A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 18

For the moment the eyes of all Europe were fixed upon the British army in Spain. Sir Arthur Wellesley, who took command at Lisbon in the spring, had driven Soult out of Oporto, and was advancing by the valley of the Tagus upon the Spanish capital. Some appearance of additional strength was given to him by the support of a Spanish army under the command of General Cuesta. Wellesley's march had, however, been delayed by the neglect and bad faith of the Spanish Government, and time had been given to Soult to collect a large force in the neighbourhood of Salamanca, ready either to fall upon Wellesley from the north, or to unite with another French army which lay at Talavera, if its commander, Victor, had the wisdom to postpone an engagement. The English general knew nothing of Soult's presence on his flank: he continued his march towards Madrid along the valley of the Tagus, and finally drew up for battle at Talavera, when Victor, after retreating before Cuesta to some distance, hunted back his Spanish pursuer to the point from which he had started. [161] The first attack was made by Victor upon the English positions at evening on the 27th of July. Next morning the a.s.sault was renewed, and the battle became general. Wellesley gained a complete victory, but the English themselves suffered heavily, and the army remained in its position. Within the next few days Soult was discovered to be descending from the mountains between Salamanca and the Tagus. A force superior to Wellesley's own threatened to close upon him from the rear, and to hem him in between two fires. The sacrifices of Talavera proved to have been made in vain. Wellesley had no choice but to abandon his advance upon the Spanish capital, and to fall back upon Portugal by the roads south of the Tagus. In spite of the defeat of Victor, the French were the winners of the campaign. Madrid was still secure; the fabric of French rule in the Spanish Peninsula was still unshaken. The tidings of Wellesley's retreat reached Napoleon and the Austrian negotiators, damping the hopes of Austria, and easing Napoleon's fears. Austria's continuance of the war now depended upon the success or failure of the long-expected descent of an English army upon the northern coast of Europe.

Three months before the Austrian Government declared war upon Napoleon, it had acquainted Great Britain with its own plans, and urged the Cabinet to dispatch an English force to Northern Germany. Such a force, landing at the time of the battle of Aspern, would certainly have aroused both Prussia and the country between the Elbe and the Maine. But the difference between a movement executed in time and one executed weeks and months too late was still unknown at the English War Office. The Ministry did not even begin their preparations till the middle of June, and then they determined, in pursuance of a plan made some years earlier, to attack the French fleet and docks at Antwerp, and to ignore that patriotic movement in Northern Germany from which they had so much to hope.

[British Expedition against Antwerp, July, 1809.]

[Total failure.]

On the 28th of July, two months after the battle of Aspern and three weeks after the battle of Wagram, a fleet of thirty-seven ships of the line, with innumerable transports and gunboats, set sail from Dover for the Schelde.

Forty thousand troops were on board; the commander of the expedition was the Earl of Chatham, a court-favourite in whom Nature avenged herself upon Great Britain for what she had given to this country in his father and his younger brother. The troops were landed on the island of Walcheren. Instead of pushing forward to Antwerp with all possible haste, and surprising it before any preparations could be made for its defence, Lord Chatham placed half his army on the banks of various ca.n.a.ls, and with the other half proceeded to invest Flushing. On the 16th of August this unfortunate town surrendered, after a bombardment that had reduced it to a ma.s.s of ruins.

During the next ten days the English commander advanced about as many miles, and then discovered that for all prospect of taking Antwerp he might as well have remained in England. Whilst Chatham was groping about in Walcheren, the fortifications of Antwerp were restored, the fleet carried up the river, and a ma.s.s of troops collected sufficient to defend the town against a regular siege. Defeat stared the English in the face. At the end of August the general recommended the Government to recall the expedition, only leaving a force of 15,000 soldiers to occupy the marshes of Walcheren.

Chatham's recommendations were accepted; and on a spot so notoriously pestiferous that Napoleon had refused to permit a single French soldier to serve there on garrison duty, [162] an English army-corps, which might at least have earned the same honour as Schill and Brunswick in Northern Germany, was left to perish of fever and ague. When two thousand soldiers were in their graves, the rest were recalled to England.

[Austria makes peace.]

Great Britain had failed to weaken or to alarm Napoleon; the King of Prussia made no movement on behalf of the losing cause; and the Austrian Government unwillingly found itself compelled to accept conditions of peace. It was not so much a deficiency in its forces as the universal distrust of its generals that made it impossible for Austria to continue the war. The soldiers had fought as bravely as the French, but in vain. "If we had a million soldiers," it was said, "we must make peace; for we have no one to command them." Count Stadion, who was for carrying on the war to the bitter end, despaired of throwing his own energetic courage into the men who surrounded the Emperor, and withdrew from public affairs. For week after week the Emperor fluctuated between the acceptance of Napoleon's hard conditions and the renewal of a struggle which was likely to involve his own dethronement as well as the total conquest of the Austrian State. At length Napoleon's demands were presented in the form of an ultimatum. In his distress the Emperor's thoughts turned towards the Minister who, eight years before, had been so strong, so resolute, when all around him wavered.

Thugut, now seventy-six years old, was living in retirement. The Emperor sent one of his generals to ask his opinion on peace or war. "I thought to find him," reported the general, "broken in mind and body; but the fire of his spirit is in its full force." Thugut's reply did honour to his foresight: "Make peace at any price. The existence of the Austrian monarchy is at stake: the dissolution of the French Empire is not far off." On the 14th of October the Emperor Francis accepted his conqueror's terms, and signed conditions of peace. [163]

[Peace of Vienna, Oct. 14, 1809.]

[Real effects of the war of 1809.]

The Treaty of Vienna, the last which Napoleon signed as a conqueror, took from the Austrian Empire 50,000 square miles of territory and more than 4,000,000 inhabitants. Salzburg, with part of Upper Austria, was ceded to Bavaria; Western Galicia, the territory gained by Austria in the final part.i.tion of Poland, was transferred to the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw; part of Carinthia, with the whole of the country lying between the Adriatic and the Save as far as the frontier of Bosnia, was annexed to Napoleon's own Empire, under the t.i.tle of the Illyrian Provinces. Austria was cut off from the sea, and the dominion of Napoleon extended without a break to the borders of Turkey. Bavaria and Saxony, the outposts of French sovereignty in Central Europe, were enriched at the expense of the Power which had called Germany to arms; Austria, which at the beginning of the Revolutionary War had owned territory upon the Rhine and exercised a predominating influence over all Italy, seemed now to be finally excluded both from Germany and the Mediterranean. Yet, however striking the change of frontier which gave to Napoleon continuous dominion from the Straits of Calais to the border of Bosnia, the victories of France in 1809 brought in their train none of those great moral changes which had hitherto made each French conquest a stage in European progress. The campaign of 1796 had aroused the hope of national independence in Italy; the settlements of 1801 and 1806 had put an end to Feudalism in Western Germany; the victories of 1809 originated nothing but a change of frontier such as the next war might obliterate and undo. All that was permanent in the effects of the year 1809 was due, not to any new creations of Napoleon, but to the spirit of resistance which France had at length excited in Europe. The revolt of the Tyrol, the exploits of Brunswick and Schill, gave a stimulus to German patriotism which survived the defeat of Austria. Austria itself, though overpowered, had inflicted a deadly injury upon Napoleon, by withdrawing him from Spain at the moment when he might have completed its conquest, and by enabling Wellesley to gain a footing in the Peninsula. Napoleon appeared to have gathered a richer spoil from the victories of 1809 than from any of his previous wars; in reality he had never surrounded himself with so many dangers. Russia was alienated by the annexation of West Galicia to the Polish Grand Duchy of Warsaw; Northern Germany had profited by the examples of courage and patriotism shown so largely in 1809 on behalf of the Fatherland; Spain, supported by Wellesley's army, was still far from submission. The old indifference which had smoothed the way for the earlier French conquests was no longer the characteristic of Europe. The estrangement of Russia, the growth of national spirit in Germany and in Spain, involved a danger to Napoleon's power which far outweighed the visible results of his victory.

[Austria and the Tyrol.]

Austria itself could only acquiesce in defeat: nor perhaps would the permanent interests of Europe have been promoted by its success. The championship of Germany which it a.s.sumed at the beginning of the war would no doubt have resulted in the temporary establishment of some form of German union under Austrian leadership, if the event of the war had been different; but the sovereign of Hungary and Croatia could never be the true head of the German people; and the conduct of the Austrian Government after the peace of 1809 gave little reason to regret its failure to revive a Teutonic Empire. No portion of the Emperor's subjects had fought for him with such determined loyalty as the Tyrolese. After having been the first to throw off the yoke of the stranger, they had again and again freed their country when Napoleon's generals supposed all resistance overcome; and in return for their efforts the Emperor had solemnly a.s.sured them that he would never accept a peace which did not restore them to his Empire. If fair dealing was due anywhere it was due from the Court of Austria to the Tyrolese. Yet the only reward of the simple courage of these mountaineers was that the war-party at head-quarters recklessly employed them as a means of prolonging, hostilities after the armistice of Znaim, and that up to the moment when peace was signed they were left in the belief that the Emperor meant to keep his promise, Austria, however, could not ruin herself to please the Tyrolese. Circ.u.mstances were changed; and the phrases of patriotism which had excited so much rejoicing at the beginning of the war were now fallen out of fashion at Vienna. Nothing more was heard about the rights of nations and the deliverance of Germany. Austria had made a great venture and failed; and the Government rather resumed than abandoned its normal att.i.tude in turning its back upon the professions of 1809.

[Austrian policy after 1809.]

[Metternich.]

Henceforward the policy of Austria was one of calculation, untinged by national sympathies. France had been a cruel enemy; yet if there was a prospect of winning something for Austria by a French alliance, considerations of sentiment could not be allowed to stand in the way. A statesman who, like Count Stadion, had identified the interests of Austria with the liberation of Germany, was no fitting helmsman for the State in the shifting course that now lay before it. A diplomatist was called to power who had hitherto by Napoleon's own desire represented the Austrian State at Paris. Count Metternich, the new Chief Minister, was the son of a Rhenish n.o.bleman who had held high office under the Austrian crown. His youth had been pa.s.sed at Coblentz, and his character and tastes were those which in the eighteenth century had marked the court-circles of the little Rhenish Princ.i.p.alities, French in their outer life, unconscious of the instinct of nationality, polished and seductive in that personal management which pa.s.sed for the highest type of statesmanship. Metternich had been amba.s.sador at Dresden and at Berlin before he went to Paris. Napoleon had requested that he might be transferred to the Court of the Tuileries, on account of the marked personal courtesy shown by Metternich to the French amba.s.sador at Berlin during the war between France and Austria in 1805.

Metternich carried with him all the friendliness of personal intercourse which Napoleon expected in him, but he also carried with him a calm and penetrating self-possession, and the conviction that Napoleon would give Europe no rest until his power was greatly diminished. He served Austria well at Paris, and in the negotiations for peace which followed the battle of Wagram he took a leading part. After the disasters of 1809, when war was impossible and isolation ruin, no statesman could so well serve Austria as one who had never confessed himself the enemy of any Power; and, with the full approval of Napoleon, the late Amba.s.sador at Paris was placed at the head of the Austrian State.

[Marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise, 1810.]

[Severance of Napoleon and Alexander.]

Metternich's first undertaking gave singular evidence of the flexibility of system which was henceforward to guard Austria's interests. Before the gra.s.s had grown over the graves at Wagram, the Emperor Francis was persuaded to give his daughter in marriage to Napoleon. For some time past Napoleon had determined on divorcing Josephine and allying himself to one of the reigning houses of the Continent. His first advances were made at St. Petersburg; but the Czar hesitated to form a connection which his subjects would view as a dishonour; and the opportunity was seized by the less fastidious Austrians as soon as the fancies of the imperial suitor turned towards Vienna. The Emperor Francis, who had been bullied by Napoleon upon the field of Austerlitz, ridiculed and insulted in every proclamation issued during the late campaign, gave up his daughter for what was called the good of his people, and reconciled himself to a son-in-law who had taken so many provinces for his dowry. Peace had not been proclaimed four months when the treaty was signed which united the House of Bonaparte to the family of Marie Antoinette. The Archduke Charles represented Napoleon in the espousals; the Archbishop of Vienna anointed the bride with the same sacred oil with which he had consecrated the banners of 1809; the servile press which narrated the wedding festivities found no s.p.a.ce to mention that the Emperor's bravest subject, the Tyrolese leader Hofer, was executed by Napoleon as a brigand in the interval between the contract and the celebration of the marriage. Old Austrian families, members of the only aristocracy upon the Continent that still possessed political weight and a political tradition, lamented the Emperor's consent to a union which their prejudices called a mis-alliance, and their consciences an adultery; but the object of Metternich was attained. The friendship between France and Russia, which had inflicted so much evil on the Continent since the Peace of Tilsit, was dissolved; the sword of Napoleon was turned away from Austria for at least some years; the restoration of the lost provinces of the Hapsburg seemed not impossible, now that Napoleon and Alexander were left face to face in Europe, and the alliance of Austria had become so important to the power which had hitherto enriched itself at Austria's expense.

[Napoleon annexes Papal States, May, 1809.]

Napoleon crowned his new bride, and felt himself at length the equal of the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons. Except in Spain, his arms were no longer resisted upon the Continent, and the period immediately succeeding the Peace of Vienna was that which brought the Napoleonic Empire to its widest bounds. Already, in the pride of the first victories of 1809, Napoleon had completed his aggressions upon the Papal sovereignty by declaring the Ecclesiastical States to be united to the French Empire (May 17, 1809). The Pope retorted upon his despoiler with a Bull of Excommunication; but the spiritual terrors were among the least formidable of those then active in Europe, and the sanct.i.ty of the Pontiff did not prevent Napoleon's soldiers from arresting him in the Quirinal, and carrying him as a prisoner to Savona. Here Pius VII., was detained for the next three years. The Roman States received the laws and the civil organisation of France. [164]

Bishops and clergy who refused the oath of fidelity to Napoleon were imprisoned or exiled; the monasteries and convents were dissolved; the cardinals and great officers, along with the archives and the whole apparatus of ecclesiastical rule, were carried to Paris. In relation to the future of European Catholicism, the breach between Napoleon and Pius VII., was a more important event than was understood at the time; its immediate and visible result was that there was one sovereign the fewer in Europe, and one more province opened to the French conscription.

[Napoleon annexes, Holland, July, 1810.]

The next of Napoleon's va.s.sals who lost his throne was the King of Holland.

Like Joseph in Spain, and like Murat in Naples, Louis Bonaparte had made an honest effort to govern for the benefit of his subjects. He had endeavoured to lighten the burdens which Napoleon laid upon the Dutch nation, already deprived of its colonies, its commerce, and its independence; and every plea which Louis had made for his subjects had been treated by Napoleon as a breach of duty towards himself. The offence of the unfortunate King of Holland became unpardonable when he neglected to enforce the orders of Napoleon against the admission of English goods. Louis was summoned to Paris, and compelled to sign a treaty, ceding part of his dominions and placing his custom-houses in the hands of French officers. He returned to Holland, but affairs grew worse and worse. French troops overran the country; Napoleon's letters were each more menacing than the last; and at length Louis fled from his dominions (July 1, 1810), and delivered himself from a royalty which had proved the most intolerable kind of servitude. A week later Holland was incorporated with the French Empire.

[Annexation of Le Valais, and of the North German coast.]

Two more annexations followed before the end of the year. The Republic of the Valais was declared to have neglected the duty imposed upon it of repairing the road over the Simplon, and forfeited its independence. The North German coast district, comprising the Hanse towns, Oldenburg, and part of the Kingdom of Westphalia, was annexed to the French Empire, with the alleged object of more effectually shutting out British goods from the ports of the Elbe and the Weser. Hamburg, however, and most of the territory now incorporated with France, had been occupied by French troops ever since the war of 1806, and the legal change in its position scarcely made its subjection more complete. Had the history of this annexation been written by men of the peasant-cla.s.s, it would probably have been described in terms of unmixed thankfulness and praise. In the Decree introducing the French principle of the free tenure of land, thirty-six distinct forms of feudal service are enumerated, as abolished without compensation. [165]

[Extent of Napoleon's Empire and Dependencies, 1810.]

Napoleon's dominion had now reached its widest bounds. The frontier of the Empire began at Lubeck on the Baltic, touched the Rhine at Wesel, and followed the river and the Jura mountains to the foot of the Lake of Geneva; then, crossing the Alps above the source of the Rhone, it ran with the rivers Sesia and Po to a point nearly opposite Mantua, mounted to the watershed of the Apennines, and descended to the Mediterranean at Terracina. The late Ecclesiastical States were formed into the two Departments of the Tiber and of Trasimene; Tuscany, also divided into French Departments, and represented in the French Legislative Body, gave the t.i.tle of Archd.u.c.h.ess and the ceremonial of a Court to Napoleon's sister Eliza; the Kingdom of Italy, formed by Lombardy, Venice, and the country east of the Apennines as far south as Ascoli, belonged to Napoleon himself, but was not const.i.tutionally united with the French Empire. On the east of the Adriatic the Illyrian Provinces extended Napoleon's rule to the borders of Bosnia and Montenegro. Outside the frontier of this great Empire an order of feudatories ruled in Italy, in Germany, and in Poland. Murat, King of Naples, and the client-princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, holding all Germany up to the frontiers of Prussia and Austria, as well as the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, were nominally sovereigns within their own dominions; but they held their dignities at Napoleon's pleasure, and the population and revenues of their States were at his service.

[Benefits of Napoleon's rule.]

[Wrongs of Napoleon's rule.]

[Commercial blockade.]

The close of the year 1810 saw the last changes effected which Europe was destined to receive at the hands of Napoleon. The fabric of his sovereignty was raised upon the ruins of all that was obsolete and forceless upon the western Continent; the benefits as well as the wrongs or his supremacy were now seen in their widest operation. All Italy, the northern districts of Germany which were incorporated with the Empire, and a great part of the Confederate Territory of the Rhine, received in the Code Napoleon a law which, to an extent hitherto unknown in Europe, brought social justice into the daily affairs of life. The privileges of the n.o.ble, the feudal burdens of the peasant, the monopolies of the guilds, pa.s.sed away, in most instances for ever. The comfort and improvement of mankind were vindicated as the true aim of property by the abolition of the devices which convert the soil into an instrument of family pride, and by the enforcement of a fair division of inheritances among the children of the possessor. Legal process, both civil and criminal, was brought within the comprehension of ordinary citizens, and submitted to the test of publicity. These were among the fruits of an earlier enlightenment which Napoleon's supremacy bestowed upon a great part of Europe. The price which was paid for them was the suppression of every vestige of liberty, the conscription, and the Continental blockade. On the whole, the yoke was patiently borne. The Italians and the Germans of the Rhenish Confederacy cared little what Government they obeyed; their recruits who were sent to be killed by the Austrians or the Spaniards felt it no especial hardship to fight Napoleon's battles. More galling was the pressure of Napoleon's commercial system and of the agencies by which he attempted to enforce it. In the hope of ruining the trade of Great Britain, Napoleon spared no severity against the owners of anything that had touched British hands, and deprived the Continent of its entire supply of colonial produce, with the exception of such as was imported at enormous charges by traders licensed by himself. The possession of English goods became a capital offence. In the great trading towns a system of permanent terrorism was put in force against the merchants.

Soldiers ransacked their houses; their letters were opened; spies dogged their steps. It was in Hamburg, where Davoust exercised a sort of independent sovereignty, that the violence and injustice of the Napoleonic commercial system was seen in its most repulsive form; in the greater part of the Empire it was felt more in the general decline of trade and in a mult.i.tude of annoying privations than in acts of obtrusive cruelty. [166]

The French were themselves compelled to extract sugar from beetroot, and to subst.i.tute chicory for coffee; the Germans, less favoured by nature, and less rapid in adaptation, thirsted and sulked. Even in such torpid communities as Saxony political discontent was at length engendered by bodily discomfort. Men who were proof against all the patriotic exaltation of Stein and Fichte felt that there must be something wrong in a system which sent up the price of coffee to five shillings a pound, and reduced the tobacconist to exclusive dependence upon the market-gardener.

[The Czar withdraws from Napoleon's commercial system, Dec., 1810.]

[France and Russia preparing for war, 1811.]

It was not, however, by its effects upon Napoleon's German va.s.sals that the Continental system contributed to the fall of its author. Whatever the discontent of these communities, they obeyed Napoleon as long as he was victorious, and abandoned him only when his cause was lost. Its real political importance lay in the hostility which it excited between France and Russia. The Czar, who had attached himself to Napoleon's commercial system at the Peace of Tilsit, withdrew from it in the year succeeding the Peace of Vienna. The trade of the Russian Empire had been ruined by the closure of its ports to British vessels and British goods. Napoleon had broken his promise to Russia by adding West Galicia to the Polish Duchy of Warsaw; and the Czar refused to sacrifice the wealth of his subjects any longer in the interest of an insincere ally. At the end of the year 1810 an order was published at St. Petersburg, opening the harbours of Russia to all ships bearing a neutral flag, and imposing a duty upon many of the products of France. This edict was scarcely less than a direct challenge to the French Emperor. Napoleon exaggerated the effect of his Continental prohibitions upon English traffic. He imagined that the command of the European coast-line, and nothing short of this, would enable him to exhaust his enemy; and he was prepared to risk a war with Russia rather than permit it to frustrate his long-cherished hopes. Already in the Austrian marriage Napoleon had marked the severance of his interests from those of Alexander.

An attempted compromise upon the affairs of Poland produced only new alienation and distrust; an open affront was offered to Alexander in the annexation of the Duchy of Oldenburg, whose sovereign was a member of his own family. The last event was immediately followed by the publication of the new Russian tariff. In the spring of 1811 Napoleon had determined upon war. With Spain still unsubdued, he had no motive to hurry on hostilities; Alexander on his part was still less ready for action; and the forms of diplomatic intercourse were in consequence maintained for some time longer at Paris and St. Petersburg. But the true nature of the situation was shown by the immense levies that were ordered both in France and Russia; and the rest of the year was spent in preparations for the campaign which was destined to decide the fate of Europe.

[Affairs in Spain and Portugal, 1809-1812.]

[Lines of Torres Vedras, 1809-1810.]

We have seen that during the period of more than two years that elapsed between the Peace of Vienna and the outbreak of war with Russia, Napoleon had no enemy in arms upon the Continent except in the Spanish Peninsula.

Had the Emperor himself taken up the command in Spain, he would probably within a few months have crushed both the Spanish armies and their English ally. A fatal error in judgment made him willing to look on from a distance whilst his generals engaged with this last foe. The disputes with the Pope and the King of Holland might well have been adjourned for another year; but Napoleon felt no suspicions that the conquest of the Spanish Peninsula was too difficult a task for his marshals; nor perhaps would it have been so if Wellington had been like any of the generals whom Napoleon had himself encountered. The French forces in the Peninsula numbered over 300,000 men: in spite of the victory of Talavera, the English had been forced to retreat into Portugal. But the warfare of Wellington was a different thing from that even of the best Austrian or Russian commanders.

From the time of the retreat from Talavera he had foreseen that Portugal would be invaded by an army far outnumbering his own; and he planned a scheme of defence as original, as strongly marked with true military insight, as Napoleon's own most daring schemes of attack. Behind Lisbon a rugged mountainous tract stretches from the Tagus to the sea: here, while the English army wintered in the neighbourhood of Almeida, Wellington employed thousands of Portuguese labourers in turning the promontory into one vast fortress. No rumour of the operation was allowed to reach the enemy. A double series of fortifications, known as the Lines of Torres Vedras, followed the mountain-bastion on the north of Lisbon, and left no single point open between the Tagus and the sea. This was the barrier to which Wellington meant in the last resort to draw his a.s.sailants, whilst the country was swept of everything that might sustain an invading army, and the irregular troops of Portugal closed in upon its rear. [167]

[Retreat of Ma.s.sena, 1810-11.]

[Ma.s.sena's campaign against Wellington, 1810.]

In June, 1810, Marshal Ma.s.sena, who had won the highest distinction at Aspern and Wagram, arrived in Spain, and took up the command of the army destined for the conquest of Portugal. Ciudad Rodrigo was invested: Wellington, too weak to effect its relief, too wise to jeopardise his army for the sake of Spanish praise, lay motionless while this great fortress fell into the hands of the invader. In September, the French, 70,000 strong, entered Portugal. Wellington retreated down the valley of the Mondego, devastating the country. At length he halted at Busaco and gave battle (September 27). The French were defeated; the victory gave the Portuguese full confidence in the English leader; but other roads were open to the invader, and Wellington continued his retreat. Ma.s.sena followed, and heard for the first time of the fortifications of Torres Vedras when he was within five days' march of them. On nearing the mountain-barrier, Ma.s.sena searched in vain for an unprotected point. Fifty thousand English and Portuguese regular troops, besides a mult.i.tude of Portuguese militia, were collected behind the lines; with the present number of the French an a.s.sault was hopeless. Ma.s.sena waited for reinforcements. It was with the utmost difficulty that he could keep his army from starving; at length, when the country was utterly exhausted, he commenced his retreat (Nov. 14).

Wellington descended from the heights, but his marching force was still too weak to risk a pitched battle. Ma.s.sena halted and took post at Santarem, on the Tagus. Here, and in the neighbouring valley of the Zezere, he maintained himself during the winter. But in March, 1811, reinforcements arrived from England: Wellington moved forward against his enemy, and the retreat of the French began in real earnest. Ma.s.sena made his way northwards, hard pressed by the English, and devastating the country with merciless severity in order to r.e.t.a.r.d pursuit. Fire and ruin marked the track of the retreating army; but such were the sufferings of the French themselves, both during the invasion and the retreat, that when Ma.s.sena re-entered Spain, after a campaign in which only one pitched battle had been fought, his loss exceeded 30,000 men.

[Soult conquers Spain as far as Cadiz.]

[Wellington's campaign of 1811.]

Other French armies, in spite of a most destructive guerilla warfare, were in the meantime completing the conquest of the south and the east of Spain.

Soult captured Seville, and began to lay siege to Cadiz. Here, at the end of 1810, an order reached him from Napoleon to move to the support of Ma.s.sena. Leaving Victor in command at Cadiz, Soult marched northwards, routed the Spaniards, and conquered the fortress of Badajoz, commanding the southern road into Portugal. Ma.s.sena, however, was already in retreat, and Soult's own advance was cut short by intelligence that Graham, the English general in Cadiz, had broken out upon the besiegers and inflicted a heavy defeat. Soult returned to Cadiz and resumed the blockade. Wellington, thus freed from danger of attack from the south, and believing Ma.s.sena to be thoroughly disabled, considered that the time had come for a forward movement into Spain. It was necessary for him to capture the fortresses of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo on the northern road, and to secure his own communications with Portugal by wresting back Badajoz from the French. He left a small force to besiege Almeida, and moved to Elvas to make arrangements with Beresford for the siege of Badajoz. But before the English commander had deemed it possible, the energy of Ma.s.sena had restored his troops to efficiency; and the two armies of Ma.s.sena and Soult were now ready to a.s.sail the English on the north and the south. Ma.s.sena marched against the corps investing Almeida. Wellington hastened back to meet him, and fought a battle at Fuentes d'Onoro. The French were defeated; Almeida pa.s.sed into the hands of the English. In the south, Soult advanced to the relief of Badajoz. He was overthrown by Beresford in the b.l.o.o.d.y engagement of Albuera (May 16th); but his junction with the army of the north, which was now transferred from Ma.s.sena to Marmont, forced the English to raise the siege; and Wellington, after audaciously offering battle to the combined French armies, retired within the Portuguese frontier, and marched northwards with the design of laying siege to Ciudad Rodrigo. Again outnumbered by the French, he was compelled to retire to cantonments on the Coa.

[Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, Jan. 19, 1812.]