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HISTORY
OF THE
WAR IN THE PENINSULA

AND IN THE

SOUTH OF FRANCE,

FROM THE YEAR 1807 TO THE YEAR 1814.

BY

W. F. P. NAPIER, C. B.

LT. COLONEL H. P. FORTY-THIRD REGIMENT.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET.

MDCCCXXVIII.

TO

FIELD-MARSHAL

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

This History I dedicate to your Grace, because I have served long enough under your command to feel, why the Soldiers of the Tenth Legion were attached to Cæsar.

W. F. P. NAPIER.

PREFACE.

For six years the Peninsula was devastated by the war of independence. The blood of France, Germany, England, Portugal, and Spain, was shed in the contest; and in each of those countries, authors, desirous of recording the sufferings, or celebrating the valour of their countrymen, have written largely touching that fierce struggle. It may therefore happen that some will demand, why I should again relate “a thrice-told tale?” I answer, that two men observing the same object, will describe it diversely, following the point of view from which either beholds it. That which in the eyes of one is a fair prospect, to the other shall appear a barren waste, and yet neither may see aright! Wherefore, truth being the legitimate object of history, I hold it better that she should be sought for by many than by few, lest, for want of seekers, amongst the mists of prejudice and the false lights of interest, she be lost altogether.

That much injustice has been done, and much justice left undone, by those authors who have hitherto written concerning this war, I can assert from personal knowledge of the facts. That I have been able to remedy this without falling into similar errors, is more than I will venture to assume; but I have endeavoured to render as impartial an account of the campaigns in the Peninsula as the feelings which must warp the judgment of a contemporary historian will permit.

I was an eye-witness to many of the transactions that I relate; and a wide acquaintance with military men has enabled me to consult distinguished officers, both French and English, and to correct my own recollections and opinions by their superior knowledge. Thus assisted, I was encouraged to undertake the work, and I offer it to the world with the less fear because it contains original documents, which will suffice to give it interest, although it should have no other merit. Many of those documents I owe to the liberality of marshal Soult, who, disdaining national prejudices, with the confidence of a great mind, placed them at my disposal, without even a remark to check the freedom of my pen. I take this opportunity to declare that respect which I believe every British officer who has had the honour to serve against him feels for his military talents. By those talents the French cause in Spain was long upheld, and after the battle of Salamanca, if his counsel had been followed by the intrusive monarch, the fate of the war might have been changed.

Military operations are so dependent upon accidental circumstances, that to justify censure it should always be shown that an unsuccessful general has violated the received maxims and established principles of war. By that rule I have been guided; but to preserve the narratives unbroken, my own observations are placed at the end of certain transactions of magnitude, where their real source being known they will pass for as much as they are worth, and no more: when they are not well supported by argument, I freely surrender them to the judgment of abler men.

Of those transactions which, commencing with “the secret treaty of Fontainebleau” ended with “the Assembly of Notables” at Bayonne, little is known except through the exculpatory and contradictory publications of men interested to conceal the truth; and to me it appears that the passions of the present generation must subside, and the ultimate fate of Spain be known, before that part of the subject can be justly and usefully handled. I have, therefore, related no more of those political affairs than would suffice to introduce the military events that followed, neither have I treated largely of the disjointed and ineffectual operations of the native armies; for I cared not to swell my work with apocryphal matter, and neglected the thousand narrow winding currents of Spanish warfare; to follow that mighty stream of battle which, bearing the glory of England in its course, burst the barriers of the Pyrenees, and left deep traces of its fury in the soil of France.

The Spaniards have boldly asserted, and the world has believed, that the deliverance of the Peninsula was the work of their hands: this assertion so contrary to the truth I combat. It is unjust to the fame of the British general, injurious to the glory of the British arms. Military virtue is not the growth of a day, nor is there any nation so rich and populous, that, despising it, can rest secure. The imbecility of Charles IV., the vileness of Ferdinand, and the corruption of Godoy, were undoubtedly the proximate causes of the calamities that overwhelmed Spain; but the primary cause, that which belongs to history, was the despotism arising from the union of a superstitious court and a sanguinary priesthood, which, repressing knowledge and contracting the public mind, sapped the foundation of all military as well as civil virtues, and prepared the way for invasion. No foreign potentate would have attempted to steal into the fortresses of a great kingdom, if the prying eyes, and the thousand clamorous tongues belonging to a free press, were ready to expose his projects, and a well-disciplined army present to avenge the insult; but Spain being destitute of both, was first circumvented by the wiles, and then ravaged by the arms, of Napoleon. She was deceived and fettered because the public voice was stifled, but she was scourged and torn because her military institutions were decayed.

From the moment that an English force took the field, the Spaniards ceased to act as principals in a contest carried on in the heart of their country, and involving their existence as an independent nation; they were self-sufficient, and their pride was wounded by insult; they were superstitious, and their religious feelings were roused to fanatic fury by an all-powerful clergy, who feared to lose their own rich endowments; but after the first burst of indignation the cause of independence created little enthusiasm. Horrible barbarities were exercised on those French soldiers that sickness or the fortune of war exposed to the rage of the invaded, and a dreadful spirit of personal hatred was kept alive by the exactions and severe retaliations of the invaders, but no great and general exertion to drive the latter from the soil was made, or at least none was sustained with steadfast courage in the field. Manifestoes, decrees, and lofty boasts, like a cloud of canvas covering a rotten hull, made a gallant appearance, but real strength and firmness were nowhere to be found.

The Spanish insurrection presented indeed a strange spectacle; patriotism was seen supporting a vile system of government; a popular assembly working for the restoration of a despotic monarch; the higher classes seeking a foreign master; the lower armed in the cause of bigotry and misrule. The upstart leaders secretly abhorring freedom, yet governing in her name, trembled at the democratic activity they had themselves excited. They called forth all the bad passions of the multitude, but repressed the patriotism that would regenerate as well as save. The country suffered the evils, without enjoying the benefits, of a revolution! Tumults and assassinations terrified and disgusted the sensible part of the community; a corrupt administration of the resources extinguished patriotism, and neglect ruined the armies: the peasant-soldier, usually flying at the first onset, threw away his arms and returned to his home, or, attracted by the license of the partidas, joined the banners of men who, for the most part originally robbers, were as oppressive to the people as the enemy. The guerilla chiefs would, in their turn, have been quickly exterminated, but that the French, pressed by lord Wellington’s battalions, were obliged to keep in large masses. This was the secret of Spanish constancy! Copious supplies from England, and the valour of the Anglo-Portuguese troops, these were the supports of the war! and it was the gigantic vigour with which the duke of Wellington resisted the fierceness of France, and sustained the weakness of three inefficient cabinets, that delivered the Peninsula. Faults he committed, and who in war has not? but his reputation stands upon a sure foundation, a simple majestic structure, that envy cannot undermine, nor the meretricious ornaments of party panegyric deform. The exploits of his army were great in themselves, and great in their consequences: abounding with signal examples of heroic courage and devoted zeal, they should neither be disfigured nor forgotten, being worthy of more fame than the world has yet accorded them—worthy also of a better historian.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

APPENDIX.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

NOTICE.

Of the manuscript authorities consulted for this history, those marked with the letter S. the author owes to the kindness of marshal Soult.

For the notes dictated by Napoleon, and the plans of campaign sketched out by king Joseph, he is indebted to his grace the duke of Wellington.

The returns of the French army were extracted from the original half monthly statements presented by marshal Berthier to the emperor Napoleon.

Of the other authorities it is unnecessary to say more than that the author had access to the original papers, with the exception of Dupont’s memoir, of which a copy only was obtained.

CORRIGENDA.

HISTORY

OF THE

PENINSULAR WAR.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

Introduction.

The hostility of the European aristocracy caused the enthusiasm of republican France to take a military direction, and forced that powerful nation into a course of policy which, however outrageous it might appear, was in reality one of necessity. Up to the treaty of Tilsit, the wars of France were essentially defensive; for the bloody contest that wasted the continent so many years was not a struggle for pre-eminence between ambitious powers, not a dispute for some accession of territory, nor for the political ascendancy of one or other nation, but a deadly conflict to determine whether aristocracy or democracy should predominate; whether equality or privilege should henceforth be the principle of European governments.

The French revolution was pushed into existence before the hour of its natural birth. The power of the aristocratic principle was too vigorous and too much identified with that of the monarchical principle, to be successfully resisted by a virtuous democratic effort, much less could it be overthrown by a democracy rioting in innocent blood, and menacing destruction to political and religious establishments, the growth of centuries, somewhat decayed indeed, yet scarcely showing their grey hairs. The first military events of the revolution, the disaffection of Toulon and Lyons, the civil war of La Vendee, the feeble, although successful resistance made to the duke of Brunswick’s invasion, and the frequent and violent change of rulers whose fall none regretted, were all proofs that the French revolution, intrinsically too feeble to sustain the physical and moral force pressing it down, was fast sinking when the wonderful genius of Buonaparte, baffling all reasonable calculation, raised and fixed it on the basis of victory, the only one capable of supporting the crude production.

Sensible, however, that the cause he upheld was not sufficiently in unison with the feelings of the age, Napoleon’s first care was to disarm or neutralize monarchical and sacerdotal enmity, by restoring a church establishment, and by becoming a monarch himself. Once a sovereign, his vigorous character, his pursuits, his talents, and the critical nature of the times, inevitably rendered him a despotic one; yet while he sacrificed political liberty, which to the great bulk of mankind has never been more than a pleasing sound, he cherished with the utmost care political equality, a sensible good, that produces increasing satisfaction as it descends in the scale of society; but this, the real principle of his government, the secret of his popularity, made him the people’s monarch, not the sovereign of the aristocracy; hence, Mr. Pitt called him, “the child and the champion of democracy,” a truth as evident as that Mr. Pitt and his successors were the children and the champions of aristocracy; hence also the privileged classes of Europe consistently transferred their natural and implacable hatred of the French revolution to his person, for they saw that in him innovation had found a protector; that he alone had given pre-eminence to a system so hateful to them, and that he really was what he called himself, “the State.”

The treaty of Tilsit, therefore, although it placed Napoleon in a commanding situation with regard to the potentates of Europe, unmasked the real nature of the war, and brought him and England, the respective champions of equality and privilege, into more direct contact; peace could not be between them while both were strong, and all that the French emperor had hitherto gained only enabled him to choose his future field of battle.

When the catastrophe of Trafalgar forbade him to think of invading England, his fertile genius conceived the plan of sapping her naval and commercial strength, by depriving her of the continental market for her manufactured goods; he prohibited the reception of English wares in any part of the continent, and he exacted from allies and dependants the most rigid compliance with his orders; but this “continental system,” as it was called, became inoperative when French troops were not present to enforce his commands. It was thus in Portugal, where British influence was really paramount, although the terror inspired by the French arms seemed at times to render this doubtful; fear however is momentary, self-interest lasting, and Portugal was but an unguarded province of England.

From Portugal and Gibraltar, English goods freely passed into Spain; and to check this traffic by force was not easy, and otherwise impossible. Spain stood nearly in the same position with regard to France that Portugal did to England; a warm feeling of friendship Monsieur de Champagny’s Report, 21st Oct. 1807. for the enemy of Great Britain was the natural consequence of the unjust seizure of the Spanish frigates in a time of peace; but although this rendered the French cause popular in Spain, and that the court of Madrid was from weakness subservient to the French Emperor, nothing could induce the people to refrain from a profitable contraband trade; they would not pay that respect to the wishes of a foreign power, which they refused to the regulations of their own government; neither was the aristocratical enmity to Napoleon asleep in Spain. A proclamation issued by the Prince of Peace previous to the battle of Jena, although hastily recalled when the result of that conflict was known, sufficiently indicated the tenure upon which the friendship of the Spanish court was to be held.

Napoleon, in Las Casas, vol. ii. 4th part.

This state of affairs drew the French Emperor’s attention towards the Peninsula; a chain of remarkable circumstances fixed it there, and induced him to remove the reigning family, and to place his brother Joseph on the throne of Spain. He thought that the people of that country, sick of an effete government, would be quiescent under such a change; and although it should prove otherwise, the confidence he reposed in his own fortune, unrivalled talents, and vast power, made him disregard the consequences, while the cravings of his military and political system, the danger to be apprehended from the vicinity of a Bourbon dynasty, and above all the temptations offered by a miraculous folly which outrun even his desires, urged him to a deed, that well accepted by the people of the Peninsula, would have proved beneficial; but being enforced contrary to their wishes, was unhallowed either by justice or benevolence.

In an evil hour, for his own greatness and the happiness of others, he commenced this fatal project; founded in violence, executed with fraud and cruelty, it spread desolation through the fairest portions of the Peninsula; it was calamitous to France and destructive to himself. The conflict between his hardy veterans and the bloody vindictive race he insulted, assumed a character of unmitigated ferocity disgraceful to human nature; for the Spaniards did not fail to defend their just cause with hereditary cruelty, and the French army struck a terrible balance of barbarous actions.

Napoleon observed with surprise the unexpected energy of the people, and bent his whole force to the attainment of his object; while England coming to the assistance of the Peninsula employed all her resources to frustrate his efforts. Thus the two leading nations of the world were brought into contact at a moment when both were disturbed by angry passions, eager for great events, and possessed of surprising power.

The extent and population of the French empire, including the kingdom of Italy, the confederation of the Rhine, the Swiss Cantons, the Duchy of Warsaw, and the dependent states of Holland and Naples, enabled Buonaparte through the medium of the conscription to array an army, in number nearly equal to the great host that followed the Persian of old against Greece; like that multitude also his troops were gathered from many nations, but they were trained in a Roman discipline, and ruled by a Carthaginian genius. The organization[1] of Napoleon’s army was simple, the administration vigorous, the manipulations well contrived. The French officers, accustomed to success, were bold, enterprising, of great reputation, and feared accordingly. By a combination of discipline and moral excitement, admirably adapted to the mixed nature of his troops, the Emperor had created a power that appeared to be resistless, and, in truth, it would have been so, if applied to one great object at a time; but this the ambition of the man, or rather the force of circumstances, would not permit.

Exposé de l’Empire, 1807-8-9-13.
Napoleon’s Memoirs, Las Casas, 7th part.
Lord Collingwood’s letters, vide [Appendix.]

The ships of France were chained up in her harbours, and her naval strength was rebuked, but not destroyed; inexhaustible resources for building vessels, vast marine establishments, a coast line of many thousand miles, and the creative genius of Napoleon were nursing up a navy, formidable as a secondary arm; and the war then pending between the United States and Great Britain promised to nurture its growth, and to increase its efficacy.

Exposé, 1808-9. Napoleon, in Las Casas, vol. ii. 4th part.

Maritime commerce was indeed fainting in France, but her internal and continental traffic was robust; her manufactures were rapidly improving; her debt was small; her financial operations conducted on a prudent plan, and with exact economy. Ibid. 6th part. The supplies were all raised within the year without any very great pressure of taxation, and from a sound metallic currency; thus there seemed to be no reasonable doubt, that any war undertaken by Napoleon might be by him brought to a favourable termination.

On the other hand, England, omnipotent at sea, was little regarded as a military power. Her enormous debt was yearly increasing in an accelerated ratio; and this necessary consequence of anticipating the resources of the country, and dealing in a factitious currency, was fast eating into the vital strength of the state; for although the merchants and great manufacturers were thriving from the accidental circumstances of the times, the labourers were suffering and degenerating in character; pauperism and its sure attendant crime were spreading over the land, and the population was fast splitting into distinct classes,—the one rich and arbitrary, the other poor and discontented: the former composed of those who profited, the latter of those who suffered by the war. Of Ireland it is unnecessary to speak; her wrongs and her misery, peculiar and unparalleled, are too well known, and too little regarded, to call for remark.

This general comparative statement, so favourable to France, would however be a false criterion of the relative strength of the belligerents, with regard to the approaching struggle in the Peninsula. A cause manifestly unjust is a heavy weight upon the operations of a general: it reconciles men to desertion—it sanctifies want of zeal—is a pretext for cowardice—renders hardships more irksome, dangers more obnoxious, and glory less satisfactory to the mind of the soldier. Now the invasion of the Peninsula, whatever might have been its real original, was an act of violence on the part of Napoleon repugnant to the feelings of mankind. The French armies were burthened with a sense of its iniquity, the British troops exhilarated by a contrary sentiment. All the continental nations had smarted under the sword of Napoleon, but, with the exception of Prussia, none were crushed; a common feeling of humiliation, the hope of revenge, and the ready subsidies of England, were bonds of union among their governments stronger than the most solemn treaties. France could only calculate on their fears, England was secure in their self-love.

The hatred to what were called French principles was at this period in full activity. The privileged classes of every country hated Napoleon, because his genius had given stability to the institutions that grew out of the revolution, because his victories had baffled their calculations, and shaken their hold of power. As the chief of revolutionary France he was constrained to continue his career until the final accomplishment of her destiny, and this necessity, overlooked by the great bulk of mankind, afforded plausible ground for imputing insatiable ambition to the French government and to the French nation, of which ample use was made. Rapacity, insolence, injustice, cruelty, even cowardice, were said to be inseparable from the character of a Frenchman; and, as if such vices were nowhere else to be found, it was more than insinuated that all the enemies of France were inherently virtuous and disinterested. Unhappily history is but a record of crimes, and it is not wonderful that the arrogance of men, buoyed up by a spring-tide of military glory, should, as well among allies, as among vanquished enemies, have produced sufficient disgust to ensure a ready belief in any accusation, however false and absurd.

Napoleon was the contriver and the sole support of a political system that required time and victory to consolidate; he was the connecting link between the new interests of mankind and what of the old were left in a state of vigour; he held them together strongly, but he was no favourite with either, and consequently in danger from both. His power, unsanctified by time, depended not less upon delicate management than upon vigorous exercise; he had to fix the foundations of, as well as to defend, an empire, and he may be said to have been rather peremptory than despotic. There were points of administration with which he durst not meddle even wisely, much less arbitrarily; customs, prejudices, and the dregs of the revolutionary licence interfered with his policy, and rendered it complicated and difficult. It was not so with his inveterate adversaries; the delusion of parliamentary representation enabled the English government safely to exercise an unlimited power over the persons and the property of the nation, and through the influence of an active and corrupt press they exercised nearly the same power over the public mind.

The vast commerce of England, penetrating by a thousand channels (open or secret) as it were into every house on the face of the globe, supplied unequalled sources of intelligence. The spirit of traffic, which seldom acknowledges the ties of country, was universally on the side of Great Britain, and those twin curses, paper-money and public credit, so truly described as “strength in the beginning but weakness in the end,” were recklessly used by statesmen whose policy regarded not the interests of posterity. Such were the adventitious causes of England’s power; and her natural, legitimate resources were many and great.

If any credit is to be given to the census, the increasing population of the United Kingdom, amounted at this period to nearly twenty millions: France reckoned but twenty-seven millions when Frederick the Great declared that if he were her king, “not a gun should be fired in Europe without his leave.”

The French army was undoubtedly very formidable from numbers, discipline, skill, and bravery; but contrary to the general opinion, the British army was inferior to it in none of these points save the first, and in discipline it was superior, because a national army will always bear a sterner code than a mixed force will suffer. With the latter, the military not the moral crimes can be punished; men will submit to death for a breach of great regulations which they know by experience to be useful, but the constant restraint of petty though wholesome rules they will escape from by desertion, or resist by mutiny, when the ties of custom and country are removed; for the disgrace of bad conduct attaches not to them, but to the nation under whose colours they serve; great indeed is that genius that can keep men of different nations firm to their colours, and preserve a rigid discipline at the same time. Napoleon’s military system was, from this cause, inferior to the British, which, if it be purely administered, combines the solidity of the Germans with the rapidity of the French, excluding the mechanical dulness of the one, and the dangerous vivacity of the other; yet, before the campaign in the Peninsula had proved its excellence in every branch of war, the English army was absurdly under-rated in foreign countries, and absolutely despised in its own. It was reasonable to suppose that it did not possess that facility of moving in large bodies which long practice had given to the French; but the individual soldier was (and is still) most falsely stigmatized as deficient in intelligence and activity, the officers ridiculed, and the idea that a British could cope with a French army, even for a single campaign, considered chimerical.

The English are a people very subject to receive and to cherish false impressions; proud of their credulity as if it were a virtue, the majority will adopt any fallacy, and cling to it with a tenacity proportioned to its grossness. Thus an ignorant contempt for the British soldiery had been long entertained, before the ill success of the expeditions in 1794 and 1799 appeared to justify the general prejudice. The true cause of those failures was not traced, and the excellent discipline afterwards introduced and perfected by the duke of York was despised. England, both at home and abroad, was, in 1808, scorned as a military power, when she possessed, without a frontier to swallow up large armies in expensive fortresses, at least two hundred thousand[2] of the best equipped and best disciplined soldiers in the universe, together with an immense recruiting establishment, and through the medium of the militia, the power of drawing upon the population without limit. It is true that of this number many were necessarily employed in the defence of the colonies, but enough remained to compose a disposable force greater than that with which Napoleon won the battle of Austerlitz, and double that with which he conquered Italy. In all the materials of war, the superior ingenuity and skill of the English mechanics were visible, and that intellectual power that distinguishes Great Britain amongst the nations, in science, arts, and literature, was not wanting to her generals in the hour of danger.

CHAPTER II.

For many years antecedent to the French invasion, the royal family of Spain was distracted with domestic quarrels; the son’s hand was against his mother, the father’s against his son, and the court was a scene of continual broils, under cover of which artful men, as is usual in such cases, pushed their own interest forward, while they seemed to act only for the sake of the party whose cause they espoused. Nellerto.[3] Charles IV. attributed this unhappy state of his house to the intrigues of his sister-in-law, the queen of the Two Sicilies. He himself, a weak and inefficient old man, was governed by his wife, and she again by don Manuel Godoy, of whose person she was enamoured even to folly. Vide Doblado’s Letters. From the rank of a simple gentleman of the Royal Guards, this person had, through her influence, been raised to the highest dignities; and the title of Prince of the Peace was conferred upon a man whose name must be for ever connected with one of the bloodiest wars that fill the page of history.

Ferdinand prince of the Asturias, naturally hated this favourite, and the miserable death of his young wife, his own youth and apparently forlorn condition created such an interest in his favour, that the people partook of his feelings; and the disunion of the royal family extending its effects beyond the precincts of the court, involved the nation in ruin. Those who know how a Spaniard hates, will readily comprehend why Godoy, who was really a mild, good-natured man, although a sensual and corrupt one, has been so overloaded with imprecations, as if he, and he alone, had been the cause of the disasters of Spain.

Napoleon in Las Casas.

The canon, Escoiquiz, a daring and subtile politician, appears to have been the chief of Ferdinand’s party; finding the influence of the Prince of the Peace too strong, he looked for support in a powerful quarter; Nellerto.and under his tuition, Ferdinand wrote upon the 11th of October, 1807, to the emperor Napoleon; in this letter he complained of the influence which bad men had obtained over his father, prayed for the interference of the “hero destined by Providence,” so run the text, “to save Europe and to support thrones;” asked an alliance by marriage with the Buonaparte family, and finally desired that his communication might be kept secret from his father, lest it should be taken as a proof of disrespect. To this letter he received no answer, and fresh matter of quarrel being found by his enemies at home, he was placed in arrest, and upon the 29th of October, Charles denounced him to the Emperor as guilty of treason, and of having projected the assassination of his own mother. Napoleon caught eagerly at this pretext for interfering in the domestic policy of Spain, and thus the honour and independence of a great people were placed in jeopardy by the squabbles of two of the most worthless persons in the nation.

Some short time before this, Godoy, either instigated by an ambition to found a dynasty, or fearing that the death of the king would expose him to the vengeance of Ferdinand, had made proposals to the French court to concert a plan for the conquest and division of Portugal, promising the assistance of Spain, on condition that a principality for himself should be set apart from the spoil. At least such is the turn given by Napoleon to this affair; but the article which provided an indemnification for the king of Etruria a minor, who had just been obliged to surrender his Italian dominions to France, renders it very doubtful if the first offer came from Godoy. That, however, is a point of small interest, for Napoleon eagerly adopted the project if he did not propose it; and the advantages were all on his side. Under the pretext of supporting his army in Portugal, he might fill Spain with his troops; the dispute between the father and the son, now referred to his arbitration, placed the golden apples within his reach, and he resolved to gather the fruit if he had not planted the tree.

A secret treaty was immediately concluded at Fontainebleau, between marshal Duroc on the part of France, and Eugenio Izquerdo on the part of Spain. This treaty, together with a convention dependant on it, was signed the 27th, and ratified by Napoleon on the 29th of October; the contracting parties agreeing to the following conditions.

The house of Braganza to be driven forth of Portugal, and that kingdom divided into three portions, of which the province of Entre Minho e Duero and the town of Oporto, forming one, was to be given as an indemnification to the dispossessed king of Etruria, and to be called the kingdom of North Lusitania.

The Alemtejo and the Algarves to be erected into a principality for Godoy, who taking the title of prince of the Algarves, was still to be in some respects dependant upon the Spanish crown.

The central provinces of Estremadura, Beira, and the Tras os Montes, together with the town of Lisbon, to be held in deposit until a general peace, and then to be exchanged under certain conditions for English conquests.

The ultra-marine dominions of the exiled family to be equally divided between the contracting parties, and in three years at the longest, the king of Spain to be gratified with the title of Emperor of the Two Americas. Thus much for the treaty. The terms of the convention were:

That France should employ 25,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry. Spain 24,000 infantry, 30 guns, and 3,000 cavalry.

The French contingent to be joined at Alcantara by the Spanish cavalry, artillery, and one-third of the infantry, and from thence to march at once to Lisbon. Of the remaining Spanish infantry 10,000 were to take possession of the Entre Minho e Duero and Oporto, and 6,000 were to invade Estremadura and the Algarves. In the mean time a reserve of 40,000 men was to be assembled at Bayonne, ready to take the field by the 20th of November, if England should interfere, or the Portuguese people resist.

If the king of Spain or any of his family joined the troops, the chief command was to be vested in the person so joining, but with that exception, the French general was to be obeyed whenever the armies of the two nations came into contact, and during the march through Spain the French soldiers were to be fed by that country, but paid by their own government.

The revenues of the conquered provinces were to be administered by the general actually in possession, and for the benefit of the nation in whose name the province was held.

Although it is evident that this treaty and convention favoured Napoleon’s ulterior operations in Spain, by enabling him to mask his views, and introduce large bodies of men into that country without creating much suspicion of his real intention; it does not follow, as some authors have asserted, that they were contrived by the emperor for the sole purpose of rendering the Spanish royal family odious to the world, and by this far-fetched expedient to prevent other nations from taking an interest in their fate when he should find it convenient to apply the same measure of injustice to his associates that they had accorded to the family of Braganza.

To say nothing of the weakness of such a policy, founded as it must be on the error that governments acknowledge the dictates of justice at the expense of their supposed interests; it must be observed that Portugal was intrinsically a great object. History does not speak of the time when the inhabitants of that country were deficient in spirit; the natural obstacles to an invasion had more than once frustrated the efforts of large armies, and the long line of communication between Bayonne and the Portuguese frontier could only be supported by Spanish co-operation. Add to this, the facility with which England could, and the probability that she would, succour her ancient ally, and the reasonable conclusion is, that Napoleon’s first intentions were in accordance with the literal meaning of the treaty of Fontainebleau, Voice from St. Helena, vol. ii. and that his subsequent proceedings were the result of new projects conceived as the wondrous imbecility of the Spanish Bourbons became manifest.

Again, the convention provided for the organization of a large Spanish force, to be stationed in the north and south of Portugal, that is, in precisely the two places from whence they could most readily march to the assistance of their country, if it was invaded; and in fact the division of the marquis of Solano in the south, and that of general Taranco in the north of Portugal, did afterwards (when the Spanish insurrection broke out) form the strength of the Andalusian and Gallician armies, the former of which gained the victory at Baylen, while the latter contended for it, although ineffectually, at Rio Seco.

The French force destined to invade Portugal was already assembled at Bayonne, under the title of the first army of the Garonne. It was commanded by general Junot, a young man of a bold ambitious disposition, but of greater reputation for military talent than he was able to support. The men were principally conscripts, and ill fitted to endure the hardships which awaited them.

Thiebault, Exp. du Portugal.

At first, by easy marches and in small divisions, Junot led his army through Spain; the inhabitants were by no means friendly to their guests; but whether from any latent fear of what was to follow, or from a dislike of foreign soldiers common to all secluded people, does not clearly appear. When the head of the columns reached Salamanca, Junot halted, intending to complete the organization of his troops in that rich country, and there to await the most favourable moment for penetrating the sterile frontier which guarded his destined prey; but political events marched faster than his calculations, and fresh instructions from the emperor prescribed an immediate advance upon Lisbon. Junot obeyed, and the family of Braganza, at his approach, fled to the Brazils. The series of interesting transactions which attended this invasion will be treated of hereafter; at present I must return to Spain already bending to the first gusts of that hurricane, which was soon to sweep over her with such destructive violence.

Nellerto.

The accusation of treason and intended parricide, preferred by Charles IV. against his son Ferdinand, gave rise to some judicial proceedings which ended in the submission of the latter; and Ferdinand being Historia de la Guerra contra Nap. absolved of the imputed crime, wrote a letter to his father and mother, acknowledging his own faults, but accusing the persons who surrounded him of being the instigators of deeds which he abhorred. The intrigues of his advisers, however, continued, and the plans of Napoleon advanced as a necessary consequence of the divisions in the Spanish court.

By the terms of the convention of Fontainebleau, forty thousand men were to be held in reserve at Bayonne; but a greater number were assembled on different points of the frontier; and in the course of December, two corps had entered the Spanish territory, and were quartered in Vittoria, Miranda, Briviesca, and the neighbourhood. The one, commanded by general Dupont, was called the second army of observation of the “Gironde.” The other, commanded by marshal Moncey, took the title of the army of observation of the “Côte d’Ocean.” Return of the French army.[Appendix.]
Journal of Dupont’s Operations MSS. In the gross they amounted to fifty-three thousand men, of which above forty thousand were fit for duty; and in the course of the month of December, Dupont advanced to Valladolid, while a reinforcement for Junot, four thousand seven hundred in number, took up their quarters at Salamanca.

It thus appeared as if the French troops were quietly following the natural line of communication between France and Portugal; but in reality Dupont’s position cut off the capital from all intercourse with the northern provinces, while Moncey secured the direct road from Bayonne to Madrid. Small divisions Notes of Napoleon. [Appendix, No. 2.] under different pretexts continually reinforced these two bodies, and through the Eastern Pyrenees twelve thousand men, commanded by general Duhesme, penetrated into Catalonia, and established themselves in Barcelona.

In the mean time the dispute between the king and his son, or rather between the Prince of the Peace and the advisers of Ferdinand, was brought to a crisis by insurrections at Aranjuez and Madrid, which took place upon the 17th, 18th, and 19th of March, 1808. The old king, deceived by intrigues, or frightened at the difficulties which surrounded him, had determined, as it is supposed by some, to quit Spain, and, in imitation of his brother of Portugal, to retire from the turmoil of European politics, and take refuge in his American dominions. Certain it is that every thing was prepared for a flight to Seville, when the prince’s grooms commenced a tumult, in which the populace of Aranjuez joined, and were only pacified by the assurance that no journey was in contemplation.

Upon the 18th the people of Madrid, following the example of Aranjuez, sacked the house of the obnoxious favourite, Manuel Godoy. Upon the 19th the riots recommenced in Aranjuez: the Prince of the Peace secreted himself from the fury of the mob; but his retreat being discovered, he was maltreated, and on the point of being killed, when the soldiers of the royal guard rescued him. Upon the 18th Charles IV., terrified by the violent proceedings of his subjects, abdicated. This event was proclaimed at Madrid on the 20th, and Ferdinand was declared king, to the great joy of the nation at large: little did the people know what they rejoiced at, time has since taught them that the fable of the frogs and their monarch had its meaning.

During these transactions, Murat, grand duke of Berg, who had taken the command of all the French troops in Spain, quitted his quarters at Aranda de Duero, passed the Somosierra, and entered Madrid the 23d, with Moncey’s corps and a fine body of cavalry, Dupont at the same time deviating from the road to Portugal, crossed the Duero and occupied Segovia, the Escurial, and Aranjuez.

Ferdinand arrived at Madrid on the 24th, but was not recognised by Murat as king; nevertheless, at the demand of that powerful guest, he surrendered the sword of Francis I., which was delivered with much ceremony to the French general. Charles, who had sent a paper to Murat, declaring that his abdication had been the result of force, wrote also to Napoleon in the same strain; and this state of affairs being unexpected by the emperor, he employed general Savary Napoleon in Las Casas. to conduct his plans, which appear to have been considerably deranged by the vehemence of the people, and the precipitation of Murat in taking possession of the capital.

Before Savary’s arrival, don Carlos the brother of Ferdinand, departed from Madrid hoping to meet the emperor Napoleon, whose presence in that city was confidently expected; and upon the 10th of April, Ferdinand, having first appointed a supreme junta, of which his uncle, don Antonio, was president, and Murat a member, commenced his own remarkable journey to Bayonne, the true causes of which certainly have not yet been developed; and perhaps when they shall be known, some petty personal intrigue may be found to have had a greater share in producing it, than the grand machinations attributed to Napoleon, who could not have anticipated, much less have calculated, a great political measure upon such a surprising example of weakness.

The people everywhere manifested their repugnance to this journey; at Vittoria they cut the traces of Ferdinand’s carriage, and at different times several gallant men offered, at the risk of their lives, to carry him off, in defiance of the French troops quartered along the road. But Ferdinand, unmoved by their entreaties and zeal, and regardless of the warning contained in a letter that he received at this period from Napoleon (who, withholding the title of majesty, sharply reproved him for his past conduct, and scarcely expressed a wish to meet him), continued his progress, and on the 20th of April, 1808, found himself a prisoner in Bayonne. In the mean time Charles, who, under the protection of Murat, had resumed his rights, and obtained the liberty of Godoy, quitted Spain, and also threw himself, his cause, and kingdom, into the hands of the emperor.

These events were in themselves quite enough to urge a more cautious people than the Spaniards into action; but other measures had been pursued, which proved beyond the possibility of doubt, that the country was destined to be the spoil of the French. The troops of that nation had been admitted without reserve or precaution into the different fortresses upon the Spanish frontier, and, taking advantage of this hospitality to forward the views of their chief, they got possession, by various artifices, of the citadels of St. Sebastian in Guipuscoa, of Pampeluna in Navarre, and of that of Figueras, and the forts of Monjuik, and citadel of Barcelona in Catalonia; and thus, under the pretence of mediating between the father and the son, in a time of profound peace, a foreign force was suddenly established in the capital—on the communications—and in the principal frontier fortresses; its chief was admitted to a share of the government, and a fiery, proud, and jealous nation was laid prostrate at the feet of a stranger, without a blow being struck, without one warning voice being raised, without a suspicion being excited in sufficient time to guard against those acts, upon which all were gazing in stupid amazement.

It is idle to attribute this surprising event to the subtlety of Napoleon’s policy, to the depth of his deceit, or to the treachery of Godoy. Such a fatal calamity could only be the result of bad government, and a consequent degradation of public feeling; and it matters but little to those who wish to derive a lesson from experience, whether it be a Godoy or a Savary that strikes the last bargain of corruption, the silly father or the rebellious son that signs the final act of degradation and infamy. Fortunately, it is easier to oppress the people of all countries, than to destroy their generous feelings; when all patriotism is lost among the upper classes, it may still be found among the lower. In the Peninsula it was not found, but started into life, and with a fervour and energy that ennobled even the wild and savage form in which it appeared; nor was it the less admirable that it burst forth attended by many evils. The good feeling displayed was the people’s own; their cruelty, folly, and perverseness, were the effects of bad government.

There are many reasons why Napoleon should have meddled with the interior affairs of Spain; there seems to be no good one for his manner of doing it. It is true that the Spanish Bourbons could never have been sincere friends to France while Buonaparte held the sceptre, and the moment that the fear of his power ceased to operate, it was quite certain that their apparent friendship would change to active hostility; the proclamation issued by the Spanish cabinet just before the battle of Jena, is evidence of this feeling; but if the Bourbons were his enemies, it did not follow that the people sympathised with their rulers. The resources of the country were, it is said, already at his disposal; but that availed him little, as the corruption and weakness of the administration had reduced those resources to the lowest ebb. His great error was, that he looked only to the court, and treated the nation with contempt. Had Napoleon taken care to bring the people and their government into hostile contact first,—and how many points of contact would not such a government have afforded!—instead of appearing as the treacherous arbitrator in a domestic quarrel, he would have been hailed as the deliverer of a great people.

The journey of Ferdinand, the liberation of Godoy, and the flight of Charles, the appointing Murat to be a member of the governing Junta, and the movements of the French troops, who were advancing from all parts towards Madrid, roused the indignation of the Spanish people; tumults and assassinations had Journal of Dupont’s Operations. MSS. taken place in various parts; and at Toledo a serious riot occurred on the 23d of April; the peasants joined the inhabitants of the town, and it was only by the advance of a division of infantry and some cavalry of Dupont’s corps (then quartered at Aranjuez) that order was restored. The agitation of the public mind, however, increased, the French troops were all young men, or rather boys, taken from the last conscription, and disciplined after they had entered Spain, their youth and apparent feebleness excited the contempt of the Spaniards, who pride themselves much upon individual prowess; and the swelling indignation at last broke out.

Upon the 2d of May, a carriage being prepared (as the people supposed) to convey don Antonio, the uncle of Ferdinand, to France, a crowd collected about it, and their language indicated a determination not to permit the last of the royal family to be spirited away: the traces of the carriage were cut, and loud imprecations against the French burst forth on every side. At that moment, colonel La Grange, an aide-de-camp of Murat’s, appearing amongst them, was assailed and maltreated; in an instant the whole city was in commotion, and the French soldiers expecting no violence, were taken unawares and killed in every quarter: above seven hundred fell. The hospital was attacked by the populace; but the attendants and the sick beat them off; and the alarm having spread to the camp outside the town, the French cavalry came to the assistance of their countrymen by the gate of Alcala; while general Lanfranc, with a column of three thousand infantry, descending from the heights on the north-west quarter, entered the Calle Ancha de Bernardo. As this column crossed the street of Maravelles, in which the arsenal was situated, two Spanish officers, named Daois and Velarde, who were in a state of great excitement, discharged some guns upon the passing troops, and were immediately put to death by the voltigeurs; meanwhile, the column, continuing its march, released, as it advanced, several superior French officers, who were in a manner besieged in the houses by the mob. The cavalry at the other end of the town, treating the affair as a tumult, Memoir of Azanza and O’Farril. and not as an action, made some hundred prisoners; and by the exertions of marshal Moncey, general Harispe, Gonzalvo O’Farril, and some others, order was soon restored.

After night-fall, the peasantry of the neighbourhood came armed and in considerable numbers towards the city, and the French guards at the different gates firing upon them, killed twenty or thirty, and wounded others, some few were also crushed to death or lamed by the cavalry in the morning.

In the first moment of irritation, Murat ordered all the prisoners to be tried by a military commission, which condemned them to death; but the municipality interfered, and represented to that prince the extreme cruelty of visiting this angry ebullition of an injured and insulted people with such severity. Murat admitted the weight of their arguments, and forbade any executions on the sentence; but it is said that general Grouchy, in whose immediate power the prisoners remained, exclaiming that his own life had been attempted! that the blood of the French soldiers was not to be spilt with impunity! and that the prisoners having been condemned by a council of war, ought and should be executed! proceeded to shoot them in the Prado; and forty were thus slain before Murat could cause his orders to be effectually obeyed. The next day some of the Spanish authorities having discovered that a colonel commanding the imperial guards still retained a number of prisoners in the barracks, applied to the duke of Berg to have them released. Murat consented to have those prisoners also enlarged: but the colonel getting intelligence of what was passing, and being enraged at the loss of so many choice soldiers, put forty-five of the captives to death before the order could arrive to stay his bloody proceedings[4].

Such were nearly the circumstances that attended this celebrated tumult, in which the wild cry of Spanish warfare was first heard; but as many authors, adopting without hesitation all the reports of the day, have represented it sometimes as a wanton and extensive massacre on the part of the French, at another as a barbarous political stroke to impress a dread of their power, I think it necessary to make the following observations.

That it was commenced by the Spaniards is undoubted: their fiery tempers, the irritation produced by passing events, and the habits of violence which they had acquired by their late successful insurrection against Godoy, rendered an explosion inevitable. But if the French had secretly stimulated this disposition, and had prepared in cold blood to make a terrible example, undoubtedly they would have prepared some check on the Spanish soldiers of the garrison, and they would scarcely have left their hospital unguarded; still less have arranged the plan so that their own loss should far exceed that of the Spaniards; and surely nothing would have induced them to relinquish the profit of such policy after having suffered all the injury. Yet marshal Moncey and general Harispe were actively engaged in restoring order; Manifesto of the council of Castile. Page 28. and it is certain that, including the peasants shot outside the gates, the executions on the Prado and in the barracks of the imperial guards, the whole number of Spaniards slain did not amount to one hundred and twenty persons, while more than seven hundred French fell. Of the imperial guards seventy Surgical Campaigns of Baron Larrey. men were wounded, and this fact alone would suffice to prove that there was no premeditation on the part of Murat; for if he was base enough to sacrifice his own men with such unconcern, he would not have exposed the select soldiers of the French empire in preference to the conscripts who abounded in his army. The affair itself was certainly accidental, and not very bloody for the patriots, but policy induced both sides to attribute secret motives, and to exaggerate the slaughter. The Spaniards in the provinces, impressed with an opinion of French atrocity, were thereby excited to insurrection on the one hand; and, on the other, the French, well aware that such an impression could not be effaced by an accurate relation of what did happen, seized the occasion to convey a terrible idea of their power and severity; but, while it is the part of history to reduce such amplifications, it is impossible to remain unmoved in recording the gallantry and devotion of a populace that could thus dare to assail the force commanded by Murat, rather than abandon one of their princes; such, however, was the character of the lower classes of Spain throughout this war; fierce, confident, and prone to sudden and rash actions, they had an intuitive perception of all that was great and noble, but were miserably weak in execution.

The commotion of the 2d of May was the forerunner of insurrections in every part of Spain, few of which were so honourable to the actors as that of Madrid. Unprincipled villains hailed this opportunity of directing the passions of the multitude, and, under the mask of patriotism, turned the unthinking fury of the people against whoever it pleased them to rob or to destroy: pillage, massacres, assassinations, cruelties of the most revolting kind were everywhere perpetrated; and the intrinsic goodness of the cause was disfigured by the enormities committed at Cadiz, Seville, Badajos, and other places, but chiefly at Valencia, pre-eminent in barbarity at a moment when all were barbarous! The first burst of popular feeling being thus misdirected, and the energy of the people wasted in assassinations; lassitude and fear succeeded to the insolence of tumult at the approach of real danger; for it is one thing to shine in the work of butchery, and another to establish that discipline which can alone sustain the courage of the multitude in the hour of trial.

To cover the suspicious measure of introducing more troops than the terms of the convention warranted, a variety of reports relative to the ultimate intentions of the French emperor had been propagated: at one time Gibraltar was to be besieged, and officers were despatched to examine the Mediterranean coasts of Spain and Barbary; at another, Portugal was to become the theatre of great events, and a mysterious importance was attached to all the movements of the French armies, with a view to deceive a court that fear and sloth disposed to the belief of any thing but the truth, and to impose upon a people whose unsuspicious ignorance was at first mistaken for tameness.

In the mean time, active agents were employed to form a French party at the capital; but as the insurrections of Aranjuez and Madrid discovered the fierceness of the Spanish character, Napoleon enjoined more caution and prudence upon his lieutenants than the latter were disposed to practise. In fact, Murat’s precipitation was the cause of hastening the discovery of his master’s real views before they were ripe for execution; for Dupont’s first division and cavalry crossed the Duero as early as the 14th of March, and upon the 10th of April occupied Aranjuez, while his second and third divisions took post at the Escurial and at Segovia; thus encircling the capital while Moncey’s corps occupied it. Hence an intention to control the provincial government left by Ferdinand became manifest, and the riot at Toledo, although promptly quelled by the interference of the French troops, indicated the state of the public mind before the explosion at Madrid had placed the parties in a state of direct hostility.

Murat seems to have been intrusted with only a half confidence, and as his natural impetuosity urged him to play a rash rather than a timid part, he appeared with the air of a conqueror before a ground of quarrel was laid; not that he acted entirely without grounds, for a letter addressed to him about this time by Napoleon, contained the following instructions: “The duke of Infantado has a party in Madrid; they will attack you; dissipate them, and seize the government.” But Murat’s policy, as his after life proved, was too coarse and open for such difficult affairs.

At Bayonne the political events kept pace with those of Madrid. Charles IV. having reclaimed his rights in presence of Napoleon, sent orders to the infant, don Antonio, to resign his office, the presidency of the governing junta, to Murat, who, at the same time, received the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom: this appointment, and the restoration of Charles to the regal dignity, were proclaimed in Madrid, with the acquiescence of the council of Castile, on the 10th of May; but five days previous to that period, the old monarch had again resigned his sceptre into the hands of Napoleon, and Ferdinand and himself were consigned, with large pensions, to the tranquillity of private life.

The throne of Spain being now vacant, the right to fill it was assumed by the French emperor, in virtue of the cession made by Charles IV. He desired that a king might be chosen from his own family, and after some hesitation upon the part of the council of Castile, that body, in concert with the municipality of Madrid, and the governing junta, declared that their choice had fallen upon Joseph Buonaparte, at that time king of Naples. Cardinal Bourbon, primate of Spain, first cousin of Charles IV., and archbishop of Toledo, not only acceded to this arrangement, but actually wrote to Napoleon a letter testifying his adhesion to the new order of things.

As it was easy to foretel the result of the election, the king of Naples was already journeying towards Bayonne, and arrived there on the 7th of June. The principal men of Spain were also invited to meet in that town upon the 15th, with a view to obtain their assent to a constitution prepared by Napoleon. At this meeting, called “the Assembly of Notables,” ninety-one Spaniards of eminence appeared, and, first accepting Joseph as their king, proceeded to discuss the constitution in detail, and after several sittings adopted it, and swore to maintain its provisions. Thus finished the first part of this eventful drama.

The new constitution was calculated to draw forth the resources of Spain: compared to the old system it was a blessing, and it would have been received as such under different circumstances; but now arms were to decide its fate, for in every province of Spain the cry of war had been raised. In Catalonia, in Valencia, in Andalusia, Estremadura, Gallicia, and the Asturias, the people were gathering, and fiercely declaring their determination to resist French intrusion.

But Joseph, apparently contented with the acquiescence of the ninety-one notables, and trusting to the powerful support of his brother, crossed the frontier on the 9th of July; and on the 12th arrived at Vittoria. The inhabitants still nourishing the discontent caused by Ferdinand’s journey to Bayonne, seemed disposed to hinder Joseph’s entrance; but their opposition did not break out into actual violence, and the next morning he continued his progress by Miranda del Ebro, Breviesca, Burgos, and Buitrago. The 20th of July he entered Madrid, and upon the 24th he was proclaimed king of Spain and the Indies, with all the solemnities usual upon such occasions; not hesitating to declare himself the enemy of eleven millions of people, the object of a whole nation’s hatred; calling, with a strange accent, from the midst of foreign bands, upon that fierce and haughty race, to accept of a constitution which they did not understand, and which few of them had ever heard of; his only hope of success resting on the strength of his brother’s arms; his claims upon the consent of an imbecile monarch, and the weakness of a few pusillanimous nobles, in contempt of the rights of millions now arming to oppose him. This was the unhallowed part of the enterprise; this it was that rendered his offered constitution odious, covered it with a leprous skin, and drove the noble-minded far from the pollution of its touch!

CHAPTER III.

Joseph being proclaimed king, required the council of Castile to take the oath of allegiance prescribed by the constitution; but with unexpected boldness, that body, hitherto obedient, met his orders with a remonstrance. War, virtually declared on the 2d of May, was at this time raging in all parts of the Memoir of O’Farril, and Azanza. peninsula, and the council was secretly apprized that a great misfortune had befallen the French arms. It was no longer a question between Joseph and some reluctant public bodies, but an awful struggle between great nations; and how the spirit of insurrection breaking forth simultaneously in every province was nourished in each, until it acquired the consistence of regular warfare, I shall now relate.

Just before the tumult of Aranjuez, the marquis of Solano y Socoro, commanding the Spanish auxiliary force in the Alentejo, received orders from Godoy to withdraw from that country with his division, and to post it on the frontier of Andalusia, to cover the projected journey of Charles IV. Napoleon was aware of these orders, but would not interrupt their execution. Solano quitted Portugal without difficulty, and in the latter end of May, observing the general agitation, repaired to his government of Cadiz, where a French squadron[5], under admiral Rossily, had just before taken refuge from the English fleet. As Solano passed through Seville (that city being in a state of great ferment), he was required to put himself at the head of an insurrection in favour of Ferdinand VII. He refused, and passed on to his own government; but there also the people were ripe for a declaration against the French; and a local government having been in the mean time established at Seville, the members at once assumed the title of the “Supreme Junta of Spain and the Indies,” declared war in form against the intrusive monarch, commanded all men between the ages of sixteen and forty-five to take arms, called upon the troops of the camp of St. Roch to acknowledge their authority, and ordered Solano to attack the French squadron. That unfortunate man hesitated to commit his country in a war with a power whose strength and means he was better acquainted with than the temper of his own countrymen, and was instantly murdered: he died with a courage worthy of his amiable and unblemished character. There is too much reason to believe that his death was coolly projected, and that the junta at Seville sent an agent to Cadiz for the express purpose of exciting the populace to commit this odious assassination.

This foul stain upon the cause was intensely deepened by the perpetration of similar or worse deeds in every part of the kingdom. At Seville the conde d’Aguilar was dragged from his carriage, and, without even the imputation of guilt, inhumanly butchered; and here again it is said that the mob were instigated by a leading member of the junta, count Gusman de Tilly, a man described as “capable of dishonouring a whole nation by his crimes,” while his victim was universally admitted to be virtuous and accomplished.

As early as April, general Castaños (then commanding the camp of St. Roch) had entered into communication with sir Hew Dalrymple, the governor of Gibraltar; he was resolved to seize any opportunity that offered to resist the French, and he appears to have been the first, if not the only Spaniard, who united patriotism with prudent calculation, readily acknowledging the authority of the junta of Seville, and stifling the workings of self-interest with a virtue by no means common to his countrymen at that period. When the insurrection first broke out, admiral Purvis, commanded the British squadron off Cadiz, and in concert with general Spencer (who happened to be in that part of the world with five thousand men), offered to co-operate with Solano, if he would assail the French ships of war in the harbour: upon the death of that unfortunate man, this offer was renewed and pressed upon don Thomas Morla, his successor; but he, for reasons hereafter to be mentioned, refused all assistance, and reduced the hostile ships himself. Sir Hew Dalrymple’s correspondence. Castaños, on the contrary, united closely with all the British commanders, and obtained from them supplies of arms, ammunition, and money; and at the insistence of sir Hew Dalrymple, the merchants of Gibraltar advanced a loan for the service of the Spanish patriots[6].

Moniteur. Azanza an O’Farril. Nellerto.

Meanwhile the assassinations at Cadiz and Seville were imitated in every part of Spain; hardly can a town be named in which some innocent and worthy persons were not slain. Grenada had its murders; Carthagena rivalled Cadiz in ruthless cruelty; and Valencia was foul with slaughter. Don Miguel de Saavedra, the governor of that city, was killed, not in the fury of the moment, for he escaped the first danger and fled, but being pursued and captured, was brought back and deliberately sacrificed. Balthazar Calvo, a canon of the church of St. Isidro, then commenced a massacre of the French residents. For twelve days unchecked he traversed the streets of Valencia, followed by a band of fanatics, brandishing their knives, and filling all places with blood: many hundred helpless people fell the victims of his thirst for murder; and at last, emboldened by the impunity he enjoyed, Calvo proceeded to threaten the junta itself; but there his career was checked. Those worthy personages, who (with the exception of Mr. Tupper, the English consul, then a member), had calmly witnessed his previous violence, at once found the means to crush his power when their own safety was concerned. The canon, being in the act of braving their authority, was seized by stratagem, imprisoned, and soon afterwards strangled, together with two hundred of his band.

The conde de Serbelloni, captain-general of the province, placed himself at the head of the insurrection, and proceeded to organise an army; and at the same time the old count Florida Blanca assumed the direction of the Murcian patriots, and those two kingdoms acted cordially together.

In Catalonia the occupation of Barcelona impeded the development of the popular effervescence, but the feeling was the same, and the insurrection breaking out at the town of Manresa, soon spread to all the unfettered parts of the province.

In Aragon the arrival of don Joseph Palafox kindled the fire of patriotism; he had escaped from Bayonne, and his family were greatly esteemed in a country where it was of the noblest among a people absurdly vain of their ancient descent. The captain-general, fearful of a tumult, ordered Palafox to quit the province. This circumstance, joined to some appearance of mystery in his escape, inflamed the passions of the multitude; they surrounded his abode, and forced him to put himself at their head: the captain-general was displaced and confined, some persons were murdered, and a junta was formed. Palafox was considered by his companions as a man of slender capacity and great vanity, and there is nothing in his exploits to create a doubt of the justness of this opinion. It was not Palafox that upheld the glory of Aragon, it was the spirit of the people, which he had not excited, and could so little direct, that for a long time after the commencement of the first siege, he was kept a sort of prisoner in Zaragoza; and evident distrust of his courage and fidelity was displayed by the population which he is supposed to have ruled.

The example of Aragon aroused the Navarrese, and Logroño became the focus of an insurrection which extended along most of the valleys of that kingdom. In the northern and western provinces the spirit of independence was equally fierce, and as decidedly pronounced, accompanied also by the same brutal excesses. In Badajos the conde de la Torre del Frenio was butchered by the populace, and his mangled carcass dragged through the streets in triumph. At Talavera de la Reyna, the corregidor with difficulty escaped a similar fate by a hasty flight. Leon presented a wide, unbroken scene of anarchy. In Valladolid, and all the great towns, the insurgent patriots laid violent hands upon every person who did not instantly concur in their wishes, and pillage was added to murder.

Gallicia seemed to hold back for a moment; but the example of Leon, and the arrival of an agent from the Asturias, where the insurrection was in full force, produced a general movement. Filanghieri, the governor of Coruña, an Italian by birth, was by a tumultuous crowd called upon to exercise the rights of sovereignty, and to declare war in form against the French: like every man of sense in Spain, he was unwilling to commence such an important revolution upon such uncertain grounds; the impatient populace instantly attempted his life, which was then saved by the courage of an officer of his staff; but his horrible fate was only deferred. He was a man of talent, sincerely attached to Spain, and he exerted himself with success in establishing a force in the province: no suspicion of guilt seems to have attached to his conduct, and his death marks the temper of the times and the inherent ferocity of the people. A part of the regiment of Navarre seized him at Villa Franca del Bierzo, planted the ground with their bayonets, and then tossing him in a blanket, let him fall on the points thus disposed, and there leaving him to struggle, they dispersed and retired to their own homes.

The Asturians were the first who proclaimed their indefeasible right of choosing a new government when the old one ceased to afford them protection. Having established a local junta, and invested it with all the functions of royalty, they declared war against the French, and despatched deputies to England to solicit assistance.

In Biscay and the Castiles, fifty thousand bayonets overawed the great towns; but the peasantry commenced a war in their own manner against the stragglers and the sick, and thus a hostile chain surrounding the French army was completed in every link.

This universal and nearly simultaneous effort of the Spanish people was beheld by the rest of Europe with astonishment and admiration: astonishment at the energy thus suddenly put forth by a nation hitherto deemed unnerved and debased; admiration at the devoted courage of an act, which, seen at a distance, and its odious parts unknown, appeared with all the ideal beauty of Numantian patriotism. In England the enthusiasm was unbounded; dazzled at first with the splendour of such an agreeable, unlooked-for spectacle, men of all classes gave way to the impulse of a generous sympathy, and forgot, or felt disinclined to analyse, the real causes of this apparently magnanimous exertion. But without wishing to detract from the merit of the Spanish people, and certainly that merit was very great, it may be fairly doubted if the disinterested vigour of their character was the true source of their resistance. Constituted as modern states are, with little in their systems of government or education which conduces to nourish intense feelings of patriotism, it would be miraculous indeed if such a result was obtained from the pure virtue of a nation, which for two centuries had groaned under the pressure of civil and religious despotism. It was, in fact, produced by several co-operating causes, many of which were any thing but commendable.

The Spanish character, with relation to public affairs, is distinguished by inordinate pride and arrogance. Dilatory and improvident, the individual as well as the mass, all possess an absurd confidence that every thing is practicable which their heated imagination suggests; once excited, they can see no difficulty in the execution of a project, and the obstacles they encounter are attributed to treachery; hence the sudden murder of so many virtuous men at the commencement of this commotion. Kind and warm in his attachments, but bitter in his anger, the Spaniard is patient under privations, firm in bodily suffering, prone to sudden passion, vindictive, bloody, remembering insult longer than injury, and cruel in his revenge. With a strong natural perception of what is noble, his promise is lofty, but as he invariably permits his passions to get the mastery of his reason, his performance is mean.

In the progress of this war the tenacity of vengeance peculiar to the nation supplied the want of cool, persevering intrepidity; but it was a poor substitute for that essential quality, and led rather to deeds of craft and cruelty than to daring acts of patriotism. Now the abstraction of the royal family, and the unexpected pretension to the crown, so insultingly put forth by Napoleon, aroused all the Spanish pride. The tumults of Madrid and Aranjuez had agitated the public mind, and prepared it for a violent movement, and the protection afforded by the French to the obnoxious Godoy increased the ferment of popular feeling: a dearly cherished vengeance was thus frustrated at the moment of its expected accomplishment, and the disappointment excited all that fierceness of anger which with Spaniards is, for the moment, uncontrollable. Just then the tumult of Madrid, swollen and distorted, wrought the people to frenzy, and they arose with one accord, not to meet a danger the extent of which they had calculated, and were prepared, for the sake of independence, to confront, but to gratify the fury of their hearts, and to slake their thirst of blood.

During Godoy’s administration the property of the church had been trenched upon, and it was evident, from the example of France and Italy, that, under the new system, that operation would be repeated. This was a matter that involved the interests, and, of course, stimulated the activity of a multitude of monks and priests, who found no difficulty in persuading an ignorant and bigoted people that the aggressive stranger was also the enemy of religion and accursed of God; hence processions, miracles, prophecies, distribution of reliques, and the appointment of saints to the command of the armies, were freely employed to fanaticize the mass of the patriots. In every part of the peninsula the clergy were distinguished for their active zeal, and monks or friars were leaders in the tumults, or at the side of those who were instigating them to barbarous actions. Napoleon’s Memoires, Campagne d’Italie, Venise. Buonaparte found the same cause produce similar effects during his early campaigns in Italy; and if the shape of that country had been as favourable for protracted resistance, and that a like support had been afforded to them by Great Britain, the heroes of Spain would have been rivalled by modern Romans!

The continental system of mercantile exclusion was another spring of this complicated machinery. It threatened to lessen the already decayed commerce of the maritime towns; but the contraband trade, which has always been carried on in Spain to an incredible extent, was certain of destruction; and with that trade [Appendix, No. 9.] the fate of one hundred thousand excise and custom-house officers was involved. It required but a small share of penetration to perceive, that a system of armed revenue officers, organized after the French manner, and stimulated by a vigorous administration, would quickly put an end to the smuggling, which was, in truth, only a consequence of the monopolies and internal restrictions upon the trade of one province with another—vexations abolished by the constitution of Bayonne: hence all the activity and intelligence of the merchants engaged in foreign trade, and all the numbers and lawless violence of the smugglers, were enlisted in the cause of the country, and swelled the ranks of the insurgent patriots; and hence also the readiness of the Gibraltar merchants to advance the loan before spoken of.

The state of civilisation in Spain was likewise exactly suited to an insurrection: if the people had been a little more enlightened, they would have joined the French; if very enlightened, the invasion could not have happened at all; but, in a country where the comforts of civilized society are less needed, and therefore less attended to than in any other part of Europe, where the warmth and dryness of the climate render it no sort of privation or even inconvenience to sleep for the greatest part of the year in the open air, and where the universal custom is to go armed, it was not difficult for any energetic man to assemble and keep together large masses of the credulous peasantry. No story could be too gross for their belief, if it agreed with their wishes. “Es verdad, los dicen,” “It is true, they say it,” is the invariable answer of a Spaniard if a doubt is expressed of the truth of an absurd report. Of temperate habits, possessing little furniture, and generally hoarding all the gold he can get, the Spanish peasant is less concerned for the loss of his house than the inhabitant of another country would be: the effort that he makes in relinquishing his abode must not be measured by the scale of an Englishman’s exertion in a like case; and once engaged in an adventure, the lightness of his spirits, and the brilliancy of his sky, make it a matter of indifference to the angry Spanish peasant whither he wanders.

The evils which had afflicted the country previous to the period of the French interference was another cause which tended to prepare the Spaniards for violence, and aided in turning that violence against the intruders. Famine, oppression, poverty, and disease, Historia de la Guerra contra Napoleon. the loss of commerce, and unequal taxation, had pressed sorely upon them; for such a system the people could not be enthusiastic; but they were taught to believe, that Godoy was the sole author of the misery they suffered, and that Ferdinand would redress their grievances; and as the French were the strenuous protectors of the former, and the oppressors of the latter, it was easy to add this bitterness to their natural hatred of the domination of a stranger; and it was so done.

Such were the principal causes which combined to produce this surprising revolution, from which so many great events flowed, without one man of eminent talent being cast up to control or direct the spirit which was thus accidentally excited. Nothing proves more directly the heterogeneous nature of the feelings and interests which were united together than this last fact, which cannot be attributed to a deficiency of natural talent, for the genius of the Spanish people is notoriously ardent, subtle, and vigorous; but there was no common bond of feeling which a great man could lay hold of to influence large masses. Persons of sagacity perceived very early that the Spanish revolution, like a leafy shrub in a violent gale of wind, greatly agitated but disclosing only slight unconnected stems, afforded no sure hold for the ambition of a master-spirit, if such there were. It was clear that the cause would fail unless supported by England, and then England would direct all, and not suffer her resources to be wielded for the glory of an individual, whose views and policy might hereafter thwart her own; nor was it difficult to perceive that the downfall of Napoleon, not the regeneration of Spain, was the object of her cabinet.

The explosion of public feeling was fierce in its expression, because political passions will always be vehement at the first moment of their appearance among a people new to civil commotion, and unused to permit their heat to evaporate in public discussions. The result was certainly a wonderful change in the affairs of Europe; it seems yet undecided whether that change has been for the better or for the worse. In the progress of their struggle, the Spaniards developed more cruelty than courage, more violence than intrepidity, more personal hatred of the French than enthusiasm for their own cause. They opened indeed a wide field for the exertions of others; they presented a fulcrum upon which a lever was rested that moved the civilised world; but assuredly the presiding genius, the impelling power, came from another quarter. Useful accessories they were, but as principals they displayed neither wisdom, spirit, nor skill sufficient to resist the prodigious force by which they were assailed. If they appeared at first heedless of danger, it was not because they were prepared to perish rather than submit, but that they were reckless of provoking a power whose terrors they could not estimate, and in their ignorance despised.

It is, however, not surprising that great expectations were at first formed of the heroism of the Spaniards, and those expectations were greatly augmented by their agreeable qualities. There is not upon the face of the earth a people so attractive in the friendly intercourse of society: their majestic language, fine persons, imposing dress and lively imaginations, the inexpressible beauty of the women, and the air of romance which they throw over every action, and infuse into every feeling, all combine to delude the senses and to impose upon the judgment. As companions they are incomparably the most agreeable of mankind; but danger and disappointment attend the man who, confiding in their promises and energy, ventures upon a difficult enterprise. “Never do to-day what you can put off until to-morrow,” is the favourite proverb in Spain, and, unlike most proverbs, it is rigidly attended to.

CHAPTER IV.

The commotion of Aranjuez had undeceived the French emperor; he perceived that he was engaged in a delicate enterprise, and that the people he had to deal with were any thing but tame and quiescent under insult. Determined, however, to persevere, he pursued his political intrigues, and, without relinquishing the hope of a successful termination to the affair by such means, he arranged a profound plan of military operations, and so distributed his forces, that, at the moment when Spain was pouring forth her swarthy bands, the masses of the French army were concentrated upon the most important points, and combined in such a manner, that, from their central position they had the power of overwhelming each separate province, no three of which could act in concert without first beating a French corps; and if any of the Spanish armies succeeded in routing a French force, the remaining corps of the latter could unite without difficulty, and retreat without danger. It was the skill of this disposition which enabled seventy thousand men, covering a great extent of country, to brave the simultaneous fury of a whole nation: an army less ably distributed would have been trampled under foot, and lost amidst the tumultuous uproar of eleven millions of people.

The inconvenience in a political point of view that would have arisen from suffering a regular army to take the field was evident. To have been able to characterise the opposition of the Spanish people as a partial insurrection of peasants, instigated by some evil-disposed persons to act against the wishes of the respectable part of the nation, would have given some colour to the absorbing darkness of the invasion: but to have permitted that which was at first an insurrection of peasants to take the form and consistence of regular armies and methodical warfare, would have been a military error, and dangerous in the extreme. Napoleon, who well knew that scientific war is only a wise application of force, laughed at the delusion of those who regarded the want of a regular army as a favourable circumstance, and who hailed the undisciplined peasant as the more certain defender of the country. He knew that a general insurrection can never last long, that it is a military anarchy, and incapable of real strength: he knew that it was the disciplined battalions of Valley Forge, not the volunteers of Lexington, that established American independence; that it was the veterans of Arcole and Marengo, not the republicans of Valmy, that fixed the fate of the French revolution; and consequently his efforts were directed to hinder the Spaniards from drawing together any great body of regular soldiers; an event that might easily happen, for the gross amount of the organized Spanish force was, in the month of May, about one hundred and twenty-seven thousand men of all arms. Fifteen thousand of these were in Holstein, under the marquis of Romana, but twenty thousand were already partially concentrated in Portugal. The remainder, in which were comprised eleven thousand Swiss and thirty thousand militia, were dispersed in various parts Historia de la Guerra contra Napoleon Buonaparte. of the kingdom, principally in Andalusia. Besides this force, there was a sort of local reserve called the urban militia, much neglected, and indeed more a name than a reality. Nevertheless the advantage of such an institution was considerable; men were to be had in abundance: and as the greatest difficulty in a sudden crisis is to prepare the frame-work of order, it was no small resource to find a plan of service ready, the principle of which was understood by the people.

The French army in the Peninsula about the same period, although amounting to eighty thousand men, exclusive of those under Junot in Portugal, had not more than seventy thousand capable of active operations; the remainder were sick or in depôts. The possession of the fortresses, the central position, and the combination of this comparatively small army, gave it great strength; but it had also many points of weakness; it was made up of the conscripts of different nations, French, Swiss, Italians, Poles, and even Portuguese, whom Junot had expatriated, partly to strengthen the French army, partly to weaken the nation which he held in subjection; and it is a curious fact, that some of them remained in Spain until the end of the war. A few of the imperial guards were also employed, and here and there an old regiment of the line was mixed with the young troops to give them consistence; but with these exceptions Napoleon’s notes. [Appendix, No. 3.]
Thiebault.
Dupont’s Journal. MSS. the French army must be considered as a raw levy fresh from the plough and unacquainted with discipline: so late even as the month of August many of the battalions had not completed the first elements of their drill, and if they had not been formed upon good skeletons, the difference between them and the insurgent peasantry would have been very trifling. This fact explains, in some measure, the otherwise incomprehensible checks and defeats which the French sustained at the commencement of the contest, and it likewise proves how little of vigour there was in Spanish resistance at the moment of the greatest enthusiasm.

In the distribution of these troops Napoleon attended principally to the security of Madrid. The capital city, and the centre of all interests, its importance was manifest, and the great line of communication between it and Bayonne was early and constantly covered with troops. But the imprudence with which the grand duke of Berg brought up the corps of Moncey and Dupont to the capital, the manner in which those corps were posted, cutting off the communication between the northern and southern provinces, and the haughty impolitic demeanour assumed by that prince, drew on the crisis of affairs before the time was ripe, and obliged the French monarch to hasten the advance of other troops, and to make a greater display of his force than was consistent with his policy; for Murat’s movement, while it threatened the Spaniards and provoked their hostility, placed the French army in an isolated position, leaving the long line of communication with France unprovided with soldiers and requiring fresh battalions to fill up the void thus discovered; and this circumstance generated additional anger and suspicion at a very critical period of time. To supply the chasm left by Moncey’s advance, the formation of a new corps was commenced in Navarre, Napoleon’s notes, [Appendix, No. 2.] and by successive reinforcements so increased; that in June it amounted to twenty-three thousand men, who were placed under the command of marshal Bessieres, and took the title of the “army of the Western Pyrenees.”

Bessieres, at the first appearance of the commotion, fixed his head quarters at Burgos and occupied Vittoria, Miranda de Ebro, and other towns, placing posts in his front towards Leon; this position, while it protected the line from Bayonne to the capital, enabled him to awe the Asturias and Biscay, and (by giving him the command of the valley of the Duero,) to keep the kingdom of Leon and the province of Segovia in check. The town and castle of Burgos, being put into a state of defence, contained his dépôts, and became the centre and pivot of his operations; while some intermediate posts and the fortresses connected him with Bayonne, where a reserve of twenty thousand men was formed under general Drouet, then commanding the eleventh military division of France.

By the convention of Fontainebleau, the emperor was entitled to send forty thousand men into the northern parts of Spain. The right thus acquired was grossly abused, but the exercise of it being expected, created at first but little alarm. It was different on the eastern frontier: Napoleon had never intimated a wish to pass forces by Catalonia; neither the treaty nor the convention authorized such a measure, nor could the pretence of supporting Junot in St. Cyr.
Napoleon’s notes, [Appendix, No. 2.] Portugal be advanced as a mask. Nevertheless, so early as the 9th of February, eleven thousand infantry, sixteen hundred cavalry, and eighteen pieces of artillery, under the command of general Duhesme, crossed the frontier at La Jonquera, and marched upon Barcelona, leaving a detachment at the town of Figueras, the strong citadel of which commands the principal pass of the mountains. Arrived at Barcelona, Duhesme prolonged his residence there under the pretext of waiting for instructions from Madrid, relative Duhesme’s Instructions, Jan. 28th. Vide St. Cyr. to a pretended march upon Cadiz; but his secret orders were, to obtain exact information concerning the Catalonian fortresses, dépôts, and magazines,—to ascertain the state of public feeling,—to preserve a rigid discipline,—scrupulously to avoid giving any offence to the Spaniards, and to enter into close communication with marshal Moncey, at that time commanding the whole of the French army in the north of Spain.

The political affairs were even then beginning to indicate serious results, and as soon as Duhesme’s report was received, and the troops in the north were in a condition to execute their orders, he was directed to seize upon the citadel of Barcelona, and the fort of Monjuick. The citadel was obtained by stratagem; the fort, one of the strongest in the world, was surrendered by the governor Alvarez. That brave and worthy officer, knowing the baseness of his court, was certain that he would receive no support from that quarter, and did not resist the demand of the French general, who having failed to surprise the vigilance of the garrison, impudently insisted upon a surrender of the place. Alvarez consented to relinquish his charge, although he felt the disgrace of his situation so acutely that, it is said, he had some thoughts of springing a mine beneath a French detachment during the conference; but his mind, unequal to the occasion, betrayed his spirit, and he sunk, oppressed by the force of unexpected circumstances.

What a picture of human weakness do these affairs present; the boldest men shrinking from the discharge of their trust like the meanest cowards, and the wisest following the march of events, confounded and without a rule of action! If such a firm man, as Alvarez afterwards proved himself to be, could think the disgrace of surrendering his charge at the demand of an insolent and perfidious guest a smaller misfortune than the anger of a miserable court, what must the state of public feeling have been, and how can those men who, like O’Farril and Azanza, served the intruder be with justice blamed, if, amidst the general stagnation, they could not perceive the elements of a salutary tempest? At the view of such scenes Napoleon might well enlarge his ambitious designs, his fault was not in the projection, but in the rough execution of his plan; another combination would have ensured success, and the resistance he encountered only shows, that nations as well as individuals are but the creatures of circumstances, at one moment weak, trembling, and submissive; at another proud, haughty, and daring; every novel combination of events has an effect upon public sentiment distinct from, and often at variance, with what is called national character.

The treacherous game played at Barcelona was renewed at Figueras, and with equal success; the citadel of that place fell into the hands of the detachment left there, and thus a free entrance, and a secure base of operations, was established in Catalonia, and the magazines of Barcelona being filled, Duhesme, whose corps took the name of the “army of the Eastern Pyrenees,” concluded that his task was well accomplished.

The affair was indeed a momentous one, and Napoleon earnestly looked for its termination before the transactions at Madrid could give an unfavourable impression of his ulterior intentions; he saw the importance which, under certain circumstances, a war would confer upon Barcelona. With an immense population, great riches, a good harbour, and almost impregnable defences, that town might be called the key of the south of France or Spain, just as it happened to be in the possession of the one or the other nation. The proximity of Sicily, where a large British force was kept in a state of constant preparation, made it more than probable that if hostilities broke out between himself and the Spaniards, an English army would be quickly carried to Barcelona, and a formidable systematic war be established upon the threshold of France. Such an occurrence would have been fatal to his projects, he felt the full extent of the danger, and at the risk of rendering abortive the efforts to create a French party at Madrid, guarded against it by this open violation of Spanish independence; but the peril of exposing Barcelona to the English was too imminent to leave room for hesitation.

Thirty or forty thousand British troops occupying an entrenched camp in front of that town, supported by a powerful fleet, and having reserve magazines and dépôts in Sicily and the Spanish islands, might have been so wielded as to give ample occupation to a hundred and fifty thousand enemies. Under the protection of such an army, the Spanish levies might have been organised and instructed, and as the actual numbers assembled could have been at all times easily masked, increased, or diminished, and the fleet ready to co-operate, the south of France (from whence all the provisions of the enemy must have been drawn) would have been exposed to descents, and have sustained all the inconvenience of actual hostilities. The Spanish provinces of Valencia, Murcia, and even Andalusia, being thus covered, the war would have been drawn to a head, and concentrated about Catalonia, the most warlike, rugged, and sterile portion of Spain. But Duhesme’s success having put an end to this danger, the affairs of Barcelona sunk into comparative insignificance. Nevertheless, the emperor kept a jealous watch upon that quarter, the corps employed there was increased to twenty-two thousand men, the general commanding it corresponded directly with Napoleon, and Barcelona was made the centre of a system complete in itself, and distinct from that which held the other corps, rolling round Madrid as their point of attraction.

The capital of Spain is situated in a sort of basin, formed by a semicircular range of mountains, which under the different denominations of the Sierra de Guadarama, the Carpentanos, and the Sierra de Guadalaxara, sweep in one unbroken chain from east to west, touching the Tagus at either end of an arch, of which that river is the chord.

All direct communications between Madrid and France, or between the former and the northern provinces of Spain, must necessarily pass over one or other of those Sierras, which are separated from the great range of the Pyrenees by the valley of the Ebro, and from the Biscayan and Asturian mountains by the valley of the Duero.

The four principal roads which lead from France directly upon Madrid are, first, the royal causeway, which passing the frontier at Irun runs under St. Sebastian, and then through a wild and mountainous country (full of dangerous defiles) to the Ebro, crosses that river by a stone bridge at Miranda, and leads upon Burgos, from which town it turns short to the left, is carried over the Duero at Aranda, and soon after encountering the Carpentanos and the Sierra de Guadalaxara, penetrates them by the strong pass of the Somosierra, and descends upon the capital. Vittoria stands in a plain about half way between St. Sebastian and Burgos.

The second, which is inferior to the first, commences at St. Jean Pied de Port, and unites at Pampelona: it runs through Taffalla, crosses the Ebro at Tudela, and enters the basin of Madrid by the eastern range of the Sierra de Guadalaxara, where the declination of the mountains presents a less rugged barrier than the snowy summits of the northern and western part of the chain.

The third threads the Pyrenees by the way of Jaca, passes the Ebro at Zaragoza, and uniting with the second, likewise crosses the Guadalaxara ridge.

The fourth is the great route from Perpignan by Figueras and Gerona to Barcelona; from this latter town it leads by Cervera and Lerida to Zaragoza.

Hence Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon, one of the great dépôts of Spain for arms and ammunition, and at that time containing fifty thousand inhabitants, was a strategetical point of importance. An army in position there could operate on either bank of the Ebro, intercept the communication between the armies of the Eastern and Western Pyrenees, and block three out of the four great roads leading upon Madrid; if the French had occupied it in force, their army in the capital would have been free and unconstrained in its operations, and might have acted with more security against Valencia; and the dangerous importance of the united armies of Gallicia and Leon would also have been diminished, when the road of Burgos ceased to be the only line of retreat from the capital. Nevertheless, Napoleon neglected Zaragoza at first, because that having no citadel, a small body of troops could not control the inhabitants, and a large force would have created suspicion too soon, and perhaps have prevented the success of the attempts against Pampelona and Barcelona (objects of still greater importance); neither was the heroic defence which that city afterwards made within a reasonable calculation.

The grand duke of Berg and the duke of Rovigo remained at Madrid, and from that central point appeared to direct the execution of the French emperor’s projects; but he distrusted their judgment, and exacted the most detailed information of every movement and transaction.

In the course of June, Murat, who was suffering from illness, quitted Spain, leaving behind him a troubled people, and a name for cruelty which was foreign to his character. Savary remained the sole representative of the new monarch: his situation was delicate; he was in the midst of a great commotion; upon every side he beheld the violence of insurrection and the fury of an insulted nation; it behoved him, therefore, to calculate with coolness and to execute with vigour.

Each Spanish province had its own junta of government; but although equally enraged, they were not equally dangerous in their anger. The attention of the Catalonians was completely absorbed by Duhesme’s operations; but the soldiers of the regiments which Cabanes’ War in Catalonia, 1st Part. composed the Spanish garrisons of Barcelona, Monjuick, and Figueras, quitting their ranks after the seizure of those places, flocked to the patriotic standards in Murcia and Valencia. The greatest part belonged to the Spanish and Walloon guards, and they formed a good basis for an army which the riches of the two provinces and the arsenal of Carthagena afforded ample military resources to equip.

The French had, however, nothing to fear from any direct movement of this army against Madrid, as such an operation could only bring on a battle; but if by a march towards Zaragoza, the Valencians had united with the Aragonese and then operated against the line of communication with France, the insurrection of Catalonia would have been supported, and a point of union for three great provinces fixed. In the power of executing this project lay the sting of the Valencian insurrection. To besiege Zaragoza and prevent such a junction was the remedy.

The importance of Andalusia was greater; the division of regular troops which under the command of the unhappy Solano had been withdrawn from Portugal, was tolerably disciplined; a large veteran force was assembled at the camp of St. Roque under general Castaños; and the garrisons of Ceuta, Algeziras, Cadiz, Granada, and other places being united, the whole formed a considerable mass of troops; while a superb cannon foundry at Seville, and the arsenal of Cadiz, furnished the means of equipment and the materials for a train of artillery. An active intercourse was maintained between the patriots and the English: the juntas of Granada, Jaen, and Cordova Mr. Stuart’s Letters, vide Parliamentary Papers, 1810. admitted the supremacy of the junta of Seville, and the army of Estremadura consented to obey their orders. The riches of the province, its distance from Madrid, the barrier of the Sierra Morena, which like a strong wall covered Andalusia, and favoured the insurrection, afforded the means of establishing a systematic war, and drawing together all the scattered elements of resistance in the southern and western provinces of Spain and Portugal; but this danger, although pregnant with future consequences, was not immediate: there was no line of offensive movement against the flank or rear of the French army open to the Andalusian patriots, and a march to the front against Madrid would have been tedious and dangerous; the true policy of the Andalusians was palpably defensive.

In Estremadura the activity and means of the junta were not at first sufficient to excite much attention; but in Leon, Old Castile, and Gallicia, a cloud was gathering that threatened a perilous storm. Don Gregorio Cuesta was captain-general of the two former kingdoms: inimical to popular movements, and of a haughty resolute disposition, he at first checked the insurrection with a rough hand; by this conduct he laid the foundation for quarrels and intrigues, which afterwards impeded the military operations, and split the northern provinces into factions; finally, however, he joined the side of the patriots. Behind him the kingdom of Gallicia, under the direction of Filanghieri, had prepared a large and efficient force. It was composed of the strong and disciplined body of troops Thiebault. Exped. Portugal. which, under the command of Tarranco, had taken possession of Oporto, and after that general’s death had returned with general Belesta to Gallicia. The garrisons of Ferrol and Coruña and a number of soldiers, flying from the countries occupied by the French, swelled the regular army, the agents of Great Britain were actively employed in blowing the flame of insurrection; money, arms, and clothing, were poured into the province through their hands; Coruña afforded an easy and direct intercourse with England, and a strict connexion was maintained between the Gallician and Portuguese patriots.

The facility of establishing the base of a regular systematic war in Gallicia was therefore as great as in Andalusia, the resources perhaps greater on account of the proximity of Great Britain, and the advantage of position at this time was essentially in favour of Gallicia, because the sources of her strength were equally well covered from the direct line of the French operations, and the slightest offensive movement upon her part threatened the communications of the French army in Madrid, and endangered the safety of any corps marching from the capital against the southern provinces. To be prepared against the Gallician forces was, therefore, a matter of pressing importance; a defeat from that quarter would have been felt in all parts of the army; and no considerable or sustained operation could have been undertaken against the other insurgent forces until the strength of Gallicia had been first broken.

In Biscay and the Asturias the want of regular troops and fortified towns, and the contracted shape of those provinces, placed them completely within the power of the French, who had nothing to fear as long as they could maintain possession of the sea-ports.

From this sketch it results that Savary, in classing the dangers of his situation, should have rated Gallicia and Leon in the first, Zaragoza in the second, Andalusia in the third, and Valencia in the fourth rank, and by that scale he should have regulated his operations. It was thus Napoleon looked at the affair, but the duke of Rovigo, wavering in his opinions, neglected or misunderstood the spirit of his instructions, lost the control of the operations, and sunk amidst the confusion which he had himself created.

Nearly fifty thousand men and eighty guns were disposable for offensive operations in the beginning of June: collected into one mass such an army was more than sufficient to crush any or all of the insurgent armies combined; but it was necessary to divide it and to assail several points at the same time; in doing this the safety of each minor body depended upon the stability of the central point from whence it emanated; and again the security of that centre depended upon the strength of its communications with France; in other words, Bayonne was the base of operations against Madrid, and this town in turn became the base of operations against Valencia, Murcia, and Andalusia.

To combine all the movements of a vast plan which would embrace the operations against Catalonia, Aragon, Biscay, the Asturias, Gallicia, Leon, Castille, Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia, in such a simple manner that the corps of the army working upon one principle might mutually support and strengthen each other, and at the same time preserve their communication with France, was the great problem to be solved. Napoleon felt that it required a master mind, and from Bayonne he put all the different armed masses in motion himself, and with the greatest caution; for it is a mistaken notion, although one very generally entertained, that he plunged headlong into this contest without precaution, as having to do with adversaries he despised.

In his instructions to the duke of Rovigo he says, “In a war of this sort it is necessary to act with patience, coolness, and upon calculation.” “In civil wars it is the important points only which should be guarded, we must not go to all places;” and he inculcates the doctrine that to spread the troops over the country without the power of uniting upon emergency would be a dangerous and useless display of activity. The principle upon which he proceeded may be illustrated by the comparison of a closed hand thrust forward and the fingers afterwards extended: as long as the solid part of the member was securely fixed and guarded, the return of the smaller portions of it and their flexible movement was feasible and without great peril; but a wound given to the hand or arm not only endangered that part but paralyzed the action of the whole limb. Hence all the care and attention with which his troops were arranged along the road to Burgos; hence all the measures of precaution already described, such as the seizure of the fortresses, and the formation of the reserves at Bayonne.

The insurrection having commenced, Bessieres was ordered to put Burgos into a state of defence,—to detach a division of four or five thousand men under general Lefebre Desnouettes against Zaragoza,—to keep down the insurgents of Biscay, Asturias, and Old Castille,—and to watch the army assembling in Gallicia; he was likewise enjoined to occupy and watch with jealous care the port of St. Ander and the coast towns. At the same time a reinforcement of nine thousand men was preparing for Duhesme, which, it was supposed, would enable him to tranquillize Catalonia, and co-operate with a division marching from Madrid against Valencia.

The reserve under general Drouet was nourished by drafts from the interior: it supplied Bessieres with reinforcements, and afforded a detachment of four thousand men to watch the openings of the valleys Napoleon’s notes, [Appendix, No. 2.] of the Pyrenees, especially towards the castle of Jaca, which was in possession of the Spanish insurgents. A smaller reserve was established at Perpignan, and another detachment watched the openings of the eastern frontier. All the generals commanding corps, or even detachments, were directed to correspond daily with general Drouet.

The security of the rear being thus provided for, the main body at Madrid commenced offensive operations. Marshal Moncey was directed, with part of S.
Journal of Moncey’s Operations. MSS. his corps upon Cuenca, to intercept the march of the Valencian army upon Zaragoza, and general Dupont, with ten thousand men, marched towards Cadiz; the remainder of his and Moncey’s troops were kept in reserve and distributed in various parts of La Mancha and the neighbourhood of Madrid. Napoleon likewise directed, that Segovia should be occupied Napoleon’s notes, [Appendix, No. 1.] and put in a state of defence, that a division (Gobert’s) of Moncey’s corps should co-operate with Bessieres on the side of Valladolid, and that moveable columns should scour the country in rear of the acting bodies, and unite again at stated times upon points of secondary interest. Thus linking his operations together, Napoleon hoped, by grasping as it were the ganglia of the insurrection, to paralyze its force, and reduce it to a few convulsive motions which would soon subside. The execution of his plan failed in the feebler hands of his lieutenants, but it was well conceived, and embraced every probable immediate chance of war, and even provided for the distant and uncertain contingency of an English army landing upon the flanks or rear of the corps at either extremity of the Pyrenean frontier.

Military men would do well to reflect upon the prudence which the French emperor displayed upon this occasion. Not all his experience, his power, his fortune, nor the contempt which he felt for the prowess of his adversaries, could induce him to relax in his precautions; every chance was considered, and every measure calculated with as much care and circumspection as if the most redoubtable enemy was opposed to him. The conqueror of Europe was as fearful of making false movements before an army of peasants, as if Frederick the Great had been in his front, and yet he failed! Such is the uncertainty of war!

CHAPTER V.

All the insurrections of the Spanish provinces took place nearly at the same period; the operations of the French divisions were, of course, nearly simultaneous; I shall, therefore, narrate their proceedings separately, classing them by the effect each produced upon the stability of the intrusive government in Madrid, and commencing with the

FIRST OPERATIONS OF MARSHAL BESSIERES.

Moniteur.
Victoires et Conquêtes des Français.

That officer had scarcely fixed his quarters at Burgos when a general movement of revolt took place. On his right, the bishop of St. Ander excited the inhabitants of the diocese to take arms. In his rear, a mechanic assembled some thousand armed peasants at the town of Logroño. In front, five thousand men took possession of the Spanish artillery dépôt at Segovia; an equal number assembling at Palencia armed themselves from the royal manufactory at that place, and advanced to the town of Torquemada; while general Cuesta, with some regular troops and a body of organized peasantry, posted themselves on the Pisuerga at Cabeçon.

Bessieres immediately divided his disposable force, which was not more than twelve thousand men, into several columns, and traversed the country in all directions, disarming the towns and interrupting the combinations of the insurgents; while a division of Dupont’s corps, under general Frere, marched from the side of Madrid to aid his operations. General Verdier attacked Logroño on the 6th of June, dispersed the peasantry, and put the leaders to death after the action. General Lasalle, departing from Burgos with a brigade of light cavalry, passed the Pisuerga, fell upon the Spaniards at Torquemada on the 7th, broke them, and pursuing with a merciless sword, burnt that town, and entered Palencia on the 8th.

Meanwhile Frere defeated the Spanish force at Segovia taking thirty pieces of artillery; and general Merle marching through the country lying between the Pisuerga and the Douero with a division of infantry, joined Lasalle at Dueñas on the 12th. From thence they proceeded to Cabeçon, where Cuesta accepted battle, and was overthrown, with much slaughter, the loss of his artillery, and several thousand musquets. The flat country being thus subdued, Lasalle’s cavalry remained to keep it under; but Merle, marching northward, commenced operations, in concert with general Ducos, against the province of St. Ander. On the 20th, the latter general drove the Spaniards from the pass of Soncillo; the 21st, he forced the pass of Venta de Escudo, and descending the valley of the river Pas, approached St. Ander; on the 22d, Merle, after some resistance, penetrated by Lantueño, and followed the course of the Besaya to Torre La Vega, then turning to his right entered St. Ander on the 23d; and Ducos arriving at the same time, the town submitted, and the bishop fled with the greatest part of the clergy. The authorities of Segovia, Valladolid, Palencia, and St. Ander, were compelled to send deputies to take the oath of allegiance to Joseph.

By these operations, the above-named provinces were completely disarmed, and so awed by the activity of Bessieres, that no further insurrections took place, and his cavalry raised contributions and collected provisions without the least difficulty. Frere’s division then returned to Toledo, and from thence marched to San Clemente, on the borders of Murcia. The imprudence of Cuesta, and the general deficiency of talent and judgment manifested by the Spaniards throughout these proceedings, were very remarkable.

While Bessieres thus broke the northern insurrections, the march of general Lefebre Desnouettes against the province of Aragon brought on the first siege of Zaragoza. Palafox being declared captain-general, Cavallero. recalled the retired officers into service; a number of volunteers repaired to him from distant parts, and the soldiers and officers who could escape from Pampelona and Madrid joined his standard, and among others the officers of engineers employed in the school of Alcala. With their assistance his forces were rapidly organized, and many battalions were formed and posted at different points on the roads leading towards Navarre. The baron de Versage, an officer of the Walloon guards, occupied Calatayud with a regiment composed of students who were volunteers; he raised more men in that quarter, kept up a communication with the juntas of Soria and Siguenza, and covered the powder-mills in Villa Felice. The arsenal of Zaragoza supplied the patriots with arms. At Tudela the people broke down the bridge over the Ebro, and Palafox detached five hundred fuzileers to assist them in defending the passage of that river.

S.
Journal of Lefebre’s Operations. MSS.

In this situation of affairs Lefebre commenced his march from Pampelona the 7th of June, at the head of three or four thousand infantry, some field batteries, and a regiment of Polish cavalry. On the 9th he Moniteur.
Victoire et Conquêtes des Français.
Cavallero. forced the passage of the Ebro, put the leaders of the insurrection to death after the action, and then continued his movement by the right bank to Mallen. Palafox, with ten thousand infantry, two hundred dragoons, and eight pieces of artillery, awaited him there in a position behind the Huecha. The 13th, Palafox was overthrown; the 14th, the French reached the Xalon; another combat and another victory carried Lefebre across that river; and the 15th, he was on the Huerba, in front of the heroic city.

FIRST SIEGE OF ZARAGOZA.

Zaragoza contained at that period fifty thousand inhabitants; situated on the right bank of the Ebro, it was connected with a suburb on the opposite side by a handsome stone bridge. The immediate vicinity is flat, and on the side of the suburb low and marshy. The small river Huerba, running through a deep cleft, cuts the plain on the right bank, and taking its course close to the walls, falls into the Ebro nearly opposite to the mouth of the Gallego, which, descending from the mountains on the opposite side, cuts the plain on the left bank. The convent of St. Joseph, built on the right of the Huerba, covered a bridge over that torrent; and, at the distance of cannon-shot, a step of land commenced, which, gradually rising, terminated at eighteen hundred yards from the convent, in a hill called the Monte Torrero. On Cavallero.
Siege of Zaragoza. this hill, which commanded all the plain and overlooked the town, several storehouses and workshops, built for the use of the canal, were entrenched, and occupied by twelve hundred men. The canal itself, a noble work, formed a water carriage without a single lock from Tudela to Zaragoza. The city, surrounded by a low brick wall, presented no regular defences, and possessed very few guns in a state fit for service, but the houses were strongly constructed, some of stone, others of brick; they were mostly of two stories high, each story being vaulted so as to be nearly proof against fire; and the massive walls of the convents, rising like castles all round the circuit as well as inside the place, were to be seen crowded with armed men.

Such was Zaragoza when Lefebre Desnouettes first appeared before it: his previous movements had cut the direct communication with Calatayud, and obliged the baron Versage to retire to Belchite with the volunteers and several thousand fresh levies. Palafox S.
Journal of Lefebre’s Operations. MSS. occupied the olive groves and houses on the step of land between the convent of St. Joseph and Monte Torrero; but his men, cowed by their previous defeats, were easily driven from thence on the 16th, and the town was closely invested on the right bank of the Ebro. Indeed so great was the terror and confusion Cavallero. of the Spaniards, that some of the French penetrated without difficulty into the street of St. Engracia, and the city was on the point of being taken that day, for Palafox, accompanied by his brother Francisco, an aide-de-camp, and one hundred dragoons, under pretence of seeking succour, endeavoured to go forth on the side of the suburb at the moment when the French were entering on the side of Engracia; but the plebeian leaders being suspicious of his intentions, would not suffer him to depart without a guard of infantry, and Tio Jorge[7] accompanied him to watch his conduct and to ensure his return. It was a strange proceeding, and ill-timed, that the chief should thus fly out at one gate while the enemy was pressing in at another, when the streets were filled with clamour, the dismayed garrison making little or no resistance, and all things in confusion. Zaragoza was that day on the very verge of destruction, when the French, either fearful of an ambuscade, or ignorant of their advantages, retired, and the people, as if inspired, changing from the extreme of terror to that of courage, suddenly fell to casting up defences, piercing loop-holes in the walls of the houses, constructing ramparts with sand-bags, and working with such vigour, that, under the direction of their engineers, in twenty-four hours they put the place in a condition to withstand an assault. Whereupon Lefebre confining his operations to the right bank of the Ebro, established posts close to the gates, and waited for reinforcements.

Meanwhile Palafox crossing the Ebro at Pina, joined Versage at Belchite, and having collected seven or eight thousand men, and four pieces of artillery, gained the Xalon in rear of the French; from thence he proposed to advance through Epila and endeavour to relieve Zaragoza by a battle. His officers, struck Cavallero. with the imprudence of this measure, resisted his authority, and prepared to retire to Valencia. Palafox, ignorant of war, and probably awed by Tio Jorge, expressed his determination to fight, saying, with an imposing air, “that those who feared danger might retire.” Touched with shame, all agreed to follow him to Epila; and he advanced: but two French regiments, detached by Lefebre, met him on the march, and a combat commencing at nine in the evening, the Spaniards were unable to form any order of battle, and, notwithstanding their superior numbers, were defeated with the loss of three thousand men. Palafox, who did not display that firmness in danger which his speech promised, must have fled early, as he reached Calatayud in the night, although many of his troops arrived there unbroken the next morning. After this disaster, Palafox, leaving Versage at Calatayud to make fresh levies, returned himself, with all the beaten troops that he could collect, to Belchite, and from thence regained Zaragoza on the 2d of July. Meanwhile Lefebre had taken the Monte Torrero by assault on the 27th of June.

The 29th or 30th, general Verdier arrived on the Huerba with a division of infantry, and a large train of battering artillery; and the besiegers being now nearly twelve thousand strong, attacked the convents of St. Joseph and the Capuchins on the same day that Palafox returned; the first assault on St. Joseph’s failed, the second succeeded; but the Capuchins, after some fighting, was set fire to by the Spaniards and abandoned. All this time the suburb was left S.
Journal of Lefebre’s Operations. MSS. open and free for the besieged. But Napoleon blamed this mode of attack, and sent orders to throw a bridge across the Ebro,—to press the siege on the left bank,—and to profit of the previous success by raising a breaching battery in the convent of St. Joseph. A bridge was accordingly constructed at St. Lambert, two hundred yards above the town, and two attacks were carried on at the same time.

Hitherto the French troops employed in Aragon formed a part of marshal Bessieres’ corps, but the emperor now directed Lefebre to repair with his brigade to reinforce that marshal, and constituting the Napoleon’s Notes, [Appendix, No. 2.] ten thousand men who remained with Verdier a separate corps, gave this last general the command of it, and promised him reinforcements. Verdier continued to press the siege as closely as his numbers would permit, but, all around him, the insurgents were rapidly organising small armies, and threatened to enclose him in his camp. This obliged him to send detachments against them: and it is singular, that with so few men, while daily fighting with the besieged, he should have been able to scour the country, and put down the insurrection, as far as Lerida, Barbastro, Tudela, Jacca, and Calatayud; the garrison of Pampelona only assisting him from the side of Navarre. In one of these expeditions the powder-mills of Villa Felice, thirty miles distant, were destroyed, and the baron Versage being defeated, was forced to retire with his division towards Valencia.

Cavallero.

During the course of July, Verdier made several assaults on the gate of El Carmen, and others on the Portillo, but he was repulsed in all. The besieged having been reinforced by the regiment of Estremadura, composed of eight hundred old soldiers, in return made a sally with two thousand men to retake the Monte Torrero, but they were beaten, with the loss of their commander; regular approaches were then commenced by the French against the quarter of St. Engracia and the castle of Aljaferia. The 2d of August, the besieged were again reinforced by two hundred men of the Spanish guard and volunteers of Aragon, who brought some artillery with them; the French likewise were strengthened by two old regiments of the line, which increased their numbers to fifteen thousand men.

On the 3d of August, the breaching batteries opened against St. Engracia and Aljaferia; the mortar batteries threw shells at the same time, and a Spanish magazine of powder blowing up in the Cosso (a public walk formed on the line of the ancient Moorish ramparts), destroyed several houses, and killed many of the defenders. The place was then summoned to surrender on terms, but Palafox having rejected all offers, on the 4th of August the town was stormed through a breach in the convent of St. Engracia; the Ibid. French penetrated to the Cosso, and a confused and terrible scene ensued. Some defended the houses, some drew up in the streets, some fled by the suburb to the country, where the French cavalry fell upon them; cries of treason were every where heard, and became the signal for assassinations; all seemed lost, when a column of the assailants seeking the way to the bridge over the Ebro, got entangled in the Arco de Cineja, a long crooked street, and being attacked in that situation, were driven back to the Cosso; others began to plunder, and the Zaragozans recovering courage, fought with desperation, and set fire to the convent of Francisco. At the close of day the French were in possession of one side of the Cosso, and the Spaniards of the other. A hideous and revolting spectacle was exhibited during the action; the Cavallero. public hospital being taken and fired, the madmen confined there issued forth among the combatants, muttering, shouting, singing, and moping, according to the character of their disorder, while drivelling idiots mixed their unmeaning cries with the shouts of contending soldiers.

The Spaniards now perceived, that with courage the town might still be defended; and from that day the fighting was murderous and constant, one party endeavouring to take, the other to defend the houses. In this warfare, where skill was nearly useless, Verdier’s force was too weak to make a rapid progress; S.
Journal of Lefebre’s Operations. MSS. and events disastrous to the French arms taking place in other parts of Spain, he received, about the 10th of August, orders from the king to raise the siege, and retire to Logroña. Of this operation I shall speak in due time.

OBSERVATIONS.

1º. Mere professional skill and enterprise do not constitute a great general. Lefebre Desnouettes, by his activity and boldness, with a tithe of their numbers, defeated the insurgents of Aragon in several actions, and scoured the open country; but the same Lefebre, wanting the higher qualities of a general, failed miserably where that intuitive sagacity that reads passing events aright was required. There were thousands in the French army who could have done as well as him; probably not three who could have reduced Zaragoza, and yet it is manifest that Zaragoza owed her safety to accident, and that the desperate resistance of the inhabitants was more the result of chance than of any peculiar virtue.

2º. The feeble defence made at Mallen, at the Xalon; at the Monte Torrero, at Epila; the terror of the besieged on the 16th, when the French penetrated into the town; the flight of Palafox under the pretence of seeking succour, nay, the very assault which in such a wonderful manner called forth the energy of the Zaragozans, and failed only because the French troops plundered, and missing the road to the bridge, missed that to victory at the same time, proves, that the fate of the city was determined by accident in more than one of those nice conjunctures which men of genius know how to seize, but others leave to the decision of fortune.

3º. However, it must be acknowledged that Lefebre and Verdier, especially the latter, displayed both vigour and talent; for it was no mean exploit to quell the insurrections to a distance of fifty miles on every side, at the same time investing double their own numbers, and pushing the attack with such ardour as to reduce to extremity a city so defended.

4º. The current romantic tales of women rallying the troops, and leading them forward at the most dangerous periods of this siege, I have not touched upon, and may perhaps be allowed to doubt, although it is not unlikely that when suddenly environed with horrors, the delicate sensitiveness of women driving them to a kind of phrensy, might produce actions above the heroism of men; and in patient suffering their superior fortitude is manifest; wherefore I neither wholly believe, nor will deny, their exploits at Zaragoza; merely remarking that for a long time afterwards Spain swarmed with heroines, clothed in half uniforms, and loaded with weapons.

5º. The two circumstances that principally contributed to the success of the defence were, first, the bad discipline of the French soldiers; and secondly, the system of terror which was established by the Spanish leaders, whoever those leaders were. Few soldiers can be restrained from plunder when a town is taken by assault; yet there is no period when the chances of war are so sudden and so decisive, none where the moral responsibility of a general is so great. Will military regulations alone secure the necessary discipline at such a moment? The French army are not deficient in a stern code, and the English army, taken altogether, is probably the best regulated of modern times; but here it is seen that Lefebre failed to take Zaragoza in default of discipline; and in the course of this work it will appear that no wild horde of Tartars ever fell with more licence upon their rich effeminate neighbours than did the English troops upon the Spanish towns taken by storm. The inference to be drawn is, that national institutions alone will produce that moral discipline necessary to make a soldier capable of fulfilling his whole duty; yet a British statesman[8] was not ashamed to declare in parliament that the worst men make the best soldiers; and this odious, narrow-minded, unworthy maxim, had its admirers. That a system of terror was at Zaragoza successfully employed to protract the defence is undoubted. The commandant of Monte Torrero, ostensibly for suffering himself to be defeated, but according to some, for the gratification of private malice, was tried and put to death; and a general of artillery was in a more summary manner killed without any trial; the chief engineer, a man Cavallero. of skill and undaunted courage, was arbitrarily imprisoned; and the slightest word or even gesture of discontent, was punished with instant death. A stern band of priests and plebeian leaders, in whose hands Palafox was a tool, ruled with such furious energy, that resistance to the enemy was less dangerous than disobedience to their orders. Suspicion was the warrant of death, and this system once begun, ceased not until the town was taken in the second siege.

CHAPTER VI.

OPERATIONS IN CATALONIA.

When Barcelona fell into the power of the French, the Spanish garrison amounted to nearly four thousand men; but Duhesme daily fearing a riot in the Cabanes, 1st Part. city, connived at their escape in parties, and even sent the regiment of Estremadura (which was eight hundred strong) entire to Lerida, where, strange to relate, the gates were shut against it; and thus, discarded by both parties, it made its way into Zaragoza during the siege of that place. Many thousand citizens also fled from Barcelona, and joined the patriotic standards in the neighbouring provinces.

Napoleon’s Notes, [Appendix, No. 2.]

After the first ebullition at Manresa, the insurrection of Catalonia lingered awhile; but the junta of Gerona continued to excite the people to take arms, and it was manifest that a general commotion approached; and this was a serious affair, for there were in the beginning of June, including those who Cabanes, 1st Part. came out of Barcelona, five thousand veteran troops in the province, and in the Balearic islands above ten thousand. Sicily contained an English army, and English fleets covered the Mediterranean. Moreover, by the constitution of Catalonia, the whole of the male population fit for war are obliged to assemble at certain points of each district with arms and provisions, whenever the alarum bell, called the somaten, is heard to ring; hence the name of somatenes; and these warlike peasants, either from tradition or experience, are well acquainted with the military value of their mountain holds.

Hostilities soon commenced; Duhesme, following his instructions from Bayonne, detached general Chabran and five thousand two hundred men, with orders to secure Tarragona and Tortosa, to incorporate the Swiss regiment of Wimpfen with his own troops, and to aid marshal Moncey in an attack on Valencia. At St. Cyr.
Victoire et Conquestes des Francois.
Foy.
Cabanes. the same time general Swartz having more than three thousand men, Swiss, Germans, and Italians, under his command, was detached by the way of Martorel and Montserrat to Manresa, with orders to raise contributions, to put down the insurrection, and to destroy the powder mills at the last town; then to get possession of Lerida, and to incorporate all the Swiss troops found there in his own brigade, placing five hundred men in the citadel; after which he was to penetrate into Aragon, and to co-operate with Lefebre against Zaragoza.

These two columns quitted Barcelona the 3d and the 4th of June. A heavy rain induced Swartz to stop all the 5th at Martorel: the 6th he resumed his march, but without any military precautions, although the Ibid. object of his expedition was known, and the somaten ringing out among the hills, the peasants of eight districts were assembled in arms; these men took a resolution to defend the pass of Bruch, and the most active of the Manresa and Igualada districts, assisted by a few old soldiers, immediately repaired there, and posted themselves on the rocks. Swartz coming on in a careless manner, a heavy but distant fire opened from all parts on his column, and created a little confusion, but order was soon restored, and the Catalans being beaten from their strong holds, were pursued for four or five miles along the main road. At Casa Mansana, where a cross road leads to Manresa, one part broke away, the others continued their flight to Igualada. Swartz, a man evidently destitute of talent, halted at the very moment when his success was complete, and the road to Manresa open; the Catalans seeing his hesitation first rallied in the rear of Casa Mansana, then returned to the attack, and drove the advanced guard back upon the main body. The French general became alarmed, formed a square, and retired hastily towards Esparraguéra, followed and flanked by clouds of somatenes, whose courage and numbers increased every moment; at Esparraguéra, which was a long single street, the inhabitants had prepared an ambush; but Swartz, who arrived at twilight, getting intelligence of their design, passed to the right and left of the houses, and continuing his flight reached Martorel the 7th, having lost a gun and many men by this inglorious expedition, from which he returned in such disorder, and with his soldiers so discouraged, that Duhesme thought it necessary to recall Chabran from Tarragona.

The country westward of the Llobregat is rugged and difficult for an army, yet Chabran reached Tarragona on the 8th without encountering an enemy; but when he attempted to return, the line of his march was intercepted by the insurgents, who took post at Vendrill, Arbos, and Villa Franca, and spread themselves along the banks of the Llobregat. As he approached Vendrill the somatenes fell back to Arbos, but a skirmish commencing at this latter place, the Catalans were defeated. Chabran set fire to the town, and proceeded to Villa Franca. Here the excesses so common at this time among the Spaniards were not spared; the governor, an old man, and several of his friends, were murdered, and the perpetrators of these crimes, as might be expected, made little or no defence against the enemy.

Meanwhile general Lechi moved out of Barcelona, and acting in concert with Swartz’s brigade, which marched from Martorel, cleared the banks of the Llobregat, and formed a junction at San Felice with Chabran on the 11th. The latter, after a day’s rest, having his division completed by the brigade of Swartz, marched against Manresa to repair the former disgrace; he arrived at Bruch the 14th, but the somatenes were also there, and assisted by some regular troops with artillery. Finding that in a partial skirmish he made no impression, Chabran, more timid even than Swartz, took the extraordinary resolution of retreating, or rather flying from those gallant peasants, who pursued him with scoffs and a galling fire back to the very walls of Barcelona.

This success spurred on the insurrection; Gerona, Rosas, Hostalrich, and Tarragona prepared for defence. The somatenes assembling in the Ampurdan obliged the French commandant to quit the town of Figueras, and shut himself up with three hundred men in the citadel, while others gathering between the Ter and the Besos, intercepted all communication between France and Barcelona.

In this predicament Duhesme resolved to make a sudden attempt on Gerona, and for this purpose drew out six thousand of his best troops, and eight pieces of artillery; but as the fortress of Hostalrich stood in the direct road, he followed the coast line, and employed a French privateer, then in the harbour, to attend his march. The somatenes got intelligence of his designs: one multitude took possession of the heights of Moncada, which are six miles from Barcelona, and overhang the road to Hostalrich; another multitude was posted on the ridge of Mongat, which, at the same distance from Barcelona, abuts on the sea; an intrenched castle, with a battery of fifteen guns, protected their left, and their right was slightly connected with the people at Moncada.

The 17th, Duhesme, after some false show to hide his real attack, fell upon the castle of Mongat, where the greater mass of the Catalans being posted, were defeated with slaughter; a detachment from Barcelona dispersing those of Moncada at the same time.

The 18th, the town of Mattaro being taken was plundered, although a few cannon-shot only had been fired in its defence. The somatenes were also defeated at the pass of San Pol. The 19th, the French halted at San Tione, but at nine o’clock on the morning of the 20th, they appeared before the walls of Gerona.

This town, built on the right bank of the Ter, is cut in two by the Oña. To the eastward it is confined by strong rocky hills, whose points filling the space between the right bank of the Oña and the Ter, overlook the town at different distances. Fort Mont Jouy, a regular fortification, crowned the nearest hill or table land, at five hundred yards distance, and three forts (that of the Constable, of queen Anne, and of the Capuchins), being connected by a ditch and rampart, formed one irregular outwork, a thousand yards in length, and commanding all the ridge to the south-east. The summit of this ridge is five, eight, and twelve hundred yards from Gerona, and sixteen hundred from Fort Mont Jouy, being separated from the latter by the narrow valley and stream of the Gallegan. South-west, between the left of the Oña and the Ter, the country, comparatively flat, is, however, full of hollows and clefts close to the town. The body of the place on that side was defended by a ditch and five regular bastions connected by a wall with towers. To the west the city was covered by the Ter, and on the east fortified by a long wall with towers having an irregular bastion at each extremity, and some small detached works placed at the opening of the valley of Gallegan. Three hundred of the regiment of Ultonia and some artillerymen composed the garrison of Gerona, but they were assisted by volunteers and by the citizens; and the somatenes also assembled on the left of the Ter to defend the passage of that river.

Duhesme, after provoking some cannon-shot from the forts, occupied the village of St. Eugenia in the plain, and making a feint as if to pass the Ter by the bridge of Salt, engaged the somatenes in a useless skirmish. Great part of the day was spent by him in preparing ladders for an attack; but at five o’clock in the evening the French artillery opened from the heights of Palau, and a column crossing the Oña passed between the outworks and the town, threw out a detachment to keep the garrison of the former in check, and assaulted the gate of El Carmen. This attempt failed completely and with great loss to the assailants. Two hours afterwards another column, advancing by the plain on the left of the Oña, made an assault on the bastion of Santa Clara, but with so little arrangement, or discipline, that the storming party moved forward without their ladders, and although the hollows favoured St. Cyr. them so much that they arrived under the walls without being perceived, and that the Neapolitan colonel Ambrosio, with a few others, actually gained the ramparts by means of the single ladder brought up, the confusion was too great to be remedied. And a detachment of the regiment of Ultonia coming from the other side of the town, charged the assailants, bayoneted those who were upon the walls, and drove the rest back. Another feeble effort made after dark likewise failed.

Duhesme tried some useless negotiations on the following day; but dreading a longer absence from Barcelona, broke up on the 22d, and returned by forced marches. As he passed Mattaro he left Chabran with some troops in that town. Meanwhile the victorious somatenes of Bruch had descended the Llobregat, rallied those of the lower country, and getting artillery from Taragona and other fortresses, planted batteries at the different passages of the river, and entrenched a line from San Boy to Martorel. Regular officers now took the command of the peasants; colonel Milans assembled a body at Granollers; don Juan Claros put himself at the head of the peasants of the Ampurdan; and colonel Baget took the command of those at Bruch.

General Chabran, after a few days’ rest at Mattaro, made a foraging excursion through the district of El Vallés. Milans, who held the valley of the Congosta, encountered him near Granollers; both sides claimed the victory, but Chabran retired to Barcelona, and Milans remained on the banks of the Besos. The 30th Duhesme caused the somatenes on the Llobregat to be attacked; general Lechi menaced those at the bridge of Molinos del Rey, while the brigades of Bessieres and Goullus, crossing at San Boy, surprised a battery at that point and turned the whole line. Lechi then crossed the river by the bridge of Molinos, ascended the left bank, took all the artillery, burnt several villages, killed a number of the somatenes, and put the rest to flight. They rallied again, however, at Bruch and Igualada, and returning the 6th of July, infested the immediate vicinity of Barcelona, taking possession of all the hills between San Boy and Moncada, and connecting their operations with colonel Milans. Other parties collected between the Besos and the Ter, and extended the line of insurrection to the Ampurdan; Juan Claros occupied the flat country about Rosas, and the French garrison of Figueras having burnt the town, were blocked up in the fort of San Fernando by two thousand somatenes of the Pyrenees. A nest of Spanish privateers was formed in Palamos Bay, and two English frigates, the Imperieuse and the Cambrian, watched the coast from Rosas to Barcelona.

A supreme junta being now established at Lerida, opened an intercourse with Aragon, Valencia, Seville, Gibraltar, and the Balearic islands, and decreed that forty tercios or regiments of one thousand men, to be selected from the somatenes, should be paid and organized as regular troops, and that forty others should be kept in reserve, but without pay.

This state of affairs being made known to Napoleon through the medium of the moveable columns watching the valleys of the eastern Pyrenees, he ordered general Reille, commanding the reserve at Perpignan, to take the first soldiers at hand and march to the relief of Figueras, after which, his force being increased by drafts from the interior of France, to nine thousand men, he was to assault Rosas and to besiege Gerona. The emperor imagined, that the fall of the latter place would induce the surrender of Lerida, and would so tranquillize Catalonia, that five thousand men might again be detached towards Valencia. On receiving this order, Reille with two battalions of Tuscan recruits, conducted a convoy safely to Figueras and raised the blockade, but not without difficulty, for his troops were greatly terrified and could scarcely be kept to their colours. He relieved the place the Foy’s History. 10th of July, and the same day Duhesme, who had been preparing for a second attack on Gerona, quitted Barcelona with six thousand infantry, some cavalry, a battering train of twenty-two pieces, and a great number of country carriages to transport his ammunition and stores, general Lechi remaining in the city with five thousand men. Meanwhile Reille having victualled Figueras and received a part of his reinforcements, proceeded to invest Rosas; but he had scarcely appeared Lord Collingwood’s despatch, Aug. 27.
Foy’s History. before it when Juan Claros raised the country in his rear; and Captain Otway, of the Montague, landing with some marines, joined the migueletes: the French were forced to retire, and lost two hundred men in their retreat.

Duhesme pursued his march by the coast, whereupon the somatenes of that part broke up the road in his front; Milans hung upon his left, and lord Cochrane, with the Imperieuse frigate and some Spanish vessels, cannonaded his right flank. In this dilemma he remained five days in front of Arenas de Mar; and then dividing his forces, sent one part across the mountains by Villagorguin, and another by St. Iscle; the first made an attempt on Hostalrich, but failed; the second beat away colonel Milans and dispersed the somatenes of the Tordera; finally, Duhesme united his people before Gerona on the 22d, but he had lost many carriages during the march. The 23d he passed the Ter and dispersed the migueletes that guarded the left bank. The 24th general Reille coming from Figueras with six thousand men, took post at Puente Mayor, and the town was invested with a line extending from that point by the heights of San Miguel to the Monte Livio; from Monte Livio by the plain to the bridge of Salt, and from thence along the left bank of the Ter to Sarria. The garrison consisting of five hundred migueletes and four hundred of the regiment of Ultonia, was reinforced on the 25th by thirteen hundred of the regiment of Barcelona, who entered the town with two guns. All the defences were in bad repair, but the people were resolute. The night of the 27th, a French column passing the valley of Galligan, gained the table land of Fort Mont Jouy, and made lodgements in three towers of masonry which the Spaniards had abandoned St. Cyr. Campaign in Catalonia. in the first moment of surprise. This advantage elated Duhesme so much, that he resolved, without consulting his engineers, to break ground on that side.

Cabanes’ History.

At this period a great change in the affairs of Catalonia took place; the insurrection had hitherto been confined to the exertions of the unorganised somatenes and was without system; but now a treaty between lord Collingwood, who commanded the British navy in the Mediterranean, and the marquis of Palacios, who was captain-general of the Balearic isles, having been concluded, the Spanish fleet and the troops in Minorca, Majorca, and Ivica, became disposable for the service of the patriots. Palacios immediately sent thirteen hundred to the port of San Felice di Quixols to reinforce the garrison of Gerona. These men entered that city, as we have seen, on the 25th, and Palacios himself disembarked four thousand others Cabanes’ History, 2d Part. at Tarragona on the 22d, together with thirty-seven pieces of artillery; an event that excited universal joy, and produced a surprising eagerness to fight the French.

The supreme junta immediately repaired to Tarragona, declared Palacios their president, and created him commander-in-chief, subject, however, to the tutelar saint Narcissus, who was appointed generalissimo St Cyr. of the forces by sea and land, and the ensigns of authority, with due solemnity, placed on his coffin. Cabanes’ History, 2d Part. The first object with Palacios was to re-establish the line of the Llobregat. To effect this, the count of Caldagues, with eighteen hundred men and four guns, marched from Tarragona in two columns, the one moving by the coast way to San Boy, and the other by the royal road, through Villafranca and Ordal. Caldagues, in passing by the bridge of Molino del Rey, established a post there, and then ascending the left bank, fixed his quarters at Martorel, where colonel Baget joined him with three thousand migueletes of the new levy.

The Llobregat runs within a few miles of Barcelona, but the right bank being much the steepest, the lateral communications easier, and the heights commanding a distinct view of every thing passing on the opposite side; the line taken by Caldagues was strong, and the country in his rear rough, full of defiles, and very fitting for a retreat after the loss of a battle. General Lechi, thus hemmed in on the west, was also hampered on the north, for the mountains filling all the space between the Llobregat and the Besos, approach in tongues as near as two and three miles from Barcelona; and the somatenes of the Manresa and Valls districts occupied them, and skirmished daily with the French outposts. Beyond the Besos, which bounds Barcelona on the eastward, a lofty continuous ridge extending to Hostalrich, runs parallel to, and at the distance of two or three miles from the sea coast, separating the main and the marine roads, and sending its shoots down to the water’s edge. This ridge also swarmed with somatenes, who cut off all communication with Duhesme, and lay in leaguer round the castle of Mongat, in which were eighty or ninety French. The Cambrian and the Imperieuse frigates blockaded the harbour of Barcelona; and, on the 31st of July, lord Cochrane having brought his Lord Collingwood’s despatches. vessel alongside of Mongat, landed his marines, and, in concert with the somatenes, took it, blew up the works, and rolled the rocks and ruins down in such a manner as to destroy the road. Thus, at the very moment that Duhesme commenced the siege of Gerona, he was cut off from his own base of operations, and the communication between Figueras and general Reille’s division, was equally insecure, for the latter’s St. Cyr. convoys were attacked the 28th of July, the 3d of August, and so fiercely on the 6th, that a Neapolitan battalion was surrounded, and lost one hundred and fifty men.

Palacios, whose forces increased daily, wished to make an effort in favour of Gerona, and with this view sent the count of Caldagues, at the head of three or four thousand men (part migueletes, part regulars), to interrupt the progress of the siege, intending to follow himself with greater forces. Caldagues left Martorel the evening of the 6th, marched by Tarrasa, Sabadell, Granollers, and San Celoni, and reached Hostalrich the morning of the 10th; there his force was increased to five thousand men and four guns. The 13th, he entered Llagostera; the 14th Castellar, a small place situated behind the ridges that overlook Gerona, and only five miles from the French camps. Don Juan Claros, with two thousand five hundred migueletes, mixed with some Walloon and Spanish guards from Rosas, met him at Castellar, as did also colonel Milans with eight hundred somatenes.

Caldagues having opened a communication with the junta of Gerona, found that Fort Mont Jouy was upon the point of surrendering, and that the French, who were ignorant of his approach, had, contrary to good discipline, heaped their forces in the plain between the left of the Oña and the Ter, but only kept a slender guard on the hills, while a single battalion protected the batteries raised against Mont Jouy. Being an enterprising man, Caldagues resolved to make an immediate effort for the relief of the place, and, after a careful observation on the 15th, divided his forces, and the 16th fell, with several columns, on the weakest part of the besiegers’ line. The garrison sallied forth at the same time from Mont Jouy, and the French guards being taken between two fires, were quickly overpowered, and driven first to the Puente Mayor and finally over the Ter. The Spaniards re-formed on the hills, expecting to be attacked; but Duhesme and Reille remained quiet until dark, then breaking up the siege, they fled away, the one to Figueras, the other to Barcelona, leaving both artillery and stores behind.

Duhesme endeavoured to pass along the coast, but, on his arrival at Callella, he discovered that the road was cut by ditches, that an English frigate was prepared to rake his columns on the march, and that all the heights were occupied by the somatenes; whereupon, destroying his ammunition, throwing his remaining artillery over the rocks, and taking to by-ways in the mountains, he forced a passage through the midst of the somatenes to Mongat, where general Lechi met him the 20th, and covered his retreat into Barcelona. Thus ended Duhesme’s second attempt against Gerona.

Observation 1.—Three great communications pierce the Pyrenean frontier of Catalonia, leading directly upon Barcelona.

The first, or Puycerda road, penetrates between the sources of the Segre and the Ter.

The second, or Campredon road, between the sources of the Ter and the Fluvia.

The third, or Figueras road, between the sources of the Muga and the sea-coast.

The first and second unite at Vicque; the second and third are connected by a transverse road running from Olot, by Castle Follit, to Gerona; the third also dividing near the latter town, leads with one branch through Hostalrich, and with the other follows the line of the coast. After the union of the first and second at Vicque, a single route pursues the stream of the Besos to Barcelona, thus turning the Muga, the Fluvia, the Ter, the Tordera, Besos, and an infinity of minor streams, that, descending from the mountains, in their rapid course to the Mediterranean, furrow all the country between the eastern Pyrenees and Barcelona. The third, which is the direct and best communication between Perpignan and the capital of Catalonia, crosses all the above-named rivers, whose deep channels and sudden floods offer serious obstacles to the march of an army.

All these roads, with the exception of that from Olot to Gerona, are separated by craggy ridges of mountains scarcely to be passed by troops; and the two first leading through wild and savage districts, are incommoded by defiles, and protected by a number of old castles and walled places, more or less capable of resistance. The third, passing through many rich and flourishing places, is however completely blocked to an invader by the strong fortresses of Figueras and Rosas on the Muga, of Gerona on the Ter, and Hostalrich on the Tordera. Palamos and several castles likewise impede the coast road, which is moreover skirted by rocky mountains, and exposed for many leagues to the fire of a fleet. Such is Catalonia, eastward and northward of Barcelona.

On the west, at five or six miles distance, the Llobregat cuts it off from a rough and lofty tract, through which the Cardena, the Noga, the Foix, Gaya, Anguera, and Francoli rivers, break in deep channels, descending in nearly parallel lines to the coast, and the spaces between being gorged with mountains, and studded with fortified places which command all the main roads. The plains and fertile valleys are so few and contracted, that Catalonia may, with the exception of the rich parts about Lerida and the Urgel, be described as a huge mass of rocks and torrents, incapable of supplying subsistence even for the inhabitants, whose prosperity depends entirely upon manufactures and commerce.

Barcelona, the richest and most populous city in Spain, is the heart of the province, and whoso masters it, if he can hold it, may suck the strength of Catalonia away. A French army, without a commanding fleet to assist, can scarcely take or keep Barcelona; the troops must be supplied by regular convoys from France; the fortresses on the line of communication must be taken and provisioned, and the active intelligent population of the country must be beaten from the rivers, pursued into their fortresses, and warred down by exertions which none but the best troops are capable of: for the Catalans are robust, numerous, and brave enough after their own manner.

Observation 2d.—It follows from this exposition, that Duhesme evinced a surprising want of forethought and military sagacity, in neglecting to secure Gerona, Hostalrich, and Tarragona, with garrisons, when his troops were received into those places. It was this negligence that rendered the timid operations of Swartz and Chabran capital errors; it was this that enabled some poor injured and indignant peasants to kindle a mighty war, and in a very few weeks obliged Napoleon to send thirty thousand men to the relief of Barcelona.

Observation 3d.—Duhesme was experienced in battles, and his energy and resources of mind have been praised by a great authority; but undoubtedly an absence of prudent calculation and arrangement, a total neglect of military discipline, marked all his operations in Catalonia; witness his mode of attack St Cyr. on Gerona, the deficiency of ladders, and the confusion of the assaults. Witness also his raising of the second siege, and absolute flight from Caldagues, whose rash enterprise, although crowned with success, should have caused his own destruction.

In those affairs it is certain Duhesme displayed neither talent nor vigour; but in the severities he exercised at the sacking of Mattaro, in the burning Napoleon’s Notes, [Appendix, No. 2.] of villages, which he executed to the extreme verge St. Cyr.
Cabanes. of, if not beyond what the harshest laws of war will justify, an odious energy was apparent, and as the ardour of the somatenes was rather increased than repressed by these vigorous proceedings, his conduct may be deemed as impolitic as it was barbarous.

Observation 4th.—In Catalonia all the inherent cruelty of the Spaniards was as grossly displayed as in any other province of Spain. The Catalans were likewise vain and superstitious; but their courage was higher, their patriotism purer, and their efforts more sustained; the somatenes were bold and active in battle, the population of the towns firm, and the juntas apparently disinterested. The praise merited and bestowed upon the people of Zaragoza is great; but Gerona more justly claims the admiration of mankind; for the Aragonese troops were by Lefebre driven from the open country in crowds to their capital, and little was wanted to induce them to surrender at once; it was not until the last hour that, gathering courage from despair, the people of Zaragoza put forth all their energy: whereas those of Gerona, although attacked by a greater force, and possessing fewer means of defence, without any internal system of terror to counterbalance their fear of the enemy, manfully and successfully resisted from the first. The people of Zaragoza rallied at their hearthstone; those of Gerona stood firm at the porch. But quitting these matters, I must now, following the order I have marked out, proceed to relate the occurrences in Valencia.

OPERATIONS OF MARSHAL MONCEY.

The execution of Calvo and his followers changed the horrid aspect of the Valencian insurrection; the spirit of murder was checked, and the patriotic energy assumed a nobler appearance. Murcia and Valencia were united as one province; and towards the end of June, nearly thirty thousand men, armed and provided with artillery, attested the resources of these rich provinces, and the activity of their chiefs. The Valencians then conceived the plan of marching to the assistance of the Aragonese; but Napoleon had already prescribed the measures which were to render such a movement abortive.

An order, dated the 30th of May, directed Moncey to move, with a column of ten thousand men, upon Cuenca; from that point he was to watch the country S.
Journal of Moncey’s Operations. MSS. comprised between the lower Ebro and Carthagena, and he was empowered to act against the city of Valencia if he judged it fitting to do so. The position of Cuenca was advantageous; a short movement from thence to the left would place Moncey’s troops upon the direct line between Valencia and Zaragoza, and enable him to intercept all communication between those towns; and a few marches to the right placed him upon the junction of the roads leading from Carthagena and Valencia to Madrid. If Moncey thought it essential to attack Valencia, the division of general Chabran was to co-operate from the side of Catalonia. By this combination the operations of Lefebre Desnouettes at Zaragoza, and those of Duhesme in Catalonia, were covered from the Valencians; and at the same time the flank of the French army at Madrid was protected on the side of Murcia.

The 6th of June Moncey marched from Aranjuez by Santa Cruz, Tarancon, Carascoso, and Villa del Orma, and reached Cuenca the 11th. There he received information of the rapid progress of the insurrection, of the state of the Valencian army, and Ibid. of the projected movement to relieve Zaragoza; he immediately resolved to make an attempt against the city of Valencia, and wrote to general Chabran, whom he supposed to be at Tortosa, directing him to march upon Castellon de la Plana, a town situated at some distance eastward of the river Guadalaviar. Moncey himself proposed, by a march through Requeña, to clear the country westward of that river, and fixed upon the 25th of June as the latest period at which the two columns were to communicate in the immediate vicinity of Valencia.

Halting from the 11th to the 16th at Cuenca, he marched the 17th to Tortola, the 18th to Buenaches, the 19th to Matilla, the 20th to Minglanilla, and the 21st to Pesquiera. From Buenaches to Pesquiera no inhabitants were to be seen; the villages were deserted, and either from fear or hatred, every living person fled before his footsteps. At length, a Swiss regiment, some of the Spanish guards, and a body of armed peasantry, made a stand at the bridge of Pajaso, upon the river Cabriel; the manner in which the country had been forsaken, the gloomy and desolate marches, and the sudden appearance of an armed force ready to dispute this important pass, prognosticated a desperate conflict; but the event belied the omens; and scarcely any resistance was made; the French easily forced the passage of the bridge; the peasants fled, and the Swiss and Spanish guards came over to the side of the victors.

Moncey informed general Chabran of this success, and appointed the 27th and 28th for a junction under Ibid. the walls of Valencia. The next day he took a position at Otiel; but hearing that the defeated patriots had rallied and being reinforced, were, to the number of ten or twelve thousand, intrenching themselves upon his left, he quitted the direct line of march to attack them in their post of Cabreras, which was somewhat in advance of the Siete Aguas. The Spanish position was of extraordinary strength, the flanks rested upon steep rocky mountains, and the only approach to the front was through a long narrow defile, formed by high scarped rocks, whose tops, inaccessible from the French side, were covered with the armed peasantry of the neighbourhood. A direct assault upon such a position could not succeed, and general Harispe was directed to turn it by the right, while the cavalry and artillery occupied the attention of the Spaniards in front; after overcoming many obstacles offered by the impracticable nature of the ground, Harispe reached the main body of the Spaniards, and then easily defeated them, taking all their cannon, ammunition, and baggage. This action, which took place upon the 24th, freed the left flank of Moncey’s army, and he resumed his march upon the direct road to Valencia. The 25th he was at the Venta de Buñol, the 26th in advance of Chieva, and the 27th he arrived in front of Valencia.

A complete circuit of the ancient walls was in existence, and all the approaches were commanded by works which had been hastily repaired or newly raised by the inhabitants; the citadel was in a tolerable state of defence, and the population were preparing for a vigorous resistance. A city containing eighty thousand people, actuated by the most violent passions, cannot be easily overcome, and the Valencians derived additional strength from the situation of their town, built as it was upon low ground, and encircled with numerous canals and cuts, made for the purposes of irrigation; the deep ditches of the place were filled with water, so that no approach could be made by the small force under Moncey except against the gates. It is said that the marshal had corrupted a smuggler, who promised to betray the city during the heat of the assault, and it is probable that some secret understanding of that kind induced the French commander to make an attempt which would otherwise have been rash and unmilitary.

Don Joseph Caro, a brother of the marquis of Romana, was with four thousand men entrenched behind the canal of the Guadalaviar, which was five miles in advance of the city gates. The village of Quarte, and some thickly planted mulberry trees, helped to render this post very strong; and when Moncey attacked it upon the 27th, he met with a vigorous resistance. Caro was, however, beaten, and chased into the city, with the loss of some cannon, and on the 28th the French drove in the outposts, and occupied all the principal avenues of the town.

However enthusiastic the patriots were while their enemy was at a distance, his near approach filled them with terror, and it is possible that a vigorous assault might have succeeded at the first moment of consternation. But the favourable opportunity, if it really existed, quickly passed away; Padre Rico, a friar distinguished by his resolution, traversing the streets, with a cross in one hand and a sword in the other, aroused the sinking spirit and excited the fanaticism of the multitude; the fear of retaliation for the massacre of the French residents, and the certainty that Moncey’s troops were few, powerfully seconded his efforts; and as it is usual for undisciplined masses of people to pass suddenly from one extreme to another, fear was soon succeeded by enthusiasm.

After disposing his field-pieces on the most favourable points, and while the impression of the first defeat was still fresh, Moncey summoned the governor to surrender. But the latter answered, “That he would defend the city.” The French guns then opened upon the place; the heavy guns of the Spaniards, however, soon overpowered them, and a warm skirmish ensuing about the houses of the suburbs and the vicinity of the gates, the Valencians so obstinately resisted, that when the night fell, not only no serious impression had been made upon the defences, but the assailants were repulsed with loss at every point. The situation of the French marshal became delicate; the persons sent to seek Chabran could gain no intelligence of that general’s movements; the secret connexions in the town, if any there were, had failed; the ammunition was nearly expended, and the army was encumbered with seven or eight hundred wounded men, and among them the general of engineers. Moncey, swayed by these embarrassments, relinquished his attack, and fell back to Quarte on the 29th, being harassed by Caro and the populace in his retreat.

When it is considered that in a great city only a small number of persons can estimate justly the immense advantages of their situation, and the comparative weakness of the enemy, it must be confessed that the spirit displayed by the Valencians upon this occasion was very great; unfortunately it ended there, nothing worthy of such an energetic commencement was afterwards performed, although very considerable armies were either raised or maintained in the province.

Journal of Moncey.

At Quarte Moncey, hearing that the captain-general, Serbelloni, was marching upon Almanza to intercept the communication with Chieva and Buñol, resolved to relinquish the line of Cuenca, and to attack Serbelloni before he could quit the kingdom of Murcia. This vigorous resolution he executed with great celerity; for, directing the head of his column towards Torrente, he continued his march until night, halting a short distance from that town. And a forced march the next day brought him near Alcira, only one league from the river Xucar; from his bivouac at that place he despatched advice to general Chabran of this change of affairs.

In the mean time the conde de Serbelloni, surprised in the midst of his movement, and disconcerted in his calculations by the decision and rapidity of Moncey, took up a position to defend the passage of the Xucar; the line of that river is strong, and offers many advantageous points of resistance; but the Spaniards imprudently occupied both banks, and in this exposed situation were attacked upon the morning of the 1st of July; the division on the French side was overthrown, and the passage forced without loss of time. Serbelloni then retired to the heights of San Felice, which covered the main road leading from Alcira to Almanza, hoping to secure the defiles in front of the latter town before the enemy could arrive there; but Moncey was again too quick for him; for leaving San Felice to his left, he continued his march on another route, and by a strenuous exertion seized upon the gorge of the defiles near Almanza late in the night of the 2d; the Spanish troops in the mean time approached his position, but were dispersed at day-break on the 3d, and some of their guns captured; the road being now open, Moncey entered the town of Almanza the same day. The 4th he took post at Bonete. The 5th near Chinchilla, and the 6th at Albacete, where he got intelligence that general Frere, who should have been at St. Clemente with a division, was gone towards Mequeña.

To explain this movement it is necessary to observe that when Dupont marched towards Andalusia, and Moncey against Valencia, the remaining divisions of their corps were employed by Savary to scour the country in the neighbourhood of Madrid, and to protect the rear and connect the operations of those generals; thus general Gobert, who, following Napoleon’s orders, should have been at Valladolid, was sent with the third division of Dupont towards Andalusia; and general Frere (commanding the second division of Moncey’s), who should have been at San Clemente, a central point, from whence he could gain the road leading from Seville to La Mancha, and intercept the communication between Valencia and Cuenca, or seize upon the point of junction where the route from Carthagena and Murcia falls into the road of Valencia, was sent by Requeña to reinforce Moncey.

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Cuenca rose in arms, and being joined by a force of seven or eight thousand peasants, overpowered and destroyed a French detachment left in that town. The duke of Rovigo, fearing that Moncey’s column would be compromised by this insurrection, ordered general Caulaincourt, then at Taracon, to quell it with a force composed of cavalry and some provisional battalions. Caulaincourt arrived in front of Cuenca on the evening of the 3d of July; finding the insurgents in position, he attacked and dispersed them with great slaughter, and the town being deserted by the inhabitants, was given up to pillage.

In the mean time, Frere, who had quitted San Clemente upon the 26th, made his way to Requeña; there he received intelligence of Caulaincourt’s success, and that Moncey had passed the Xucar; whereupon, retracing his steps, he returned to San Clemente, his troops being wearied, sickly, and exhausted by these long and useless marches in the heats of summer. Moncey now re-organized his forces, and prepared artillery and other means for a second attempt against Valencia; but he was interrupted by Savary, who, alarmed at the advance of Cuesta and Blake, recalled Foy’s History. Frere towards Madrid, and Moncey, justly offended that Savary, inflated with momentary power, should treat him with so little ceremony, broke up from San Clemente, and likewise returned by the way of Ocaña to the capital.

OBSERVATIONS.

1º. The result of marshal Moncey’s campaign being published by the Spaniards as a great and decisive failure, produced extravagant hopes of final success; a happy illusion if the chiefs had not partaken of it, and pursued their wild course of mutual flattery and exaggeration, without reflecting that in truth there was nothing very satisfactory in the prospect of affairs. Moncey’s operation was in the nature of a moveable column; the object of which was to prevent the junction of the Valencian army with the Aragonese. The attempt upon the town of Valencia was a simple experiment, which, if successful, would have produced great effects, but having failed, the evil resulting was but trifling in a military [Appendix, No. 7.] point of view. Valencia was not the essential object of the expedition, and the fate of the general campaign depended upon the armies in Old Castile.

2º. It was consoling that a rich and flourishing town had not fallen into the power of the enemy; but at the same time a want of real nerve in the Spanish insurrection was visible. The kingdoms of Murcia and Valencia acted in concert, and contained two of the richest sea-port towns in the Peninsula; their united force amounted to thirty thousand organised troops, exclusive of the armed peasants in various districts; and the populace of Valencia were deeply committed by the massacre of the French residents. Here then, if in any place, a strenuous resistance was to be expected; nevertheless, marshal Moncey, whose whole force was at first only eight thousand French, and never exceeded ten thousand men, continued marching and fighting without cessation for a month, during which period he forced two of the strongest mountain passes in the world, crossed several large and difficult rivers, carried the war into the very streets of Valencia; and being disappointed of assistance from Catalonia, extricated his division from a difficult situation, after having defeated his opponents in five actions, killed and wounded a number of them, equal in amount to the whole of his own force, and made a circuit of above three hundred miles through a hostile and populous country, without having sustained any serious loss, without any desertion from the Spanish battalions incorporated with his own, and what was of more importance, having those battalions much increased by desertions from the enemy. In short, the great object of the expedition had been attained, the plan of relieving Zaragoza was entirely frustrated, and the organization of an efficient Spanish force retarded.

3º. Moncey could hardly have expected to succeed against the town of Valencia; for to use Napoleon’s words, “a city, with eighty thousand inhabitants, barricadoed streets, and artillery placed at the gates, cannot be TAKEN BY THE COLLAR.”

4º. General Frere’s useless march to Requeña was very hurtful to the French; and the duke of Rovigo was rated by the emperor for his want of judgment upon the occasion; “it was a folly,” the latter writes, “to dream of reinforcing Moncey; because if that marshal failed in taking the city by a sudden assault, it became an affair of artillery; and twenty thousand men, more or less, would not enable him to succeed.” “Frere could do nothing at Valencia, but he could do a great deal at San Clemente; because from that post he could support either Madrid or general Dupont.”

5º. Moncey was slightly blamed by the emperor for not halting within a day’s march of Valencia, in order to break the spirit of the people, and make them feel the weight of the war; but this opinion was probably formed upon an imperfect knowledge of the local details. The marshal’s line of operations from Cuenca was infested by insurgent bands, his ammunition was nearly exhausted, he could hear nothing of Chabran’s division, and the whole force of Murcia was collecting upon his flank and rear. The country behind him was favourable for his adversaries, and his army was encumbered by a number of wounded men; it was surely prudent under such circumstances, to open his communication again with Madrid as quickly as possible.

By some authors, the repulse at Valencia has been classed with the inglorious defeat of Dupont at Baylen; but there was a wide difference between those events, the generals, and the results. Moncey, although an old man, was vigorous, active, and decided; and the check he received produced little effect. Dupont was irresolute, slow, and incapable, if not worse, as I shall hereafter show; but before describing his campaign, I must narrate the operations of the Gallician army.

CHAPTER VII.

OPERATIONS OF BESSIERES AGAINST BLAKE AND CUESTA.

While the moveable columns of Bessieres’ corps ranged over the Asturian and Biscayan mountains, and dispersed the insurgent patriots of those provinces, Cuesta, undismayed by his defeat at Cabezon, collected another army at Benevente, and, in concert with the Gallician forces, prepared to advance again towards Burgos.

Filanghieri, the captain-general of Gallicia, had organised the troops in that kingdom without difficulty, because the abundant supplies poured in from England were beginning to be felt; and patriotism is never more efficacious than when supported by large sums of money. Taranco’s soldiers joined to the garrisons of Ferrol and Coruña were increased, by new levies, to twenty-five thousand men, organised in four divisions, and being well equipped, and provided with a considerable train of artillery, were assembled at Manzanal, a strong post in the mountains, twelve miles behind Astorga.

The situation of that city offered great advantages to the Spaniards; the old Moorish walls which surrounded it were complete, and susceptible of being strengthened, so as to require a regular siege; but a siege could not be undertaken by a small force, while the army of Gallicia was entrenched at Manzanal, and while Cuesta remained at Benevente; neither could Bessieres, with any prudence, attack the Gallicians at Manzanal while Cuesta was at Benevente, and while Astorga contained a strong garrison. Filanghieri appears to have had some notion of its value, for he commenced forming an entrenched camp in the mountains; but being slain by his soldiers, don Joachim Blake succeeded to the command, and probably fearing a similar fate if the army remained stationary, left one division at Manzanal, and with the remainder marched towards Benevente to unite with Cuesta.