the applications made by neutrals for permission to reship goods, which ♦Reply of the Spanish government. Feb. 17.♦ they did not deem any longer safe. A note was transmitted in reply to this, saying, that the Junta would dispatch an extraordinary courier to London, and empower their minister there to settle a point of so much importance in a manner agreeable to the interests of both nations. Meantime, the English troops which were at present in the bay, and those which should arrive there, might disembark, for the purpose of proceeding to Port St. Mary, San Lucar, Xeres, and the other places proposed for their cantonment. No misfortune which could happen to the Spanish cause could prevent the English from falling back on Gibraltar and Cadiz; and this step would prevent the inconvenience and perhaps sickness to which they might be exposed by remaining on board ship or in Cadiz, the appointed stations being in a country the most healthy in the world.

♦Their proposal for employing the troops.♦

Having thus considered the convenience of the troops, the Junta submitted two propositions to Mr. Frere, the only person, they said, alluding to Sir George Smith’s interference, whom they acknowledged as the representative of the British nation. First, that the British troops should proceed to Catalonia, and garrison the maritime ports of that principality, thus enabling the Spanish army in that quarter to march to the relief of Zaragoza. Secondly, that they should co-operate with Cuesta: that general was threatened by a force not very superior in number to his own, and the assistance of the English might give him the superiority; thus Cadiz would be secured, and time given to set on foot the troops who were now only waiting for muskets from England. The note concluded by expressing a feeling of honourable pain in the Junta, that England should distrust the safety of Cadiz unless it were garrisoned by English troops. They asserted, that the constancy and valour of the Spanish nation, manifested in this arduous struggle, entitled it to the respect of Europe; and, gently hinting at what had passed in Galicia, they requested that a veil might be drawn over it. Cadiz was not situated like Coruña, the same events therefore could not possibly occur there.

♦Conference with Mr. Frere. Feb. 18.♦

Upon the receipt of this note, Mr. Frere requested a conference. They proposed to him that he should name a governor for Cadiz. He replied, it was a responsibility with which he would not charge himself for all the world. Four months ago he should have chosen Morla, Espeleta six months before that: both had been found wanting in the day of trial, though neither had been placed in a situation so trying as that of a governor holding out in the last remaining garrison. Then replying to the argument, that the Junta could not act against popular opinion, “it must likewise be recollected,” he said, “that the British government could not proceed in opposition to an opinion equally decided in England; and which of the two pretensions was the more just? England was willing to expose an English army to any hazard which resulted absolutely from the nature of things; but England would not consent that that danger should be aggravated in the slightest degree, out of deference to the caprice of popular opinion, or suspicions which were unworthy of either country. England required of Spain that it should place confidence in the British government, binding itself by the most formal engagements; Spain offered the choice of a governor and the chance of his fidelity. Our proposal was in every respect the fairest and the most rational, and it could not be expected that we should depart from a demand of right, for the sake of conferring a favour. Mr. Frere offered to propose to General Mackenzie, that he should leave 1000 men in Cadiz, and proceed with the rest to act in concert with Cuesta for the protection of Seville, and that when General Sherbrooke arrived, 3000 should proceed to the same direction, and he should content himself with garrisoning Cadiz with 2000 men, and proceed with or forward the remainder of his own force to General Mackenzie. To this proposition the Junta had so nearly acceded, that the agreement was only broken off by their insisting that the public mind could not be reconciled to the admission of 2000 troops into Cadiz, and offering to admit half the number, a force which Mr. Frere judged altogether inadequate to a purpose for which his own government allotted four times that amount.

The conference, which was conducted on both sides with perfect moderation and temper, concluded with a fair avowal from the Junta, that they were convinced of the good faith of the British government, and of the advantage that would result to Spain from the admission of British troops into Cadiz, if that were to be the indispensable condition of their co-operation; but that their own existence as a government depended upon popular opinion; and the English ambassador could not be ignorant what numerous and active enemies were endeavouring to undermine them. The Junta of Seville, who gave themselves great credit for resisting the introduction of the English into Cadiz last year when the French were advanced as far as Ecija, were upon the watch now, and calling the attention of the people to the conduct of the Central Junta in the present instance. Mr. Frere made answer, that he could not of course expect his opinion should be submitted to upon a subject on which their existence as a government and their personal security (for such in fact was the case) were involved. But he advised them to consider whether the responsibility to which they exposed themselves in the other alternative was not equally dangerous, and whether their enemies would not be as ready and as able to make a handle of the rejection of British assistance as of its acceptance.

♦Mr. Frere requests Cuesta’s opinion.♦

Mr. Frere was aware that the uppermost feeling in the minds of some of the Junta was an apprehension of the resentment which Cuesta might entertain against them, convinced as that general must have been of their weakness by the manner of his appointment. Being desirous, therefore, of obtaining his opinion in favour of the measure which the British government proposed, or at least in such terms as would remove all fear of his declaring himself in opposition to it, he wrote to him, explaining what Great Britain was willing to do in aid of Spain, and what condition was required. That condition, he said, was to be considered as indispensable, not only in the opinion of government, but in that of the nation, the individuals of which did not at that moment consider Cadiz as sufficiently secure even for a place of disposal for their merchandize, so that they were daily soliciting permission to re-export it; and it might easily be judged whether the nation would risk its army upon an assurance which individuals did not consider sufficient for their woollen and cotton. Lisbon had twice been garrisoned by British troops, without the smallest inconvenience to the Portugueze government. Madeira had in like manner been garrisoned: the Portugueze knew us by long experience; they knew also the internal state of England; knew that the English government never entertained a thought of abusing the confidence of its allies; and the state of public opinion was such in England, that it could not do this, even though it wished it. Under the present circumstances, the political question came before General Cuesta, both as a commander and a patriot, who, as he must be interested in any thing that might appear to injure the honour and independence of his country, so also he could not regard with indifference any thing that might derange the military plans of his government, and perhaps its political relations, by repeated acts of mistrust and mutual displeasure. 4300 good British troops might at this time march to co-operate with him upon the frontier of Extremadura, they would be followed by 1500 more as soon as General Sherbrooke arrived, and the auxiliary army would be delayed no longer than was necessary to dispose of its wounded and prisoners, and to be re-equipped. The question therefore was, whether General Cuesta could dispense with the present reinforcement, and Spain with the aid of an auxiliary army; for these were the points to be decided by the resolution of admitting or sending back the British troops, such being the alternative in which those troops were placed by the orders under which they left Lisbon.

♦Cuesta’s reply.♦

Cuesta returned a reply in terms of proper respect, both for the British government and his own. He did not, he said, discover any difficulty which should prevent the British troops from garrisoning Cadiz; but he was far from supposing that the Central Junta could be without good ground for their objections, and that they should have objections was sufficient to prevent him from giving any opinion unless they consulted him. With regard to the 4300 men, there could be no doubt but that he stood in need of them; and he hoped that England would lend him much greater assistance, particularly if from any change of circumstances the Central Junta should no longer appear repugnant to the condition which the British government required. This reply did not alter the determination which Mr. Frere had made, of sending the troops back to Lisbon, considering Seville as comparatively safe, and conceiving that the principle which the English ministry had originally laid down, of not attaching small corps of British troops to a Spanish army, was one he should not be justified in departing from, for any object less important than the security of Cadiz or the capital. He communicated this determination to Don Martin de Garay, alleging that the information which he had lately received from Lisbon rendered such a measure necessary.

♦Close of the discussion.♦

Garay’s answer closed the discussion. It was meant to be at the same time conciliatory, and capable of being produced for the exculpation of the Junta. He represented, “that if any immediate attack upon Cadiz was to be feared, ... if the Spanish forces were incapable of defending that point, ... if there were no others of the greatest importance where the enemy might be opposed with advantage, the Junta would not fear to hurt the public feeling by admitting foreign troops into that fortress, because public feeling would then be actuated by the existing state of things. But no such emergency existed; the armies were strengthening themselves in points very distant from Cadiz; the enemy had much ground to pass, and many difficulties to conquer, before he could threaten it; time could never be wanted for falling back upon that fortress; it was easy to be defended, ... it was to be considered as a last point of retreat, and extreme points ought to be defended in advance, never in themselves, except in cases of extreme urgency. The army of Extremadura defended Andalusia on that side, those of the centre and La Carolina at the Sierra Morena; the enemy for some time past had not been able to make any progress; and there if superior forces could be collected against him, a decisive blow might be struck. Catalonia too was bravely defending itself, and Zaragoza still resisted the repeated attacks of an obstinate and persevering besieger. Either in Extremadura, or with the central army or in Catalonia, the assistance of Great Britain would be of infinite service. This was the opinion of the Junta; this was the opinion of the whole nation, and would doubtless be that of every one who contemplated the true state of things. If the auxiliary troops already in the bay, or on their passage, should disembark in the neighbourhood of Cadiz, and proceed to reinforce General Cuesta, they would always find a safe retreat in Cadiz in case of any reverse; but should a body of troops, already very small, leave part of its force in Cadiz, in order to secure a retreat at such a distance, the English ambassador himself must acknowledge that such assistance could inspire the Spaniards with very little confidence, particularly after the events in Galicia. But it appeared to Mr. Frere that the presence of these troops was necessary at Lisbon, and therefore he had given orders for their return. Of this measure the same might be said as of the proposed one for securing Cadiz. Lisbon was not the point where Portugal could be defended; the greatest possible number of troops ought to be employed in those advanced lines where the enemy was posted, and where he might be routed decisively. For all these reasons the Supreme Junta were persuaded, that if the British government should determine that its troops should not act in union with theirs, except on the expressed condition, this non-co-operation could never be imputed to them. The Junta must act in such a manner, that if it should be necessary to manifest to the nation, and to all Europe, the motives of their conduct, it might be done with that security, and with that foundation, that should conciliate to them the public opinion, which was the first and main spring of their power.”

Thus terminated the discussion concerning the admission of English troops into Cadiz. Mr. Frere warned the Junta of the ill consequences which must result to Spain, if it should appear that the efforts and offers which the King of England had made should have the effect of producing embarrassment to his government at home. It appears, indeed, as if both governments acted more with reference to their enemies at home, than from any real importance which they could attach to the point in dispute. With the Spanish government this was confessedly the case; they did not, and could not, possibly suspect the good faith of England: ... between Spain and England, the honourable character of one country was sufficient security for the other; but they stood equally in fear of a set of men who criticised all their measures with factious acrimony, because their own enthusiastic hopes of complete triumph and thorough reformation had not been fulfilled; and of Morla and the other traitors, whose aim was to excite suspicion of Great Britain. Under the influence of this feeling, they opposed a measure which they did not think otherwise objectionable, but which they opposed the more firmly because they did not perceive that it was necessary. The English ministry on their part wanted a point of defence against the opposition, who, as they omitted no means of wounding the pride and calumniating the character of the Spaniards, were continually saying that they did not desire our assistance, and that they had no confidence in us. It was against this party at home that Cadiz was wanted as a point of defence, ... not as a point of retreat upon a coast where we possessed Gibraltar, and where also we were sure of the disposition of the people in Cadiz itself, whatever might be the conduct of its governor. The governor at Coruña had failed in his duty, but still the embarkation of the English was protected by that fortress.

Mr. Frere concluded this unpleasant transaction according to his own judgement. He had the satisfaction of finding that the ministry perfectly accorded with him. They sent him Sir George Smith’s instructions, authorising him, if he thought proper, to communicate them to the Supreme Junta. They recalled Sir George, and assured the Junta that no such separate or secret commission, as they apprehended to have been given to him, ever had been, or ever would be, entrusted to any officer or other person; and that it never could be in the contemplation of the English government to select any other channel of communication than the King’s accredited minister, in a transaction of such importance, much less to engage in such a transaction without the entire consent and concurrence of the Spanish government. They dispatched orders after General Sherbrooke, directing him to proceed to Lisbon instead of Cadiz. Nevertheless, if at any time the Junta ♦Papers relating to Spain and Portugal, C.♦ should require a British force for the actual garrison of Cadiz, Mr. Frere was authorized to send to Lisbon for that purpose, and the commanding officer there was ordered to comply with his requisition.

♦Insurrection at Cadiz.♦

While this question was discussed at Seville, Cadiz itself became the scene of an insurrection, in which the popular feeling in favour of the English was unequivocally expressed. The people of that city were dissatisfied with the Central Junta; they complained that, instead of informing them of the true state of affairs, their government kept them in ignorance; and having been deceived by Morla, the slightest circumstance sufficed to make them suspect any one who had the means of betraying them. A corps of foreigners had been raised from the prisoners taken at Baylen; they consisted chiefly of Poles and Germans, who might have fought with a better will against Buonaparte than for him, but who were less to be relied on than deserters, because they had enlisted to escape confinement. This corps was ordered to do garrison duty at Cadiz; while the volunteers of that city and of Port St. Mary’s were drafted to other parts. But the people, thinking that if Cadiz wanted defenders, it could by none be so faithfully defended as by its own children, determined to oppose both measures, and on the morning of the 22d of February they broke out in insurrection. Their first act of violence was to seize a courier charged with dispatches from the Junta to the Marquis of Villel, a member of that body, and its representative in this important fortress. The Marquis had rendered himself suspected by setting persons at liberty who were confined for their supposed attachment to the French, and by imposing restrictions upon the public amusements. A report that he had committed women of respectable rank to the house of industry, and threatened others with the same scandalous punishment, excited indignation in the rabble; they seized and were dragging him to the public jail, where, if he had arrived alive, it is little probable that he could long have been protected from popular fury. But P. Moguer, a capuchin friar, persuaded them to commit him to the capuchin convent, and pledged himself to produce his person, that he might suffer condign punishment, if his treason should be proved.

Luckily the confidence of the people was possessed by the governor, Don Felix Jones, and in a still greater degree by the guardian of the Capuchins, Fr. Mariano de Sevilla. The former represented to General Mackenzie, that it would tend to re-establish tranquillity if an assurance were given that the English would take no part in the tumult; for they had been called upon to land and assist against the traitors. Accordingly the British General sent some officers who could speak the Spanish language, and they, in the presence of the governor and the principal capuchin friars, distinctly declared, that the British troops would by no means interfere in any thing relating to the internal concerns of the people, but that they were ready to assist in defending the town to the last extremity. This seemed for a time to allay their agitation. In the course of a few hours they again became tumultuous; still an opinion prevailed that they were betrayed, and that measures were arranged for delivering up Cadiz to the French. They called for the dismissal of those whom they suspected, and they required that two British officers should be appointed to inspect the fortifications, jointly with two Spanish officers, and to direct the preparations ♦Confidence of the people in the English.♦ for defence. General Mackenzie deputed two officers for that purpose; and all those of his staff accompanied the most active and popular of the friars to a balcony, from whence these orators harangued the people, assuring them of the co-operation of the British troops and the support of the British nation, and frequently appealing to the British officers to confirm by their own voices the pledges given in their name and in their presence. This satisfied the populace, and they dispersed with loud huzzas, in honour of King George and King Ferdinand.

♦Proclamation of the governor.♦

On the following morning the governor issued a proclamation, in which, considering the discontent which had been manifested, “and keeping in mind,” he said, “the loyalty of the inhabitants at all times, but particularly under the present circumstances, and the good and signal services which they had done, and daily were doing, he dismissed from office four persons whose discharge had been loudly demanded; and declared also, that if the people wished to have the Junta of Cadiz suppressed, their desire should be fulfilled. He assured them that no foreign troops should be admitted; but that officers of their faithful ally the British nation were invited to examine the posts and works of the city and its dependencies, and that every thing necessary for its defence should be concerted with them. He promised that the papers of the Marquis should be examined without delay; that there should be no longer any cause of complaint respecting the ignorance in which the people were kept of public affairs, for that whatever occurred should punctually and faithfully be made public; that the enlistment of the inhabitants for the provincial regiment of Ciudad Rodrigo should cease till further consideration; and that no part of the volunteers, the light troops, and companies of artillery should be ordered away.” Notwithstanding the popularity of Don Felix Jones, it was thought advisable that this proclamation should be countersigned by the guardian of the Capuchins.

♦Murder of D. J. de Heredia.♦

Still the tumult continued. Caraffa, who had been second in command of the Spanish troops in Portugal, was confined in the Castle of Catalina, under a charge of misconduct or treachery, with the viceroy of Mexico and other prisoners, who had been sent home from New Spain. The mob proceeded thither, and demanded the prisoners, that they might put them to death. Colonel Roche, who had just arrived from Seville with another English officer, interposed, addressed the people, and succeeded in dissuading them from their purpose. But shortly afterwards they fell in with Don Joseph de Heredia, a particular object of their suspicion, who that very day had at their demand been dismissed from his office of collector of the public rents. He was stepping into a boat to make his escape to Port St. Mary’s: the attempt cost him his life, and he was murdered upon ♦The tumult subsides.♦ the spot. The popular fury seemed now to have spent itself, and the clergy and friars, who throughout the whole insurrection had exerted themselves to pacify the people, and protect the threatened victims, succeeded in restoring peace. To have attempted to quell the mob by force would have occasioned great bloodshed, for they had got possession of arms and of the park of artillery.

♦Proclamation of the Central Junta.♦

Fifty of the rabble, who had been most conspicuous for violence, were seized by the volunteers of Cadiz, and imprisoned. The Central Junta addressed a proclamation to the people of that city, reprehending them with dignified severity for their conduct. “It was absurd,” they said, “to apprehend danger in so populous and so brave a city from a single battalion of foreigners, even if there could be any reason to doubt the fidelity of Poles and Germans, who had been forcibly dragged into Spain, and were in every quarter deserting from the flag under which they had been compelled to march. As little reason was there for their suspicion of the Marquis. His papers were now before the Junta, and nothing was expressed in them but zeal for the country, and diligence to promote all means for the security of Cadiz. Let the state of those means before his arrival be compared with the works projected and executed since. And had the people no other way of manifesting their disapprobation than by tumult? No one came to the Junta to complain of the Marquis’s conduct; no one informed them that their commissioner at Cadiz had lost the confidence of the people. Some anonymous letters only had reached the government, some on one side, some on the other, but all contemptible in the eye of equity. But what was the course which would have become the open and generous character of the Spaniards? To have made their complaint frankly and nobly, and the government would have done them justice.”

The Junta then warned them to beware of the insidious arts of the enemy. “It is not,” said they, “the traitors who fled with the French and returned with them who do most injury to their country; but it is the obscure agitators, hired by them or by the tyrant, who abuse the confidence and mislead the patriotism of the people. It is they who, disseminating distrust and suspicion, lead you through crooked and guilty paths to the precipice, and to subjugation; it is they who convert loyalty into rage, and zeal into sedition. The Junta have proofs enough of these infernal machinations in the intelligence which they receive every day, and in the correspondence which they intercept.” But, notwithstanding the government declared its persuasion of Villel’s innocence, it was not thought proper completely to exculpate him without such farther inquiry as might satisfy the people: this proclamation, therefore, announced that a commission would be appointed to examine his conduct, and that it would not be composed of members of the Central Junta, in order to avoid all shadow of partiality in an affair so serious. “Any person,” said the Junta, “shall be heard who desires to accuse him, and the sentence will be adjudged according to law. He himself demands in justice that this may be done; his honour, the estimation of the government, and the public satisfaction, necessarily prescribe it. If the Marquis be culpable, he shall be punished in proportion to his abuse of the high functions and national confidence which he has enjoyed; but if he be declared innocent, it is necessary that the reparation made to his good name be as solemn and public as the aggression was cruel and scandalous.” These proceedings satisfied the people, of whom the better sort were grieved at the excesses which had been committed; and their suspicions against the Marquis were in some degree removed when Don Felix Jones, to whom his papers were delivered, declared that no indication of treason was to be discovered in them.

CHAPTER XVIII.
SECOND SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA.

♦1808.
December.♦

The Central Junta perfectly understood and truly represented the spirit of the nation, partaking in some things its blindness and its obstinacy, but also its exalted feeling, its true heroism, and its incomparable devotion to the cause of national independence. Its information concerning the real state of affairs was as imperfect as its other arrangements. In the correspondence concerning Cadiz, Garay assured the British Ambassador that Zaragoza was still holding out, not considering that by little less than miracle that glorious city could have held out so long, and not knowing that the enemy had then been eight days in possession of its ruins.

♦Castaños accused at Zaragoza as a traitor.♦

Palafox was not present at the battle of Tudela. He had embarked on the river just before the action began, little apprehending that it was so near, and believing that his presence was required at Zaragoza. This was one cause among the many which led to the misfortunes of that day; for Castaños, who would otherwise have been with his own troops, remained with ♦Representaciones, &c. del G. Castaños, p. 195.♦ the Aragonese to supply his place, and each army was thus deprived of the General who knew the troops, and in whom they trusted. During the short time that these Generals had acted together, there had been no want of confidence and frankness between them: but after their separation, and the refusal of Castaños to throw his troops into Zaragoza instead of retreating toward Madrid, in obedience to the orders of the Central Junta, the disasters which had been sustained were imputed by Palafox to his errors. He had been far from apprehending, he said, that he should have to prepare for a second siege; and never could any combination of his own have placed him under such a necessity. The charge of incapacity against Castaños was more broadly made in an official account of the action by General O’Neille, and he was publicly accused of having sold the army and betrayed his country.

♦State of public feeling in that city.♦

Castaños himself did Palafox the justice to believe that he had been deceived by malicious representations. The other charges proceeded from men who sought to shelter their own misconduct by appearing as accusers, or from private malice, which in such times never loses the opportunity of exerting itself with sure effect. Zaragoza was in a state of tremendous agitation; the same spirit was still prevailing there which had so wonderfully repulsed the French, but that spirit had broken the bonds of order; and Palafox, who was so well able to direct the popular feeling in the hour of danger, found it necessary at other times in many things to yield to it. His power was absolute while he held it; but though it had been confirmed to him by the Supreme Junta, it was in fact held only by the tenure of popular opinion, which among large masses of men, and more especially in perilous circumstances, is always influenced less by the considerate and the wise, than by the headstrong, the audacious, and the profligate. Victims whom ♦Cavallero, p. 67.♦ he dared not interfere to save were sacrificed, and the utmost he could do in behalf of any accused persons, was to secure them in prison, and ♦Measures of precaution.♦ thus respite them from immediate death. During the former siege the French who resided in the city had been put under arrest; and there had been the twofold anxiety of guarding against any correspondence between them and the besiegers, and protecting them against the fatal effects of popular suspicion, which at any moment might have produced a massacre of these unfortunate persons. To prevent both the inconvenience and the danger, Palafox sent them away to distant places of confinement; but it was necessary to prepare the people for this by a proclamation, appealing to their honour, and courage, and humanity, and cautioning them against the enemy’s emissaries, who were seeking to bring a stain upon their cause by exciting them to acts of murder. The prisoners and deserters were also removed. The nuns were permitted to remove to other convents not within the scene of immediate danger, where they might occupy themselves without interruption in their holy exercises. Aware that in so large a city there must be persons whom their own wealth would have bribed to betray their country, and who would fain have submitted for the sake of preserving their property, Palafox decreed that the inhabitants of Zaragoza, of whatever rank or condition, should consider themselves bound to devote their persons, their property, and their lives to its defence; that the rich should foster, and assist, and clothe the poor, enable them to maintain their respective posts, and remunerate them for the zeal with which they defended their lives, their estates, and their common country. If any man were unnatural enough to disregard this sacred duty, which he owed both to his native land and his religion, he should be fined in proportion to the magnitude of his offence, and the amount of the fine appropriated to the subsistence of the army. All persons who served the cause of the enemy, by pasquinades, by endeavouring to excite a want of confidence in the chiefs, the people, or the army, or by raising disturbances and riots, should be carried before the newly-appointed judge of the police, who would pass judgment according to their crimes, and suitable to the danger of the country; but before he imposed the punishment of death, he should consult the captain-general. Every house was ordered to be well supplied with vessels of water, in order to extinguish fires; and the officers of the ward were charged to superintend this important measure of preparation. Persons entering or leaving the city were to be watched with care, because the enemy assumed the dress of the Spaniards, and, greatly superior as they were, resorted to every artifice. “All these measures,” said Palafox, “should be obeyed with religious respect, because they are all directed to the good of our country, which, in happier times, will recompense all the sacrifices we make, ... sacrifices so acceptable in the sight of God, and of the Virgin Mother of God, who is our celestial protectress.”

♦None of the inhabitants leave the city.♦

Three days were allowed for all women, all men above threescore, and all boys under fourteen, to leave the city; a general order being issued, that whithersoever they might go, they should be welcomed, and provided for. But not one of the inhabitants left the place. The sentiment of patriotism was as ardent in the women as in the men; they thought it a worse evil to seek bread and protection apart from their husbands and fathers than to abide the siege with them, and triumph or perish together: and even if this sentiment had not been so general and so strong, whither were they to betake themselves for security in a land which was every where overrun or threatened by the enemy’s armies? In no place would they have imagined themselves so secure as in Zaragoza itself, which had been so wonderfully defended and delivered, and which they believed to be invincible through the protection of Our Lady of the Pillar, who had chosen it for the seat of her peculiar worship. During the former siege prints of that idol had been distributed by women in the heat of action, and worn by the men in their hats both as a badge and an amulet. The many remarkable escapes and deliverances which had occurred ♦Supposed miracles.♦ were ascribed not to all-ruling and omnipresent Providence, but to the immediate interference ♦Memoria de lo mas Interesante, &c. 121.♦ of the Magna Mater of Zaragoza. Palafox himself had been trained up with more than common care in the superstition of the place; he and his brethren in their childhood had been taken every day to attend mass in the Holy Chapel where the image was enshrined, dressed at such times in the proper costume of the Infantes, as a mark of greater honour to the present Goddess. An appearance in the sky, which at other times might have passed unremembered and perhaps unnoticed, had given strong confirmation to the popular faith. About a month before the commencement of the first siege a white cloud appeared at noon, and gradually assumed the form of a palm tree; the sky being in all other parts clear, except that a few specks of fleecy cloud hovered about the larger one. It was first observed over the church of N. Señora del Portillo, and moving from thence till it seemed to be immediately above that of the Pillar, continued in the same form about half an hour, and then dispersed. The inhabitants were in a state of such excitement, that crowds joined in the acclamation of the first beholder, who cried out, A miracle! and after the ♦1808.♦ defeat of the besiegers had confirmed the omen, a miracle it was universally pronounced to have been, the people proclaiming with exultation that ♦Do. 11.♦ the Virgin had by this token prefigured the victory she had given them, and promised Zaragoza her protection as long as the world should endure.

♦Works of defence.♦

In many recorded instances superstition such as this has deluded men to their destruction. But the Zaragozans knew that to obtain the divine support, wherein they trusted, they must deserve it by works as well as faith, and that the manner in which heavenly aid would be manifested would be by blessing their human exertions. Palafox himself, confidently as he had expected that the army which he commanded would be successful in the field, had not been negligent in preparing to withstand a second siege. Works of considerable extent and importance had been designed, and executed as far as time and means permitted. It was impossible to convert so large a city into a good fortified place, accessible as it was on all sides, and every where commanded within reach of cannon; but with a population so resolute in defending themselves, every thing became of consequence which could impede the enemy. The houses within 700 toises of the place were demolished, and their materials employed in the fortifications; and the numerous and valuable plantations of olive trees within the same distance were cut down: there was reason to regret that this precaution had not been carried farther. During the autumn the works had not been prosecuted with vigour, because all men of a certain age were required for military service, and those who might have been disposable for such employment were busied in the vintage, or in gathering hemp. Moreover volunteers did not offer themselves for this labour, while the danger appeared remote; and when there were so many demands upon the treasury, the expense of wages could ill be defrayed. It so happened that no mischief resulted from this dangerous economy: after the battle of Tudela there were hands enough at the General’s disposal; and the French allowed time for completing all that had been intended, while they were collecting means and materials for a siege, the difficulties of which they had been taught how to estimate. The works were directed by the Commander of the Engineers, Colonel San Genis; and what was defective in them was imputable not to any want of science, but to the difficulty of fortifying the whole circuit of a great city. The Aljafaria, which had been the palace of the Moorish kings, then of the kings of Aragon, and was now called the Castle of the Inquisition, because it contained the prisons of that accursed tribunal, had been converted into a fortress by Philip V., and was now repaired and strengthened. It was a square, with four tower-bastions, surrounded by a good ditch, and communicating with the city by a double caponiere. From thence to the bridge over the Guerva the place was protected by a long line of wall and batteries; two Capuchin convents which came into the line were fortified, and served to flank it. A ditch was carried from one of these to the bridge, and the bridge itself secured by a tête-de-pont. A double retrenchment extended from thence to the memorable Convent of St. Engracia, which was made a sort of citadel; and from that Convent to the Ebro the old wall had been strengthened; this part of the city being covered also by the bed of the Guerva, and by the Convent of St. Joseph on the farther bank of that river, which had been well fortified, and was the most salient point of the whole circle, serving as a strong tête-de-pont to protect the besieged when they sallied in the direction of Valencia. The suburb beyond the Ebro was defended by redoubts and fleches, with batteries and traverses at the entrance of the streets. The artillery amounted to 160 pieces, the greater part being four, eight, and twelve pounders: what pieces there were of larger calibre had mostly been recovered from the canal into which the French had thrown them on their retreat. Great part of the cannon balls also were what the French had fired or left behind them. To prevent all danger from the explosion of their magazines, it was determined not to prepare a stock of gunpowder, but to make it day by day as it should be wanted; and this could easily be done, because Zaragoza was the place where all the saltpetre of Aragon was refined. There was no want of musquets, either for the inhabitants or the troops and peasantry with whom the city was crowded. The stores contained corn, wine, brandy, oil, salt-fish, and pulse, sufficient for six months’ ♦Cavallero, 74–80. Rogniat, 4–6.♦ consumption for 15,000 men; this ought to have been the amount of the garrison; but fatal circumstances, and the more fatal error of supposing that the means of defence would be in proportion to the number of the defenders, had ♦The city crowded with soldiers.♦ doubled it. Palafox would have had the central army, as well as his own troops, take refuge there after the battle of Tudela. Castaños indeed led away the wreck of that army in a different direction; but there were other persons in authority who, not having the same foresight, thought the best means of succouring Zaragoza was by increasing its garrison. The Central Junta fell into this error, and ordered the Valencian government to send thither all the force it could raise, which was not absolutely required for its own safety. A Walloon battalion, which had served during the former siege, was sent from Tarragona. A proclamation was issued from Zaragoza, inviting the dispersed soldiers to repair thither, and fill up the places of their brethren who had fallen in that holy cause, and were already in glory, enjoying their reward. By these means not less than 30,000 regular troops were collected there; as many as 15,000 peasants entered the city to share in the dangers and merit of its defence; and the hospitals were ♦Cavallero, 82.♦ filled with the sick and wounded from Tudela, who had all been removed hither as the place to which they could most easily be conveyed.

♦Preparations within the city.♦

Except in the great and fatal error of thus crowding the city with men, the means of defence were wisely provided. That the enemy would effect an entrance was not doubted; traverses therefore were made in the streets which were near the wall, the doors and the windows of the ground-floor were walled up, communications opened within from house to house, and the house-tops parapeted to secure the defendants. Every householder, providing for life as well as death, laid in ample supplies. The convents were well stored. In the general fervour of national feeling men were as liberal of their means as of their lives. Nor was this feeling confined to those who could gratify it by taking an active part in military service, and by the expectation or the enjoyment of vengeance: among instances of a rarer heroism that of a physician may be noticed, Miguel Guillen by name, who came from Valencia, and, refusing all pay, devoted himself to the service of the hospitals.

♦M. Moncey reconnoitres the Torrero.♦

Marshal Moncey, on whom the odious service of besieging Zaragoza had been imposed, fixed his head-quarters at Alagon, while he waited for reinforcements, and preparations were making to commence it. At the end of November he reconnoitred the Torrero, a point which it was ♦1808.
December.♦ necessary to occupy before he could begin the siege; some warm skirmishes ensued, which tended to encourage the Spaniards, because the enemy, when they had well examined the ground, returned to Alagon. The importance of the Torrero seems not to have been duly appreciated by the Zaragozans; they contented themselves with throwing up some slight works there, faced with unburnt bricks. Moncey had with him 17,000 men, and was joined by Mortier with 14,000 in the middle of December. Meantime a battering train of sixty pieces was brought from Pamplona; projectiles also were supplied from the same arsenal; the country was compelled to furnish means of transport as far as Tudela, and there they were embarked upon the canal. ♦The French appear before the city.♦ All being ready, they appeared before Zaragoza on the 20th. Gazan’s division crossing the Ebro at Tauste marched to Zuera and Villa Nueva; Suchet’s took a position upon the right bank of the river, within a league of the city; and Moncey, following the right bank of the canal, placed one of his divisions on the left of the ♦Rogniat, 3.♦ Guerva, opposite the great sluice, the two others on the right.

♦They take the Torrero.♦

Buonaparte had declared that bombs and mines should bring Zaragoza to reason; and in the spirit of that declaration had prepared the fullest means for overpowering moral resistance by military force. Skilled as he was in the art of war, he did not, like a Mahommedan conqueror, reckon upon numbers for success: to have employed a larger army (even if the Austrian war had not occurred) would have been wasting men here who might be more serviceably employed in other quarters; there was the difficulty of feeding them, and no danger could be apprehended from any efforts which might be made to raise the siege; but the number of engineers was unusually large, and the means of destruction were in proportion. General Lacoste commanded this department; he was perfect master of his profession, and having served with Buonaparte in Egypt, had acquired at the siege of Cairo some knowledge of the kind of difficulties with which he had now to contend. During the night the enemy erected a battery which commanded the Torrero, and was opened upon it at daybreak: a false attack was made upon that post in front, where the canal covered it; meantime another brigade, which under cover of the olive-yard of St. Joseph had got possession of an aqueduct the preceding evening, passed the canal under that aqueduct, and moved rapidly up the left bank with the intention of interposing between the city and the point of attack. The Spaniards were thrown into confusion by the explosion of an ammunition-cart; and the exertions of a very able officer, and the example of a few steady corps, were not able to restore order or confidence. But, considering the distance of the Torrero from the city, they had expected to lose it, and prepared accordingly; so that by blowing up the Puente de America they prevented the cavalry from pursuit, and retreated in good order. The officer who had drawn off his men from this position during the former siege had been put to ♦See vol. ii. p. 12.♦ death with circumstances of great cruelty. It ♦Sebastian Hernandez, 3–5.♦ was fortunate for San Marc, the general of the Valencian troops, who now commanded there, ♦Rogniat, 6. Cavallero, 89.♦ that Palafox knew how to appreciate his excellent talents and distinguished worth. For being a Frenchman, he was peculiarly obnoxious to suspicion; and if he had fallen a victim to popular jealousy, the Zaragozans would have lost the ablest military man employed in their defence.

♦Unsuccessful attack upon the suburbs.♦

Meantime Gazan’s division moved from Zuera and Villa Nueva, drove back a corps of Swiss, who were posted on the road to Villa Mayor, dislodged them with the loss of some 300 from the Torre del Arzobispo, and attempted to enter the suburbs by a coup-de-main. This was in conformity to Lacoste’s opinion. Its success would materially have facilitated the progress of the besiegers, who might then have established breaching batteries upon the left bank of the Ebro, and opened a way into the city by demolishing the line of houses on the quay. D. Josef Manso, of the royal guards, commanded on that side; and after a severe action, repulsed the enemy: they renewed the attack with their reserve, and the Spaniards gave way. Palafox, who saw from a window what was passing, hurried across the bridge, cut down some of the runaways, and by his voice and example changed the fate of the day. Time had been gained for San Marc to arrive there with the troops who had retired from the Torrero, ♦Rogniat, 7.
Cavallero, 90, 1.♦ and the enemy were repelled with a loss which they stated at 400 men, and the Spaniards at 4000.

♦Moncey summons Palafox to surrender.♦

On the following day Moncey, who had fixed his head-quarters at the Torrero, addressed a letter to Palafox and the magistrates of Zaragoza, warning them that the city was now besieged on all sides, and all its communications cut off, and that he might now employ against it every means of destruction which the laws of war allowed. Madrid, he said, had capitulated, and thereby saved itself from the miseries which a longer resistance must have drawn on. Zaragoza, however she might confide in the courage of her inhabitants, could not possibly succeed against the means which were now brought against her, and her total destruction must be inevitable if she caused those means to be employed. He called upon them to spare the effusion of blood, and save so fine and so estimable a city, and to inspire the people with peaceful sentiments, as the way to deserve their love and gratitude. On his part, he promised them every thing compatible with his feelings, his duty, and the power which the Emperor had given him. Marshal Moncey was an upright and honourable man, unstained by any of the revolutionary crimes; what his feelings were may therefore well be supposed. Gladly would he have induced the Zaragozans to submit, that he might have saved himself from the enormous guilt of destroying the city and its inhabitants for resisting what he and every man in the French army who acknowledged the difference between right and wrong, felt in their hearts to be an insolent and iniquitous usurpation. Palafox replied to the summons, and told him it was in vain to think of appalling men by the horrors of a siege, who had endured one, and who knew how to die. If Madrid had capitulated (which he could not believe), it had been sold: and what then? Madrid was but a single place, and there was no reason why Zaragoza should yield, when there were 60,000 men determined to defend it. The Marshal had tried them yesterday, and his troops had left at the gates witnesses enough of that determination. It might be more fitting for him to assume a lofty tone, and talk to the Marshal of capitulating, if he would not lose his army before the town. The spirit of eleven million Spaniards ♦Cavallero, 92.
Sebastian Hernandez, 6, 7.♦ was not to be extinguished by oppression; and they who had resolved to be free, were so. As for the blood which Marshal Moncey was desirous of sparing, it was as glorious for the Spaniards to lose it in such a cause, as it was ignominious for the French to be the instruments of shedding it.

♦The investment of the city completed.♦

During that and the ensuing day General Gazan completed the investment of the suburb. One of his brigades extended on the right of the Zuera road, the other on the left, with two battalions at the bridge over the Galego on the road to Valencia. The swampy nature of the ground, upon which the inhabitants relied in some degree for their protection on that side, was favourable to the besiegers also, for it enabled them to form inundations along the greater part of their line, which secured them against any sorties. On the right bank Suchet’s division, forming the left of the besieging army, extended from the Ebro to the valley of the Huerba; that valley was occupied by Morlot’s; Meusnier’s was encamped on the heights of the ♦Rogniat, 7.♦ Torrero; and Grandjean’s extended from thence to the Ebro on the other end of the bow, where a bridge of boats was laid, to establish their communication with the troops on the side of the suburb. It was determined to make three attacks; one upon the Castle of the Inquisition, with the view of employing the garrison on that side, which was their strongest part; one upon the bridge over the Huerba, where the name of that Pillar which was regarded as the palladium of the city had been given to the redoubt; and the third upon S. Joseph’s: this was the immediate object of the enemy; they deemed it the weakest point, and thought to connect their attack against it with an attempt upon the suburb, where Lacoste still hoped that the French might establish themselves. The weather was peculiarly favourable to their operations, being at once mild and dry; the nights were long and dark, and every morning a thick fog effectually covered them from the fire of the besieged, who could never see where to point their guns till it ♦Cavallero, 95.♦ was near mid-day. Meantime they were not idle; a line of counter-approaches was commenced which compelled the enemy to prolong their works, lest they should be enfiladed; sallies were made from S. Joseph’s to interrupt them, and to cut down the olive-trees and destroy the buildings which afforded them cover; and on the last day of the year the Spaniards made a general attempt along the whole line. ♦Cavallero, 94.
Rogniat, 9.♦ It was every where repulsed; but Palafox, who knew of what importance it was to excite a spirit of emulation in the troops, ordered those who had distinguished themselves by some partial success to wear a red riband as a badge of honour on the breast. He addressed a proclamation ♦Proclamation of Palafox to the people of Madrid.♦ also to the people of Madrid. The dogs by whom he was beset, he said, scarcely left him time to clean his sword from their blood, but they still found their grave at Zaragoza. The defenders of that city might be destroyed, but compelled to surrender they could not be: and he promised that, so soon as he was at liberty, he would hasten to the deliverance of Madrid. All Palafox’s proclamations were in the same spirit; his language had the high tone, and something of the inflation of Spanish romance, suiting the character of those to whom it was directed.

♦1809.
January.

At the beginning of the year Mortier received orders to move upon Calatayud with Suchet’s division. It was thought that they would be more serviceably employed in keeping that part of Aragon in awe, than in forwarding the operations of the siege. The position which they left was filled up by extending Morlot’s division, and securing its front by three redoubts. Moncey and Mortier, holding independent commands, appear to have been mutually jealous of each other; and Gazan, conceiving that his orders required him only to cover the siege, refused to make any farther attempt upon the suburb, after the severe repulse which he had sustained, strongly as the commandant of the engineers advised a second attack. The arrival of Junot to take the command did not put an end to this disunion: there were indeed plain indications, that if Buonaparte had died at this time, his generals, like Alexander’s, would have made some atonement to mankind by taking vengeance upon each other. The works, however, went on, under a heavy fire; and on the 10th eight batteries were opened against St. Joseph and the redoubt of the Pillar. Colonel Mariano de Renovales commanded the former post, a man who made himself conspicuous throughout the whole course of the war by his activity and enterprising courage. An old brick convent, ♦St. Joseph’s and the redoubt of the Pillar taken.♦ and works faced with unburnt bricks, were soon demolished; and in the night it was found necessary to remove the heavy artillery into the town, as it could no longer be used. A brave sally was made at midnight against one of the batteries; but the adventurers were taken in flank by two guns placed at the right of the second parallel, and being exposed to a murderous fire in front, retreated with considerable loss. The next day, the convent being in ruins, and the breach practicable, an assault was made in the evening; at the same time a party of the enemy, turning the convent, effected an entrance by a bridge which the besieged had neglected to remove, and obtained possession of the ruins. The French employed three days in repairing the works and connecting them with their second parallel. It had been an easy but an important conquest; for they were now secured against the garrison on that side by the river, and by an escarp eight feet high. On the 15th they attacked the redoubt ... it was defended by the second regiment of Aragonese volunteers, and it was not till the works were reduced to ruins, and the flower of that regiment ♦Rogniat, 11, 14.
Cavallero, 96.♦ had perished, that the survivors retreated into the city, and blew up the bridge. A second parallel was then opened against the town, which had now no longer any defence on this side but its feeble wall and the houses themselves.

♦Rumours of success, and rejoicings in the city.♦

Meantime a tremendous bombardment was kept up upon this devoted city. The enthusiasm of the inhabitants was not abated by the loss of their outworks: from the beginning they knew that this contest must come to the knife’s point, and the event of the former siege made them look with full hope for a similar deliverance. They were encouraged also by false rumours which arrived announcing a victory over Buonaparte by the combined armies of Romana and Sir John Moore. Palafox immediately announced it in an extraordinary gazette; it was just as night closed; the people crowded into the streets and squares, the bands of all the regiments were collected, bells were rung, salutes fired, and the multitude with shouts and acclamations of joy went in tumultuous procession to the Church of the Pillar, to return thanksgiving, and join in the hymn of Salve Regina. The besiegers heard the music and the uproar, and ascribed to the artifices of Palafox and the other leaders what was in fact the genuine impulse ♦Rogniat, 15.
Seb. Hernandez, 13.♦ of public feeling. By good fortune the bombardment was suspended at the time, but in the course of the night more than six hundred shells were thrown into the city.

♦An infectious disease appears in the city.♦

The worst evil arising from the bombardment was one which had not been anticipated from that cause, and against which, had it been foreseen, it would hardly have been possible to provide. A great number of the inhabitants retired into cellars, the women especially retreated there with their children, for security from the shells. In these long low vaults, where wine and oil had formerly been kept, they were crowded together day and night, where it was necessary to burn lamps during the day, and where fresh air entered as scantily as daylight. Such places soon became hot-beds of infection, and other causes contributed to extend the calamity. On the first day of the siege, when the attack was made upon the suburbs, part of the troops, exhausted by the previous exertions, were under arms for some hours in the Cozo, exposed first to a heavy snow, and then to a severe frost: this produced a catarrh, which proved infectious, and was soon followed by all the dreadful symptoms of camp contagion. The number of soldiers and of countrymen would at any time have crowded the city, but more especially now, when the inhabitants of all those houses which were prepared and blockaded for street warfare were compelled to seek quarters in the inner parts of the town. The Murcian and Valencian troops came from a country where great part of their food consisted in fresh or preserved fruits; the mere change of diet from such aliment to garrison stores was sufficient to produce disease. They had also been used to drink well water: change of water is a cause of illness as frequent as it is unsuspected; and that of the Ebro, though it is preferred by the Aragonese to any other, is thought unwholesome for those who are not accustomed to it. To these causes must be added scantiness of food (an evil consequent upon the fatal error of crowding the place with men), unusual exertions, and the impossibility of recruiting exhausted strength by needful sleep in a city which was now bombarded without intermission; and among that part of the population who were not immediately engaged in the defence, fear, anxiety, and perpetual agitation of mind, predisposing the body for endemic disease.

♦Attempts of Lazan and Francisco Palafox to succour the city.♦

Every rumour of success, however preposterous in its circumstances, and incredible in itself, was readily believed by the Zaragozans; they were too ill-informed to judge of probabilities, or to understand the real condition of their country; but this they knew, that if in other parts the Spaniards did their duty as devoutly as they themselves were discharging it, the deliverance of Zaragoza and the triumph of Spain were certain. They were always in hope that some vigorous effort would be made for their relief; and, to accelerate this, D. Francisco Palafox left the city, embarked at night in a little boat, and descending the Ebro and getting to Alcañiz, began to organize the peasantry, who lost no opportunity of harassing the enemy’s communications. His situation, like that of the Marquez de Lazan, was truly pitiable; not only their brother, but their wives and families, were in Zaragoza, ... to them more than to any other individuals the inhabitants looked for succour, from the same hereditary feeling which had made them at the beginning of their troubles turn as it were naturally to the house of Palafox for a leader. But both were ordinary men, unequal to the emergency in every thing except in good-will. General Doyle was in Catalonia; he had passed through Zaragoza on his way to that province, had commanded the Spanish cavalry in a spirited and successful affair at Olite a few days before the battle of Tudela, and as a complimentary memorial of that service, Palafox had formed a legion, and named it after him. From him also, as an Englishman, the Zaragozans expected aid, and if zeal and activity could have supplied the place of adequate means, their expectations would not have been disappointed. He had been indefatigable in his exertions for storing the city before the French encamped around it: he succeeded by repeated representations to the local and provincial Juntas in making them put Mequinenza in a state of defence, ... an old town with a castle which commanded the navigation of the Ebro, about half way between Zaragoza and its mouth; and he was now endeavouring to make Reding attempt something in aid of the besieged city.

♦Condition of the army in Catalonia.♦

St. Cyr had not known how to improve a victory so well as the Spaniards did how to remedy a defeat. As soon as the fugitives from Molins de Rey brought the first tidings of their rout to Tarragona, the populace, supposing themselves to be betrayed, rose tumultuously, and took the power into their own hands. They blocked up the gates, unpaved the streets, and removed the stones to the windows and varandas, that they might be ready for a civic defence. They got possession of the arsenal, and distributed the arms and ammunition; they moved the artillery from one place to another, at the will of any one who fancied himself qualified to give orders; and they called out for the head of Vives, as the traitor who had been the cause of all their misfortunes. In this imminent danger Vives made a formal resignation of the ♦Reding takes the command.♦ command, and Reding, upon whom it devolved, was enabled to save his life by letting him be put in confinement. The superior Junta, apprehensive alike of the populace and of a siege or an immediate assault, got out of the city as soon as they could (for the people had forbidden any person to leave it), and fixed themselves at Tortosa, leaving, however, two of their members to represent them in the Junta of that district. If while this insubordination prevailed the French had attempted to carry the place by a coup-de-main, they might probably have succeeded; but St. Cyr was not so well acquainted with the inability of the Spaniards as with the difficulties of his own position. A few days after the battle a strong detachment of French appeared before the city; the generale was beaten, the somaten was sounded from the Cathedral, one of the forts fired, and the place was in the utmost confusion, when a flag of truce arrived, with a request that an aid-de-camp of M. St. Cyr might be allowed to confer with General Vives. Reding, to whom the letter was delivered, suspected that the real intent must be to discover the state of the place; he communicated it to the Junta, and two of their members, with two officers, were sent out to know the purport of the mission. It was not without difficulty that these persons could get out of the gate, so fearful were the people of being betrayed; the general opinion was, that the French had sent to summon the town, and the universal cry was, that they would not capitulate, they would listen to no such proposals, they would die for their king, their religion, and their country. It proved, however, that the aid-de-camp came only to propose an exchange of prisoners. The impolicy of agreeing to this was obvious; but Reding knew how ill the prisoners on both sides were treated, and thought it due to humanity to exchange them. The advantage was wholly on the enemy’s side; they received disciplined soldiers, who had now been many months in the country, and had had opportunities since their capture of observing the state of the Spaniards, and even learning their intentions, for every thing like secrecy seemed to be despised; and they gave in return ♦Cabañes, p. iii. c. 13.♦ only men of the new levies, not exchanging a single dragoon or artilleryman, nor one of the Swiss troops.

♦The army re-formed in Tarragona.♦

Reding was fully sensible how injurious it was that the enemy should thus be enabled to fill up their ranks; he suffered it, however, for the sake of mitigating the evils of a war in which he considered success absolutely hopeless. From the same hopelessness he committed the greater error of suffering himself to be surrounded by persons, some of whom were suspected by the superior Junta, and others by himself: but with this there was a generous feeling mingled; he would not, because they were unpopular, cease to employ men of whom he had a good opinion, nor would he upon a strong suspicion of guilt dismiss others as if they were guilty. His despondency was rooted in the constitution of his mind, but it did not make him omit any efforts for enabling the army again to take the field; and it was one happy part of the Spanish character, that no defeat, however complete and disgraceful, produced any effect in dispiriting the nation. The very men who, taking panic in battle, threw down their arms and fled, believed they had done their country good service by saving themselves for an opportunity of better fortune; and as soon as they found themselves in safety, were ready to be enrolled and take their chance again. Such of the runaways as had reached the Ebro, when they could get no farther, turned back, and came in troops to Tarragona. They came in pitiable condition, and without arms: ... Reding knew not where to look but to the English for money and muskets, and a failure of powder also was apprehended, the materials having hitherto been supplied from Zaragoza. It would have been madness to have attempted punishing any of these fugitives; the better mode of impressing upon them a sense of military duty was to let them see that their superiors could not behave ill with impunity: Reding therefore degraded one colonel and several inferior officers for their conduct at Molins de Rey, and made them serve in the ranks; but by posting them in advanced parties gave them an opportunity of retrieving their character and their rank. The government never acted with so much energy as when it was refitting an army after a defeat: its efforts were then such as the danger required. Two regiments arrived from Granada, a Swiss one from Majorca; supplies were sent from Valencia; men came in from all quarters as the hopes of the people rose, and by the middle of January the force in Tarragona was not inferior to that which had been so shamefully dispersed at Granollers. The men recovered heart, and acquired confidence from frequent success in the desultory warfare wherein Reding practised them. But he himself continued[3] to despond; ♦Cabañes, p. iii. c. 13.♦ and, in sad anticipation of defeat, deferred acting, when activity and enterprise might have found or made opportunities for success.

♦Conduct of the French under St. Cyr.♦

It was their victories which made the French most sensible of the difference between this and the other wars wherein they had been engaged; ... the spoils of the field were the only fruits of success. These indeed had been of signal consequence in Catalonia; they had enabled St. Cyr to relieve Barcelona, to refit his troops, and to strengthen himself with a park of field-pieces. He had profited by the first panic to dislodge the Spaniards from the pass of Bruch, which they had twice so gloriously defended; his troops had entered Igualada after the success, and the dangerous impression which his ostentation of justice and his observance of the humanities of war were likely to produce upon the wealthier classes, was seen by the conduct of the inhabitants, who seemed to think it a matter of indifference whether their houses were occupied by the national troops or by the French. But the system upon which Buonaparte carried on this wicked war rendered it impossible for any general to persist in a course of honourable conduct. The army which he had ordered into Catalonia was left to provide for itself, in a province which had now been many months the seat of war, and which never even in peace produced half its own consumption of corn. It had also to store the places of Rosas, Figueras, and Barcelona; for no attempt was made to bring provisions from France by land ... (the pass indeed between Bellegarde and Figueras was so dangerous to the French, that they called it the Straits of Gibraltar); and it was seldom that a vessel could escape the vigilance of the British cruisers. Eleven victuallers intended for Barcelona were lying in the port of Caldaques under convoy of a cutter and a lugger, when Lord Cochrane landed his men, drove the French from the town, took their batteries, and captured the whole. St. Cyr, however humane by nature, however honourable by principle, was engaged in a service with which humanity and honour were incompatible: he could support his army by no other means than by plundering the inhabitants, and the Catalans were not a people who would endure patiently to be plundered. The difficulty was increased by the Moorish custom still retained in that part of Spain of preserving corn, not in barns or granaries, but in mattamores. In the towns these subterranean magazines were emptied before the French could enter; in the country they were so easily concealed, that, after long and wearying search, it was a rare fortune to discover one. And the Miquelets and Somatenes were so constantly on the alert, that frequently when the marauders had seized their booty they were deprived of it. In this sort of warfare their loss was generally greater than that of the natives, who on such occasions had them at vantage. How considerable ♦St. Cyr, 92–99.♦ it must have been may be in some degree estimated from the fact, that in the course of seven weeks St. Cyr’s foraging parties fired away not less than two million cartridges.

♦Orders to attempt the relief of Zaragoza.♦

But plainly as it would have been the policy of the Spaniards to confine themselves to the slow and sure method of weeding out their invaders, till they could bring their regular troops into a fit state for taking the field, the pressing danger of Zaragoza called for immediate efforts. Francisco Palafox, looking every where for that aid which was nowhere to be found, had gone to Cuenca, and proposing that Infantado should march the central army to his brother’s relief, had been present at a council where the proposal was discussed, and had seen with his own eyes how utterly incapable that army was of engaging in such an attempt, or even of attempting ♦Infantado, Manifiesto, 87.♦ such a march. Orders to undertake something for its relief had been dispatched from the Central Junta to the provinces of Valencia and Catalonia. The Valencians were offended with Palafox for having detained General St. Marc with a division of their army; no man contributed more by his military talents to the defence of the city than that general, but he and his men were now cooped up to die of pestilence, when they might have effectually served the Zaragozans in the field. Want of will therefore made the Valencians take only half measures, and these so tardily as to be of no avail. Neither did Reding manifest the feeling which he ought to have partaken upon this subject, partly because the sense of his own difficulties possessed him, and partly perhaps from a personal dislike to the Palafox family. One natural consequence of thus delaying succour in quarters where there was most ability was to produce premature and rash attempts on the part of those who felt more generously. Palafox ♦Tardiness in obeying them.♦ had written to say, that as long as provisions lasted, and there were ruins to shelter them, Zaragoza would not surrender. The place chosen for a depot was Mequinenza, and there, chiefly by the exertions of General Doyle, stores in considerable quantity were collected; but impatient of waiting, when time was so precious, till a well-concerted attempt to introduce supplies could be made, a Colonel who had ♦Defeat of the peasantry.♦ several thousand peasants under his command moved to Belchite, within five leagues of Zaragoza, with a convoy under protection of this force, which was as unmanageable in a body, as it might have been efficient in its proper mode of warfare. The enemy, at the beginning of the siege, had stationed General Vathier at Fuentes with 600 cavalry and 1200 foot to command the country and collect provisions. This movement of the peasants was too near him to be concealed; he fell upon them, routed them with some slaughter, and got possession of all their stores. ♦Alcañiz occupied by the French.♦ The pursuit led him as far as Ixar, and from thence he proceeded against Alcañiz. The peasantry whom Francisco Palafox had collected there drew up on the heights before the town, and withstood the attack with more firmness ♦Rogniat, 17.♦ than might have been expected from such a force; but they were not equal to contend with disciplined troops; and Vathier occupied the towns of Alcañiz and Cuspe as long as the siege endured.

♦Movement in Navarre and Aragon.♦

These misfortunes did not discourage the Spaniards, and the movements of the inhabitants both in Navarre and Aragon were formidable enough to excite some uneasiness in the besiegers. While the Navarrese bands interrupted their communication with Pamplona, the mountaineers of Soria threatened Tudela, and those of the Sierra de Muela endangered their hospitals and establishments at Alagon Lazan, meantime, with his brother Francisco, occupied the country from Villa Franca de Ebro to Licineña and Zuera, and sending detachments as far as Capavrosa to intercept the enemy’s convoys, straitened Gazan’s division in their camp. More than once the French were without meat, and upon half rations of bread; and they might have been foiled a second time before Zaragoza, more shamefully than the first, if the heroism of the inhabitants had been in any degree seconded from without, and if the want of capacity in the Spanish leaders had not been as glaring as the want of order in the field and of reason in their councils. The besiegers had felt some ill effects from the latter cause; but an end was put to jarring pretensions and contrarient views when ♦M. Lasnes takes the command.♦ Marshal Lasnes arrived on the 22d of January to take the command. He had previously ordered Mortier to leave Calatayud, and act with Suchet’s division on the left of the Ebro; having dispersed the force which Francisco Palafox had collected there, they took possession of Zuera, and scouring the country as far as Pina, Sarineña, ♦Rogniat, 18, 20.♦ and Huesca, secured the besiegers from interruption on that side. The French Marshal hoped that this might abate the spirit of the Zaragozans as much as it had cheered them ♦He summons Palafox to surrender. Jan. 25.♦ when they saw the force of their countrymen upon the surrounding heights; and he addressed a letter to Palafox, telling him that the force upon which he had relied for relief had been destroyed, that the English had fled to Coruña and embarked there, leaving 7000 prisoners, and that Romana had escaped with them, his army with their officers having yielded to the Emperor: that Infantado had been defeated at Ucles with the loss of 18,000 men; and that if after this true statement he persisted in withstanding a force more than sufficient for effecting its purpose, the destruction of the city and of its inhabitants must rest upon his head. Palafox ♦Cavallero, 107.♦
♦Seb. Hermandez, 14, 15.♦ replied, that M. Lasnes would cover himself with glory if he were to win the city by force of manly courage with the sword, and not by bombarding it; but that the Zaragozans knew their duty, and would not surrender.

♦The French enter the city, but with great loss. Jan. 26.♦

All the outworks had now been taken except the Castle of the Inquisition, which had never been seriously attacked, because its possession was of no importance to the enemy. The batteries against the city itself were completed, and on the day after the summons fifty pieces opened their fire upon the wall, and on the morrow three practicable breaches were made. One was by an oil-mill, a building standing alone, without the walls, and close to them; the enemy had established themselves in it during the night. The second was to the left of this, immediately opposite S. Joseph’s; the third in the monastery of S. Engracia. All these were attacked. A column issuing from the oil-mill presently reached the first, and the explosion of two fougades at the foot of the breach scarcely appeared to impede their progress. But they found an inner intrenchment, well constructed and mounted with two guns; and when they attempted to carry this the bell of the Torre Nueva rang, the inhabitants manned the adjacent houses, and a fire was opened from roofs and windows which it was neither possible to return nor to withstand. Profiting, however, by the cover which the exploded fougades afforded them, they succeeded in lodging themselves upon the breach. On the left they were more successful; after gaining the ramparts, they made their way into the opposite house, which the artillery had breached, and into the two adjoining ones; their progress was then stopped, but they established themselves within the walls, and repaired and lengthened for their own use a double caponier, by which the besieged used to communicate with S. Joseph’s. The attack upon the third breach was more formidable. After a severe struggle the enemy entered the convent of S. Engracia, obtained possession of its ruins and of the nunnery of S. Joseph, which stood near, and of which little more than the mere shell was remaining. Piercing the walls of this, they enfiladed the curtain from S. Engracia to the bridge of the Huerba, and taking the tête-de-pont in reverse, became masters of the bridge, over which fresh troops joined them to follow up their success. They pushed on to the Capuchin convent of La Trinidad, which made part of the line; forty artillerymen, who were stationed there without support, as a place not in danger of attack, were cut to pieces at their guns, and the convent was taken. It was recovered by the Spaniards; but two battalions came to support the assailants, who took it a second time, and maintained their conquest, though at a dear price. The greater part of the French who occupied the curtain fell under the fire from the houses. They suffered also considerably in a vain attempt to possess themselves of a single house which defended an imperfect breach to the right of all their other attacks. Their whole loss was stated by themselves at 600, that of the besiegers at eight. The Spaniards, with better reason, believed that a much greater proportion of the enemy had fallen; and the French had in fact received so severe a lesson, that they determined not to ♦Rogniat, 22, 26.
Cavallero, 102–105.♦ risk any more direct attacks, but proceed always as much as possible under cover: there was danger otherwise that the troops would become impatient of so fatal a service, and even that all their efforts might be unavailing.

♦The enemy establish themselves in the Trinidad convent.♦

As it was now no longer necessary to carry on the false attack upon the Aljafaria, the engineers were called from thence to fortify the Trinidad convent, and establish a communication with it and with a house by the bridge; commanding in this manner the whole intermediate space. During the night the Spaniards endeavoured to recover the ruins of S. Engracia and the adjoining houses, but without success. They attempted twice also to regain the Trinidad, and once succeeded so far as to force open the church door: the enemy had formed an epaulement within of bags of earth, and fought to advantage behind that protection. A friar was at the head of the assailants, with a sword in one hand and the crucifix in the other; one of his brethren was killed in the act of administering extreme unction to a Spaniard who was mortally wounded; another took the holy oil from the slain, and continued to perform the same office to his dying countrymen. Women also mingled with the combatants, distributing cartridges to them, and bearing refreshments to their sons, ♦Rogniat, 25, 28.
Cavallero, 105.♦ their husbands, and fathers, and sometimes rushing upon the enemy when these dear relatives fell, to revenge their deaths, and to die with them.

♦Convents of S. Augustin and S. Monica won.♦

The French had in vain attempted to get possession of the convents of S. Augustin and ♦Feb. 1.♦ S. Monica. Having been repelled in assaulting ♦1809.
February.♦ the breaches, they sprung a mine under the partition wall, and by that means effected an entrance, turning all the works which the Spaniards had constructed for their defence. They forced their way into the church. Every column, every chapel, every altar, became a point of defence, which was repeatedly attacked, taken, and retaken, and attacked again; the pavement was covered with blood, and the aisles and nave of the church strewed with the dead, who were trampled under foot by the combatants. In the midst of this conflict the roof, which had been shattered by bombs, fell in; the few who were not crushed, after a short pause which this tremendous shock and the sense of their own escape occasioned, renewed the fight with increased desperation: fresh parties of the enemy poured in: monks, and citizens, and soldiers came to the defence, and the contest was continued upon the ruins and the bodies of the dead and the dying. It ended in favour of the invaders, who succeeded in keeping the disputed position. Taking advantage of the opportunity afforded while the attention of the Spaniards was directed to this point, they entered the Rua Quemada, where no attack was at that time apprehended, and got possession of one side of the street to the angle which it makes with the Cozo: their sappers were beginning to pierce the walls of the houses, barricade the doors and windows, and establish traverses in the street, when the Zaragozans charged them with redoubled spirit, drove them out with considerable loss, and recovered four houses which had been taken on a preceding day. At the same time an attack was made on the side of S. Engracia, when, after exploding two mines, the Poles got possession of some ruined houses; but in obtaining this success, General Lacoste, the ♦Rogniat, 27, 30.
Cavallero, 106.♦ French commandant of engineers, was killed. His opponent, Colonel San Genis, had fallen the preceding day: he was succeeded by Colonel Zappino, Lacoste by Colonel Rogniat.

♦The enemy proceed by mining.♦

Now that the city was open to the invaders, the contest was to be carried on once more in the streets and houses. But the French had been taught by experience that in such domestic warfare the Zaragozans derived a superiority from the feeling and principle which inspired them, and the cause wherein they were engaged. They had learned that the only means of conquering it was to destroy it house by house, and street by street; and upon this system of destruction they proceeded. Three companies of miners and eight of sappers carried on this subterranean war. The Spaniards had officers who could have opposed them with not inferior skill; but men were wanting, and the art of sapping and mining is not one which can be learned on the spot where it is wanted; their attempts therefore were frequently discovered, and the men suffocated in their own works. Nor indeed had they been more expert could powder have been supplied for their consumption. The stock with which the Zaragozans began had been exhausted; they had none but what they manufactured day by day, and no other cannon-balls than those which had been fired against them, and which they collected and fired back upon the enemy.

♦Progress of the pestilence.♦

The Zaragozans expected miracles for their deliverance; and they exerted themselves so excellently well, that the French, with all their advantages, would have found themselves unequal to the enterprise in which they were engaged, and other armies must have been brought up to supply more thousands for the slaughter, if the defenders had not been suffering under an evil which in their circumstances it was equally impossible to prevent or to alleviate. The consequences of that evil, when it had once appeared, were but too surely to be apprehended; and in bitter anticipation, yet while a hope ♦Miralles, Elogio de Zaragoza, p. 42.♦ remained, an Aragoneze exclaimed, Zaragoza surrenders not, if God is neutral! If the seasons had only held their ordinary course, this heroic people might a second time have delivered themselves. In that part of Spain January is commonly a wet month. Had the rains fallen as usual, the enemy would hardly have been able to complete their approaches; had the weather, on the contrary, been severe, it might have stopped the contagion, and then the city would have had hands as well as hearts for its defence. But the season proved at once dry enough for the ground to be in the most favourable state for the besiegers’ operations, and mild enough to increase the progress of the disease, which was now more destructive than the enemy, though no enemy ever employed the ♦Cavallero, 71.♦ means of destruction with less remorse. When once the pestilence had begun it was impossible to check its progress, or confine it to one quarter of the city. It was not long before more than thirty hospitals were established; ... as soon as one was destroyed by the bombardment the patients were removed to some other building which was in a state to afford them temporary shelter, and thus the infection was carried to every part of Zaragoza. The average of daily deaths from this cause was at this time not less than three hundred and fifty; men stretched upon straw, in helpless misery lay breathing their last, and with their dying breath spreading the mortal taint of their own disease, who, if they had fallen in action, would have died with the exultation of martyrs. Their sole comfort was the sense of having performed their duty religiously to the uttermost ... all other alleviations were wanting; neither medicines nor necessary food were to be procured, nor needful attendance ... for the ministers of charity themselves became victims of the disease. All that the most compassionate had now to bestow was a little water in which rice had been boiled, and a winding-sheet. The nuns, driven from their convents, knew not where to take refuge, nor where to find shelter for their dying sisters. The Church of the Pillar was crowded with poor creatures, who, despairing of life, hoped now for nothing more than to die in the presence of the tutelary saint. The clergy were employed night and day in administering the sacraments to the dying, till they themselves sunk under the common calamity. The slightest wound produced gangrene and death in bodies so prepared for dissolution by distress of mind, agitation, want of proper aliment and of sleep. For there was now no respite neither by day nor night for this devoted city; even the natural order of light and darkness was destroyed in Zaragoza: by day it was involved in a red sulphureous atmosphere of smoke and dust, which hid the face of heaven; by night the fire of cannon and mortars, and the flames of burning houses, kept it in a state of horrible illumination. The cemeteries could no longer afford room for the dead; huge pits were dug to receive them in the streets and in the courts of the public buildings, till hands were wanting for the labour; they were laid before the churches, ♦Sebastian Hernandez, p. 17.
Cavallero, p. 108.♦ heaped upon one another, and covered with sheets; and that no spectacle of horror might be wanting, it happened not unfrequently that these piles of mortality were struck by a shell, and the shattered bodies scattered in all directions.

♦First talk of surrender in the city.♦

On the 1st of February the situation of the city appeared so desperate, that persons of approved and unquestionable patriotism came to the Regent of the Royal Audience of Aragon, D. Pedro Maria Ric, and besought him to represent to Palafox the necessity of capitulating; but Ric, with a spirit like that of Palafox himself, could not submit to this while there was any possibility of prolonging the defence. He knew that of all examples there is none which makes so sure and so powerful an impression as that of heroic suffering; and that if Zaragoza were defended to the last gasp, the influence of its fall under such circumstances would be not less honourable and hardly less salutary than a happier termination. Nor indeed would the people have consented to a surrender; their spirit was unsubdued, and the principle which supported it retained all its force. The worst effect of their sense of increasing danger was, that it increased their suspicions, always too easily excited; and ♦D. P. M. Ric, Semanario Patriotico, No. 28, p. 214.
Cavallero, p. 110.♦ to those suspicions several persons were sacrificed, being with or without proof hung during the night in the Cozo and in the market-place. The character indeed of the struggle was such as to excite the most implacable indignation and hatred against an enemy, who having begun the war with such unexampled treachery, prosecuted it with a ferocity equally unexampled in later ages.

♦The contest carried on by fire.♦

Four days the French were employed in forming three galleries to cross the Rua Quemada. They failed in two; the third opened into the cellar of an undefended house; thence they made way along great part of the street from house to house, and crossing another street by means of a double epaulement of bags of earth, established themselves in the ruins of a house which formed an angle of the Cozo and of the Rua del Medio, Their next object was to get possession of the Escuelas Pias, a building which commanded some traverses made for defending the Cozo. The French often attacked it, and were as often repulsed; they then attempted the adjoining houses. The system of blowing up the houses exposed them to an evil which had not been foreseen, for when they attempted to establish themselves upon the ruins, the Spaniards from the dwellings near fired upon them with sure effect. They endeavoured therefore so to proportion the charge in their mines as to breach the house without destroying it; but to deprive them of the cover which they would thus have obtained, the Zaragozans with characteristic desperation set fire now to every house before they abandoned it. They began this mode of defence here, maintaining the entrance till they had prepared the building for burning; for so little wood was used in the construction, that it was necessary to smear the floors and beams with melted resin, to make them more combustible. When all was ready they then set fire to the place, and retired into the Escuelas Pias, interposing thus a barrier of flames between them and the assailants. The enemy endeavoured in vain to extinguish the fire under a shower of balls; and the time thus gained was employed by the Zaragozans in forming new works of defence. Unable to win the Schools by any other means, the enemy at length prepared a mine, which was discovered too late ♦Rogniat, 30, 1.
Cavallero, 121. Feb. 7.♦ for the Spaniards to frustrate their purpose, but in time to disappoint them of their expected advantage by setting fire to the disputed edifice.

♦Convent of Jesus taken in the suburbs.♦

On the same day operations were renewed against the suburbs, where the enemy, at the commencement of the siege, had received so severe a repulse. General Gazan, availing himself of an ambiguity in his orders, had, after that lesson, contented himself with keeping up the blockade; nor could any representation induce him to engage in more active operations, till M. Lasnes arrived with authority to enforce his orders. The Convent of Jesus, situated on the road to Barcelona, formed part of the defence on that side; the engineers, not having time to rase it, deeming it better that it should be occupied than abandoned for the enemy. Trenches were now opened against this building, and twenty battering pieces soon effected a breach, which was carried almost as easily as it had been made; but when the enemy, flushed with success, entered the suburbs in pursuit of the retreating garrison, they were driven out with great slaughter, as on their former attempt. ♦Rogniat, 34, 35.♦ They entrenched themselves, however, on the ruins of the convent, established a communication with it, and lodgements on the right and left.

The attack in the centre was pursued with the same vigour, and resisted with the same desperate determination. Every door, every staircase, every chamber was disputed; the ♦S. Francisco taken.♦ French abandoned all attacks to the left for the sake of concentrating their efforts here, that they might the sooner reach the Cozo, extend themselves along it to the right as far as the quay, and thus connect their operations with those of Gazan on the other side the Ebro: and these increased efforts were met with proportionate exertions by the Zaragozans. Grenades were thrown from one floor to another, and bombs were rolled among the enemy, when they were so near that the Spaniards who rolled them expected themselves also to perish by the explosion. Their resolution seemed, if it were possible, to increase with their danger; every spot was defended with more obstinacy than the last; and this temper would have been, as it deserved to be, invincible, if pestilence the while had not been consuming them faster than fire and sword. The sense of honour as well as of duty was carried to its highest point; the officers preferred dying upon the stations which they had been appointed to defend, rather than to live after having lost them, though every possible resistance had been made. On this side, after having occupied and been driven from the vaults of the Hospital, which had been reduced to ruins in the former siege, the enemy succeeded at length in carrying a gallery to the great convent of S. Francisco; ... a countermine was prepared, which compelled them to stop before they could get under the walls of the convent. The engineer, Major Breuille, immediately charged the mine with three thousand weight of powder, and fired it, having drawn by feigned preparations for an assault as many Spaniards as he could within the sphere of destruction. The explosion was terrible, and brought down part of the building: the enemy rushed through the breach, and making way into the church, formed an epaulement there to establish themselves. Some Zaragozans who were acquainted with the building got, by passages connected with the tower, upon the cornices of the church; others mounted the roof, and broke holes in it, and from thence they poured down grenades upon the invaders, and drove them from their post. The ruins of this convent, which had been burnt during the first siege, and now shattered by the mine, were disputed two whole days, till the defenders at length were driven from the last chapel by the bayonet. For the advantage now both in numbers and in physical power was on the side of the enemy, the pestilence having so wasted the Spaniards, that men ♦Rogniat, 36.
Cavallero, 126.♦ enough could not be provided to man the points which were attacked without calling up from the hospitals those who had yet strength enough to use a weapon.

From the tower of this building the French commanded the Cozo for a musket-shot distance ♦The French begin to murmur.♦ on either side. After many desperate attempts their miners succeeded in crossing that street; but they were baffled in their attacks upon the University, and so many of their officers and best soldiers had fallen in this murderous struggle, that the disgust which ought to have been excited by their abominable cause was produced by the difficulty which they found in pursuing it. Not the men alone, but the officers also, began to complain that they were worn out, though they had as yet only taken a fourth part of the town; it was necessary, they said, to wait for reinforcements, otherwise they should all be buried in these cursed ruins, before they could drive the fanatics from their last retreat. Marshal Lasnes represented to them, that destructive as the mode of war was, it was more so to the besieged than to them, whose operations were directed by more skill, and carried on by men trained to such service; that pestilence was doing their work; and that if these desperate madmen chose to renew the example of Numantia, and bury themselves under the ruins of their city, bombs and mines would not now be ♦Rogniat, 38.♦ long in destroying the last of them. Marshal Lasnes was a man after the Emperor Napoleon’s own heart; with so little honourable feeling, that he regarded the Zaragozans merely as madmen; and with so little human feeling, that he would have completed the destruction of the city and its last inhabitants with the same insensibility that he declared his intention of doing so.

♦Not even an attempt is made to relieve the city.♦

S. Genis had repeatedly said, “Let me never be appealed to if there is any question of capitulating, for I shall never be of opinion that we can no longer defend ourselves.” In the same spirit Palafox wrote to his friend General Doyle: “Within the last forty-eight hours,” said he, “6000 shells have been thrown in; two-thirds of the city are in ruins; but we will perish under the ruins of the remaining part, rather than surrender.” It was not by any promises or hopes of external succour that this spirit was supported. Palafox well knew that no efforts would be wanting on the part of his brothers, or of his friends; but he knew also what divided counsels and jarring interests were opposed to them, and that willing lives were all they could have had at their command. General Doyle with great exertions got together ammunition and stores at Mequinenza, in the beginning of February; and the Marques de Lazan took the field from Lerida with a nominal force of 7000 foot and 250 horse to attempt something for the relief of the besieged city. It was soon learnt by their spies that a corps of 10,000 foot and 800 horse was ready to oppose them; and rather than make an attempt which must inevitably have ended in the utter rout of his ill-disciplined troops, Lazan waited at Monzon, to be joined by a division from Valencia, which the Junta of that kingdom had at last consented to send across the Ebro. But a French division in Aragon threatened to impede the junction: ammunition was wanted from Lerida, which the Junta of that city demurred at granting; time was consumed in miserable counsels and hopeless expectation, Lazan looking to Reding for some great exertion, and Reding deterred from attempting any thing, though with a superior force, by total want of confidence in his army, and the suspicion that whatever passed at his head-quarters was immediately communicated to the enemy; and thus while Lazan and his brother were in the most pitiable distress, knowing the state of Zaragoza, where their families were suffering under the unexampled horrors of such a siege, ... while every man in their division partook that feeling which the situation of the besieged excited in all their countrymen ... an anxiety as unexampled as it was great, ... and while every where it was expected that some efforts such as the occasion required would be made; even the most ready and devoted courage was of no avail where preparation, order, discipline, prompt judgement, and vigorous authority were all wanting; and though the province and the nation were in arms, Zaragoza was left to its fate without even an attempt to save it.

♦Progress of the pestilence.♦

Meantime pestilence was consuming the Zaragozans faster than fire and sword. The points which were not immediately threatened were now wholly manned by men who rose from their straw in the hospitals, and sate at their posts, unable to support themselves standing, wrapped in their blankets, and shivering or panting for breath, as the ague or the hot fit of the disease might prevail. The officer whose dreadful task it was to choose out patients for the service became in his turn a victim to the contagion. Hopeless of finding relief any where, the sick resigned themselves quietly to their fate; the dying and the dead were buried together beneath the houses which were blown up, or consumed in the flames; and the French found court-yards and chambers filled with corpses, and said themselves that they were fighting now only to obtain possession of a cemetery. ♦Rogniat, 39.
Cavallero, 129.♦ The ravages of the disease were such, that many, bearing up with invincible resolution to the last, fell in the streets and died. The enemy did not remit their attacks while death was thus doing their work; they profited by the weakness of the besieged, and opening a fire ♦Feb. 18.♦ from their batteries on both sides the Convent of Jesus upon the suburbs, made another attempt upon the feeble works where they had twice been repulsed with such great loss. A fire ♦The suburbs taken.♦ from fifty pieces soon made the way open, and the bridge being flanked by some of their guns, no succour could be sent from the city. Baron de Versaje, who commanded there, and had distinguished himself in the defence, was killed in repairing to his post. A breach was made in the Convent of S. Lazarus on the left bank; the garrison, exhausted by privations and fatigue and sickness, opposed all the resistance in their power, ... the greater number dying in its defence; and this edifice being taken, the Spaniards could neither retreat from the suburbs, nor hope to support themselves there, when they could no longer be supplied with food or ammunition from the city. Finding themselves separated by the enemy into two columns, the one body crossed the bridge with considerable loss, and effected their retreat into the town; the other cut their way through the enemy, and endeavoured to escape in the open country ♦Rogniat, 41.
Cavallero, 137.♦ along the bank of the Ebro; they were pursued by the French horse, and after sustaining a second action till their powder was exhausted, were taken prisoners to the number of 1500.

♦The University taken.♦

The loss of the left bank exposed to the enemy the only part of the city which had not yet been open to their direct attacks, but had only suffered from the bombardment. On the other side, the University, after repeated attempts, had been taken, and the traverses which the Spaniards had so well defended in the Cozo. Palafox had now been seized with the disease. Capitulation had been mentioned at the last council in which he was present, and when it was asked how long the city could hold out, his answer had been, hasta la ultima tapia; “to the ♦Palafox transfers his authority to a Junta.♦ last mud-wall.” Being now utterly disabled, he transferred all his authority, civil and military, on the night of the 18th, to a Junta, naming Ric to be the president. That noble-minded Spaniard immediately summoned the members, and they began their functions at one on the morning of the 19th. The chiefs of the various military departments were summoned to deliver ♦Condition of the besieged.♦ their opinions. The general of cavalry represented, that there remained only sixty-two horses, and those weak and unserviceable, the rest having died of hunger. From a statement of the infantry it appeared that there were only 2822 men fit for service. Ammunition was nearly exhausted; there was none but what was manufactured in the Inquisition, and that would be destroyed if a shell should fall there. The commandant of engineers reported that the fortifications were demolished, there were neither men nor materials for repairing them, and all the cloth which could serve for bags of earth had been consumed. All the officers who had thus been consulted gave their opinion that the place ought to be surrendered, and that the Junta would be responsible to God and the King for the lives which every hour were sacrificed, if they persisted in resistance, now that it was become manifestly impossible to save the city. Having heard this melancholy representation, the Junta required General San Marc, who was one of their members, to express his judgement; the eminent talents and courage which he had displayed during the whole siege would render his opinion decisive both with them and the commander-in-chief and the people. He stated, that if the enemy made a general attack, which the preparations that were observed appeared to indicate, the loss of the city was inevitable, and would be followed by every imaginable horror. It was known with what fury the French treated every place which they conquered, and their rage would be greater here, on account of the hatred which they and their general and their bloody Emperor bore towards a city that had once put them to such shame, and now cost them so dearly. If the attacks were partial, such as those which were repeatedly made every day, they might hold out two days longer, or possibly four, provided men could be found for defence and for the works; longer than four days it was not possible to maintain the contest: San Marc concluded by declaring, that unless there were well-founded expectations of speedy relief, it was unjustifiable ♦Ric, Sem. Patr. 215, 6.♦ to sacrifice the lives which in these days must be lost, the loss of the city in that short time being unavoidable.

Upon this the Junta proceeded to make inquiry what expectations of relief there were: for this purpose the Duke of Villahermosa was sent to Palafox; but Palafox was now so ill that he could give no account of any thing, for the fever had fixed upon his brain. His secretary was applied to for any letters and documents which might be in his possession: he delivered in two, both of which were dated long back. One was a letter from Francisco Palafox, saying, that after making the utmost exertions to collect troops, but in vain, he was then at Tortosa, assembling the peasantry with some soldiers from the garrisons on the coast, and that he designed to strengthen this force with some gun-boats that were to be sent up the Ebro. The other was a scrap of paper, written in enigmatical terms (for it had to pass through the enemy’s lines), and, as it was supposed, by the Conde de Montijo. It said, that the writer and the Duke del Infantado wished to come to the relief of Zaragoza, but the Central Junta had ordered that the Swiss should go, and that they were to fall upon Madrid. The Swiss was understood to mean General Reding; but he was so situated that no succour could be expected from him; for he was in Catalonia, and the enemy being masters of the suburbs, it was not possible for him now to cross the bridge. Moreover there could be no doubt, that other divisions of the French gave him full employment. These papers, therefore, only confirmed the Junta in their apprehensions that the French were victorious every where, and that in the ♦Ric, 216, 7.♦ general distress of the country they could expect no relief.

♦Flag of truce sent to the French.♦

While they were deliberating the bombardment was renewed. They knew that the city could not hold out; twenty-six members voted for a capitulation, eight, with Ric among them, that they should still continue their resistance, urging that there was a possibility of being succoured. Such was the high spirit of these brave men, that the opinion of the minority was followed: for they who had voted for surrendering had done so for the sake of others, ... for themselves, there was not one among them who would not rather have died than capitulated. They agreed to send a flag of truce to the enemy, requesting a suspension of hostilities for three days, that officers might in the meantime be sent to ascertain the situation of the Spanish armies, and according to the intelligence which might thus be obtained, they would then treat for a surrender. Lasnes, when he had summoned the city, had proposed this method himself, ... he now resented the proposal as an insult, and vented the most ferocious threats against the city, unless it were immediately delivered up. The flag was remanded with a second letter, reminding him that the proposal was originally his own: he did not vouchsafe to answer in any other manner than ♦Ric, 217, 8.♦ by a shower of bombs, and by ordering the attack to be renewed.

♦Last efforts of the besieged.♦

In the evening of that day the quarter of the Tanneries was lost, a part of the strand leading to the stone bridge, and the Puerto del Angel, a point of great importance. Four cannon in the battery of the wooden bridge were spiked, treacherously it was supposed, ... but there was no time for ascertaining this and punishing the traitors. The handful of men who remained were at their posts, manifesting their wonted resolution; but they were too few for the severe service to which they were exposed, and San Marc applied to Ric to reinforce with only 200 the points which were attacked, ... more he did not ask for, knowing the deplorable state of the city. Ric had already charged Don Miguel Marraco, a beneficed priest of the Church of the Pillar, whom the general had commissioned to organise the peasantry, to provide men for the works, ... he now sent him a note which would have excited him to new exertions had there been any remissness on his part. Don Mariano Cerazo, an honourable citizen, who had distinguished himself by his zeal and his influence with the people, was called upon in like manner; and certain priests also, who had united for the purpose of training and encouraging the peasantry, were requested in this emergency to furnish men. These measures, before the pestilence had so widely extended itself, would in a quarter of an hour have produced a thousand armed men. Ric ordered also the alarm to be beaten in the New Tower, and taking advantage of a favourable moment, when the enemy were driven back by the bayonet from the Convent del Sepulcro, he sent the public crier through the streets to proclaim this success, and summon the people by sound of trumpet to complete the victory. But disease had subdued them; of the surviving population, the few who were not suffering under the disorder were attending their sick or dying friends, and neither hope nor despair could call them out, ... hope, indeed, they had none, and the dreadful duty in which they were engaged rendered them insensible to all evils but those before their eyes. San Marc was joined by only seventeen men; ill tidings came upon him from every quarter; one commander complained that he was cut off at his station, another that he was on the point of being so, a third that he was undermined, ... from every quarter they called for troops and ♦Ric, 218, 9.♦ labourers and ammunition, at a time when all were wanting.

♦D. P. Maria Ric goes out to treat with M. Lasnes.♦

Thus situated, the Junta ordered the almoners of the different parishes to inform their parishioners of the state of the city, and report the opinion which they should form in consequence. Two-thirds of the city had been destroyed; thirty thousand of the inhabitants had perished, and from three to four hundred persons were daily dying of the pestilence. Under such circumstances the Junta protested that they had fulfilled their oath of fidelity, for Zaragoza was destroyed; and they dispatched a flag of truce to the French commander, requesting a suspension of hostilities for four-and-twenty hours, that they might in that time negotiate for a capitulation. A French officer came with the reply, requiring the Junta to wait upon Marshal Lasnes within two hours, and declaring that after that time was expired he would not listen to any terms. Ric instantly summoned the Junta, and as they could not all be immediately collected, he proceeded with some of them toward Marshal Lasnes, leaving some to acquaint the others with the result of the flag of truce, and to act as circumstances might require. They took a trumpeter with them to announce a parley, because the firing was still continued on both sides; but, notwithstanding this, the Spanish deputies were fired at from one of the enemy’s batteries. Ric protested against this violation of the laws of war, and refused to proceed till he was assured that it should not be repeated. An aide-de-camp of the French general had just before arrived, with instructions that the Junta should repair to the Casa Blanca, not to the suburbs, as had been first appointed; this officer went for an escort of infantry, and conducted Ric and his colleagues to the general’s presence. Lasnes received them with an insolent indifference, while his despite for the brave resistance which he had found betrayed itself in marks of affected contempt. He took some turns about the room, then addressing himself to Ric, began to inveigh against the Zaragozans for not believing him when he said that resistance was in vain, ... for which, he said, they deserved little consideration from his hands. He reproached the Junta also. Ric interrupted him. The Junta, he said, had commenced their sittings on the yesterday, and therefore could not be responsible for any thing before that time. The Marshal himself must feel, that if they had surrendered without having ascertained the absolute necessity of surrendering, they would have failed in their duty. When they were informed of the actual state of affairs, they had considered of a capitulation, and addressed a letter, proposing measures which he himself had suggested in the summons to which he now alluded. This had offended him, and he did not condescend to notice their second letter in explanation of the first. They had then dispatched a third flag, requesting a suspension of four-and-twenty hours, because they were accountable to the people, and that time was necessary for ascertaining the public will. Zaragoza, which had so nobly distinguished itself by the manner of its resistance, must also distinguish itself in the manner of capitulating, when capitulation was become inevitable. “Acting upon these principles,” said Ric, “it is my duty to declare that I bring neither powers nor instructions, neither do I know the will of the people; but I believe they ♦Ric, 229–231.♦ will accept a capitulation, provided it be reasonable, and becoming the heroism with which Zaragoza has defended itself.”

♦Capitulation.♦

The manner and the manliness of this declaration were not lost even upon Lasnes: in spite of himself he felt the superiority of the men who stood before him, and, abstaining from farther insults, he said, that the women and children should be safe, and that the negotiation was concluded. Ric replied, it was not yet begun; for this would be surrendering at discretion, and Zaragoza had no such thought. If the Marshal insisted upon this, he might renew his attacks on the city, “And I and my companions,” said the noble Aragoneze, “will return there, and continue to defend ourselves; we have yet arms and ammunition, and daggers: war is never without its chances; and if we are driven to despair, it yet remains to be seen who are to be victorious.” This answer did not appear to irritate the French general; he knew, indeed, that though farther resistance could not possibly save Zaragoza, every inch which he had to win must be dearly purchased, and, for the honour of France, the sooner the siege was concluded the better; ... it had already lasted too long. There was another reason, too, why he did not refuse to grant terms, ... it would be in his power to break them. He called for his secretary, and dictated the preamble of the capitulation and some of the articles. The first stipulated that the garrison should surrender prisoners. Ric proposed that they should march out, as became them, with the honours of war; Lasnes would not consent to make any alteration in the words of the article, but he promised that those honours should be allowed them, and that the officers should retain their baggage, and the men their knapsacks. Ric then required that Palafox might be at liberty to go whithersoever he pleased, with all his staff. It was replied, that an individual could never be the subject of capitulation; but Marshal Lasnes pledged his word of honour that Palafox should go to any place he pleased; and he specified Mallen or Toledo. Those places, Ric replied, would not suit him, because they were occupied by French troops, and it was understood that he thought of going to Majorca. Lasnes then gave his word of honour that he might go to any place which he thought best. It was demanded that all persons, not included in the garrison, who wished to leave Zaragoza, in order to avoid the contagion, should be allowed passports. Lasnes replied, all who wished it might go out, ... he pledged his word to this; ♦Ric, 231, 2.♦ but it was not necessary, he said, to insert an article upon this head, and he was desirous of terminating the capitulation.

♦Farther conditions asked, and refused.♦

While copies of the capitulation were drawing out, the French general produced a plan of the city, and laid his finger upon the part which was that night to have been blown up, telling Ric that 44,000 lbs. of powder were already lodged for the explosion, and that this would have been followed by a cannonade from seventy pieces of artillery, and a bombardment from thirty mortars, which they were at that time mounting in the suburbs. The duplicates being signed, Ric and his companions returned to lay the terms before the other members of the Junta; and they, who had ascertained the opinion of their fellow-citizens, accepted, ratified, and signed the act. Some farther stipulations, however, they still thought desirable; they wished it to be stated in the articles, that the garrison were to march out with the honours of war; for, as only the written capitulation would appear in the gazettes, if this were not expressed it would not be understood. They required also, that the peasants who had been formed into temporary corps should not be prisoners of war, urging, that they ought not to be considered as regular soldiers, and representing the injury which it would be to agriculture if they were marched away. And at the petition of the clergy, they requested that an article might be added, securing to them the punctual payment of their revenues from the funds assigned by the government for that purpose. With these proposals Ric returned to Marshal Lasnes; the two former were in every respect unexceptionable; the last was the only one upon which any demur might have been looked for. The French commander, however, broke into a fit of rage, snatched the paper out of Ric’s hand, and threw it into the fire. One of his generals, sensible of the indecency of this ♦Ric, 232–4.♦ conduct, rescued it from the flames; and Ric, unable to obtain more, received a ratified copy of the capitulation, and returned to the city.

The French, by their own account, threw above 17,000 bombs during the siege, and expended near an hundred and sixty thousand weight of powder. More than 30,000 men, and 500 officers, the flower of the Spanish armies, lay buried beneath the ruins of Zaragoza; and this is far from the amount of lives which were sacrificed in this memorable and most virtuous defence, the number of women and children who perished by the bombardment, by the mines, by famine and pestilence, remaining untold. The loss of the besiegers was carefully concealed; it was sufficient to cripple their army; the Paris papers declared, that one part was to march against Lerida, another against Valencia, and neither of these movements could be effected.

♦Conduct of the French.♦

On the evening of the capitulation the French troops entered. They began immediately to pillage. General Laval was appointed governor. He ordered all the clergy of the city to go out and compliment Marshal Lasnes; ... the yoke was upon their necks; they went forth to appear at this ceremony, like prisoners in a Roman triumph, and as they went, the French soldiers were permitted to rob them of their apparel in the streets. Laval, when complaint was made to him of such outrages, observed, that his troops had to indemnify themselves for the plunder which they looked upon as certain, and which ♦Ric, 235.♦ they would have had in another day, if the capitulation had not disappointed them.

♦Treatment of the prisoners.♦

When the French entered the city six thousand bodies were lying in the streets and trenches, or piled up in heaps before the churches. The people, still unsubdued in spirit, were with difficulty restrained from declaring that the capitulation was concluded without their consent, and rushing upon the invaders with the determination of taking vengeance and dying in the act. The armed peasants, instead of delivering up the weapons which they were no longer permitted to use, broke them in pieces with generous indignation. General O’Neille died before the surrender; St. Marc was one of the many hundreds whom the pestilence carried off within a few days after it. P. Basilio escaped from the danger of the war and of the contagion. He was a man of exemplary life and great attainments; and having been tutor to Palafox, and fought by his side in both sieges, remained now at his bedside, to wait upon him in his illness, and administer, if need should be, the last offices of religion to his heroic and beloved pupil. There the French found him, as they had ever found him during the siege, at the post of duty; and they put him to death for having served his country with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength. P. Santiago Sass suffered a like martyrdom. The officers received orders to come out of the city, on pain of being shot if they remained ♦Feb. 22.♦ there after four-and-twenty hours. Immediately upon forming without the town for their march, they were, in contempt of the capitulation, plundered of every thing, stripped of the devices of their different ranks, and pushed in among the common soldiers as leaders of insurgents. It was affirmed in the French bulletin that 17,000 men laid down their arms: there were not more than four-and-twenty hundred capable of bearing them; the rest were in the hospitals, and this, with five-and-twenty hundred taken in the suburbs and during the siege, was the number which was marched off for France. Two hundred and seventy of these men, who from fatigue and weakness could not keep up the pace which their ferocious guard required, were butchered and left on the road, where their companions in the next division might march over their bodies. Augustina Zaragoza was among the prisoners. She had distinguished herself in this siege as much as in the former. At the commencement she took her former station at the Portillo, by the same gun which she had served so well; “See, general,” said she, with a cheerful countenance, pointing to the gun when Palafox visited that quarter, “I am again with my old friend.” Her husband was severely wounded, and she pointed the cannon at the enemy, while he lay bleeding among his companions by her side. Frequently she was at the head of an assaulting party, sword or knife in hand, with her cloak wrapt round her, cheering the soldiers, and encouraging them by her example; constantly exposed as she was, she escaped without a wound: yet once she was thrown into a ditch, and nearly suffocated by the dead and dying who covered her. At the close of the siege she was too well known by the French to escape notice, and they made her prisoner. Fortunately, as it proved, she had at that time taken the contagion, and was removed to the hospital, where, as she was supposed to be dying, little care was taken to secure her. Feeling herself better, she availed herself of this, and effected her escape. Another heroine, whose name was Manuella Sanchez, was shot through the heart. Donna Benita, a lady of distinction, who headed one of the female corps which had been formed to carry provisions, bear away the wounded, and fight in the streets, escaped the hourly dangers to which she exposed herself, only to die of grief upon hearing that her daughter had been killed. During the siege six hundred women and children perished, not by the bombardment and the mines, but in action, by the sword, or bayonet or bullet.

♦Treatment of Palafox.♦

Marshal Lasnes had pledged his word of honour that Palafox should be at liberty to go wherever he would, as soon as he should be able to travel; in contempt of that pledge, he was immediately made prisoner, surrounded entirely by French, and left even in want of necessary food. Ric, who was ever ready to exert himself when any duty was to be performed, remonstrated against this treatment both verbally and in writing. He could obtain little immediate ♦He is compelled by threats of death to sign orders for delivering up other fortresses.♦ relief, and no redress. Arrangements were concerted for his escape, and so well laid, that there would have been every prospect of success, if he had been sufficiently recovered to make the attempt. They were not, however, altogether fruitless; for M. Lasnes having extorted from him, by threats of immediate death if he refused, orders to the governors of Jaca, Benasque, Monzon, and Mequinenza, to deliver up those places to the French, he found means to advise his brother, the Marques de Lazan, of the iniquitous proceeding, and to direct that no obedience should be given to orders so obtained. Unfortunately Jaca and Monzon had been entrusted to commanders who waited only for an opportunity of betraying their charge, and they opened the gates to the enemy. Before Palafox had recovered he was hurried away into France, a country from which and to which, while it was under the iron yoke of Buonaparte, no prisoner returned. On the way he was treated with insolence and barbarity, and robbed even to his very shirt. Buonaparte, who, feeling no virtue in himself, acknowledged none in others, had already reproached him as a coward and a runaway in the field; he now, with contradictory calumny, reviled him for having defended Zaragoza against the will of the inhabitants. “The people,” it was said in the French papers, “held him in such abhorrence, that it was necessary to station a guard before his door, for otherwise he would have been stoned. An idea of the detestation in which he and the monks of his party were held could only be formed by remembering the hatred with which those men were regarded in France, who governed by terror and the guillotine.” Yet while they thus asserted at one time that Palafox defended the city against the will of the people, at another they affirmed that the Spanish troops would have surrendered long before, being perfectly sensible that resistance was unavailing after the French had entered the city, but it did not depend upon them, ... they were obliged to submit to the wills of the meanest of the inhabitants. Any one who should have expressed a wish to capitulate would have been punished with death: such a thought could not be uttered till two-thirds of the city were lying in ruins, and 20,000 of its defenders destroyed by disease.... No higher eulogy could be pronounced upon Zaragoza than was comprised in the very calumnies of its unworthy conqueror.

♦Demands of the French.♦

Before the main body of the French made their entry they demanded of Ric 50,000 pair of shoes, 8000 pair of boots, and 1200 shirts, with medicines and every requisite for an hospital. Several of the officers demanded for themselves double equipage and linen, curtains, pens, paper, and whatever they wanted, insisting that plenty of every thing should be supplied them, and the best of its kind, at the expense of the city. A service of china was required for Junot; and this merciless oppressor, who had escaped the proper punishment of his crimes in Portugal, insisted that a tennis-court should be fitted up for his amusement, in a city of which two-thirds were then lying in ruins, beneath which so large a proportion of the inhabitants lay buried! Ric resisted demands which it was impossible for the city to supply. The French generals, provoked at his refusal to engage for the maintenance of their household, threatened to send in a squadron of hussars. He replied, that well they might, since the gates of the city were demolished and in their power, but that from that moment they would not advance a foot of ground till they had moistened it with French blood. Another member of the Junta, who had less courage, undertook that these ruffians should be satisfied as far as was possible. Ric, who was too true a Spaniard to live under the government of the Intruder, ♦Ric, 245–9.♦ renounced the high office which he held, and, not being considered a prisoner, obtained his liberty.

♦Lasnes makes his entrance.♦

Lasnes made his entrance on Sunday the 5th of March; his approach was announced by the discharge of 200 cannon, and he proceeded in triumph through that part of the city which remained standing, to the Church of the Pillar. The wretched inhabitants had been compelled to adorn the streets with such hangings as could be found, and to witness the pomp of festive triumph, and hear the sounds of joy and exultation. ♦Baseness of the suffragan bishop.♦ The suffragan bishop of the diocese, a traitor who had fled from the town when it took arms, and now returned thither to act as the instrument of the oppressors, met Lasnes at the great door of the church, and conducted him in procession, with the crucifix and the banner, to a throne prepared before the altar, and near the famous idol, which had escaped destruction. Then the wretch addressed a sermon to his countrymen upon the horrors of war! “They had seen,” he said, “in their unhappy city, the streets and market-places strewn with dead, parents expiring and leaving their children helpless and unprotected, babes sucking at the dry breast of the famished mother, palaces in ruins, houses in flames, dead bodies heaped at the doors of the churches, and hurried into common graves without any religious ceremony. And what had been the cause of all this ruin? I repeat it,” said the villanous time-server, “I shall always repeat it, your sins and your seditious spirit, your forgetfulness of the principles of the gospel. These horrors have ceased: and to whom are you indebted for this unexpected happiness? To God in the first place, who raises and destroys monarchies according to his will; after God, to the Virgin of the Pillar, who interceded for us; and in the next place to the generous heart of the great Napoleon, the man who is the messenger of God upon earth to execute his divine decrees, and who is sent to punish us for our sins. Nothing can equal his power except his clemency and his goodness! He has granted us the inestimable favour of peace; oh that, at the expense of my tears and my blood, I could render it eternal! It is fitting, O my God, that for this great and unexpected mercy, this signal mercy, we should all exclaim, Te Deum Laudamus! We praise thee, O God!” Such were the blasphemies which this hoary traitor uttered over the ruins of his heroic city! It is not possible to record them without feeling a wish, that some one of the noble-hearted Zaragozans, who at that hour of bitterness were wishing themselves in the grave, had smitten him upon the spot in the name of his religion and his country.

♦Language of the French.♦

The oath of obedience and allegiance was then administered to those persons who either retained or accepted office under the Intruder’s government. A superb entertainment followed, at which Lasnes and his chief officers sate down to a table of four hundred covers, and at every health which was drunk to the family of Buonaparte the cannons were discharged. The transactions of the day furnished a fine topic for the journalists at Paris. “All the people,” they said, “manifested their joy at so sudden and happy a change in acclamations of ‘long live the Emperor!’ they were edified by the behaviour of their conquerors during the religious ceremony; that ceremony had melted the most obdurate hearts, the hatred of the French was eradicated from all breasts, and Aragon would soon become one of the most submissive provinces in Spain!” At the time when these falsehoods were circulated in France, Junot issued a proclamation, declaring, that every Aragoneze found in arms should be punished with death. Upon this the Supreme Junta addressed an order to their generals, requiring them to apprise the French commanders to whom they might be opposed, that every Spaniard who was capable of carrying arms was a soldier, so their duty required them to be, and ♦Decree of the Central Junta.♦ such the Supreme Junta declared them: “This,” they said, “was not a war of armies against armies, as in other cases, but of an army against a whole nation, resisting the yoke which a tyrant and usurper sought to force upon them; every individual, therefore, of that nation was under the protection of the laws of war, and the general who should violate those laws was not a soldier, but a ruffian, who would provoke the indignation of Heaven, and the vengeance of man. The Junta well knew,” they said, “that the French, when they were victorious, ridiculed principles which the observance and respect of all nations had consecrated, and that they did this with an effrontery and insolence equal to the affectation with which they appealed to them when they were vanquished. The Spaniards were, however, in a condition to enforce that justice which they demanded. Three Frenchmen should suffer for every Spaniard, be he peasant or soldier, who might be put to death. Europe would hear with admiration as well as horror, that a magnanimous nation, which had begun its struggle by making 30,000 prisoners, was forced, in opposition to its natural character, to decimate those prisoners without distinction, from the first general to the meanest in the ranks. But it was the chiefs of their own nation who condemned these unfortunate wretches, and who, by imposing upon Spain the dreadful necessity of retaliation, signed the death of their own countrymen when they murdered a Spaniard.”

♦Address to the nation.♦

The Junta pronounced the funeral oration of Zaragoza, in an address to the people. “Spaniards,” said they, “the only boon which Zaragoza begged of our unfortunate monarch at Vittoria was, that she might be the first city to sacrifice herself in his defence. That sacrifice has been consummated. More than two months the murderous siege continued; almost all the houses were destroyed, those which were still standing had been undermined; provisions were nearly exhausted, ammunition all consumed; 16,000 sick were struggling with a mortal contagion, which every day hurried hundreds to the grave; the garrison was reduced to less than a sixth part; the general dying of the pestilence; O’Neille, the second in command, dead; St. Marc, upon whom the command then devolved, prostrated by the fever: so much was required, Spaniards, to make Zaragoza yield to the rigour of fate, and suffer herself to be occupied by the enemy. The surrender was made upon such terms as the French have granted to other towns, and those terms have been observed as usual by the perfidious enemy. Thus only were they able to take possession of those glorious precincts, filled only with demolished houses and temples, and peopled only with the dead and the dying; where every street, every ruin, every wall, every stone, seemed mutely to say to the beholder, Go, tell my king, that Zaragoza, faithful to her word, hath joyfully sacrificed herself to maintain her truth.

“A series of events, as mournful as they are notorious, frustrated all the efforts which were made to relieve the city; but the imagination of all good men accompanied her defenders in their dangers, was agitated with them in their battles, sympathised in their privations and efforts, and followed them through all the dreadful vicissitudes of their fortune; and when strength failed them at last through a continued resistance, which they had prolonged almost beyond belief, in the first moment of grief it seemed as if the light of liberty had been at once extinguished, and the column of independence overthrown. But, Spaniards, Zaragoza still survives for imitation and example! still survives in the public spirit which, from her heroic exertions, is for ever imbibing lessons of courage and of constancy. For where is the Spaniard, priding himself upon that name, who would be less than the Zaragozans, and not seal the liberty of his country, which he has proclaimed, and the faith to his king, which he has promised, at the cost of the same perils and the same labours? Let the base, the selfish, and the cowardly be dismayed by them; not the other towns of Aragon, who are ready to imitate and to recover their capital; not the firm and faithful patriots, who see in that illustrious city a model to imitate, vengeance to be exacted, and the only path of conquest. Forty thousand Frenchmen, who have perished before the mud walls of Zaragoza, cause France to mourn the barren and ephemeral triumph which she has obtained, and evince to Spain, that three cities of equal resolution will save their country, and baffle the tyrant. Valour springs from valour; and when the unhappy who have suffered, and the victims who have died there, shall learn that their fellow-citizens, following them in the paths of glory, have surpassed them in fortune, they will bless their destiny, however rigorous it has been, and rejoice in the contemplation of our triumphs.

“Time passes away, and days will come when these dreadful convulsions, with which the genius of iniquity is now afflicting the earth, will have subsided. The friends of virtue and patriotism will come to the banks of the Ebro to visit those majestic ruins, and beholding them with admiration and with envy, Here, they will say, stood that city which in modern ages realised, or, more truly, surpassed those ancient prodigies of devotement and constancy, which are scarcely credited in history! Without a regiment, without other defence than a weak wall, without other resources than its courage, it first dared to provoke the fury of the tyrant: twice it withstood the force of his victorious legions. The subjection of this open and defenceless town cost France more blood, more tears, more slaughter, than the conquest of whole kingdoms: nor was it French valour that subdued it; a deadly and general pestilence prostrated the strength of its defenders, and the enemy, when they entered, triumphed over a few sick and dying men, but they did not subdue citizens, nor conquer soldiers.”

♦Honours decreed to the inhabitants.♦

This address was followed by a decree, declaring “that Zaragoza, its inhabitants, and garrison, had deserved well of their country, in an eminent and heroic degree: That whenever Palafox should be restored to liberty, to effect which no efforts on the part of the government should be wanting, the Junta, in the name of the nation, would confer upon him that reward which might seem most worthy of his unconquerable constancy and ardent patriotism: That every officer employed in the siege should be promoted one step, and every private soldier enjoy the rank and the pay of serjeant: That all the defenders of Zaragoza, and its inhabitants, and their heirs, should enjoy personal nobility: That pensions, conformable to their rank and circumstances, should be granted to the widows and orphans of all who had perished there: That the having been within the walls during the siege should be considered as a claim in future pretensions: That Zaragoza should be exempt from all contributions for ten years, from the time when peace should be established; and that at that time the rebuilding of the public edifices, with all possible magnificence, should be begun at the expense of the state, and a monument erected in the great square of the city, in perpetual memory of the valour of the inhabitants and their glorious defence: That in all the cities of the kingdom an inscription should forthwith be set up, relating the most heroic circumstances of the two sieges, and a medal be struck in its honour, as a testimony of national gratitude. Finally, the Junta promised the same honours and privileges to every city which should resist a like siege with like constancy, and proposed rewards for the best poem and best discourse upon this memorable event; the object being not only to hold up the virtues of the Zaragozans to the present generation and to posterity, but to inflame the hearts of the Spaniards with the same ardent patriotism, the same love of freedom, and the same abhorrence of tyranny.”

♦Falsehoods of the French government.♦

The capitulation was published by the Intruder’s ministers in the Madrid gazette, and inserted in a French journal printed in the same capital. That journal was suppressed by order of Buonaparte as soon as he was informed of this; and it was stated in his bulletin that Lasnes would allow no capitulation, and had only published certain provisions as his[4] pleasure; and that the French possessed themselves of the whole town by force. Had the facts been thus, it would not have derogated in the slightest degree from the heroism of a people who had discharged their duty to the uttermost. But the falsehood is worthy of notice, not only as showing Napoleon Buonaparte’s systematic disregard of truth, but as exemplifying also that want of generosity which peculiarly characterized him, and made him incapable of doing justice in any one instance to the principles, virtues, talents, or even courage, of those by whom he was opposed.