The History of Napoleon Buonaparte Part 17

The Clergy were, as we have seen, appointed universally under the direction of Government: they were also its direct stipendiaries; hence nothing could be more complete than their subjection to its pleasure.

Education became a part of the regular business of the state; all the schools and colleges being placed under the immediate care of one of Napoleon's ministers--all prizes and bursaries bestowed by the government--and the whole system so arranged, that it was hardly possible for any youth who exhibited remarkable talents to avoid the temptations to a military career, which on every side surrounded him.

The chief distinctions and emoluments were everywhere reserved for those who excelled in accomplishments likely to be serviceable in war: and the _Lyceums_, or schools set expressly apart for military students, were invested with numberless attractions, scarcely to be resisted by a young imagination. The army, as it was the sole basis of Napoleon's power, was also at all times the primary object of his thoughts. Every inst.i.tution of the state was subservient and administered to it, and none more efficaciously than the imperial system of education.

The ranks of the army, however, were filled during the whole reign of Napoleon by _compulsion_. The conscription law of 1798 acquired under him the character of a settled and regular part of the national system; and its oppressive influence was such as never before exhausted, through a long term of years, the best energies of a great and civilised people.

Every male in France, under the age of twenty-five, was liable to be called on to serve in the ranks; and the regulations as to the procuring of subst.i.tutes were so narrow, that young men of the best families were continually forced to comply, in their own persons, with the stern requisition. The first conscription list for the year included all under the age of twenty-one; and the result of the ballot within this cla.s.s amounted to nearly 80,000 names. These were first called on: but if the service of the Emperor demanded further supply, the lists of those aged twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-five, were successively resorted to. There was no exemption for any one who seemed able to bear arms. The only child of his parents, the young husband and father, were forced, like any others, to abandon fireside, profession, all the ties and all the hopes of life, on a moment's notice: and there is nothing in the history of modern Europe so remarkable, as that the French people should have submitted, during sixteen years, to the constant operation of a despotic law, which thus sapped all the foundations of social happiness, and condemned the rising hopes of the nation to bleed and die by millions in distant wars, undertaken solely for the gratification of one man's insatiable ambition. On the other hand, it is not to be denied that the great majority of the conscripts, with whatever reluctance they might enter the ranks, were soon reconciled to their fate. The avenues to promotion, distinction, wealth, honour, n.o.bility, even royal dignity, were all open before the devoted and successful soldiers of Napoleon; and the presence of so many youths of good condition and education, among the ranks of the private soldiery, could not fail, first, to render the situation immeasurably less irksome than it otherwise could have been to each individual of the cla.s.s, and secondly, to elevate the standard of manners and acquirements among the soldiery generally. There never was an army in whose ranks intelligence so largely abounded, nor in which so many officers of the highest rank had originally carried a musket.

The taxation rendered necessary by the constant wars of Napoleon was great; and the utter destruction of the foreign commerce and marine of France, which the naval supremacy of England effected, made the burden the more intolerable for various important cla.s.ses of the community. On the other hand the taxes were levied fairly on the whole population, which presented a blessed contrast to the system of the old _regime_; and the vast extension and improvement of agriculture consequent on the division of the great estates at the Revolution, enabled the nation, at large to meet the calls of the government with much less difficulty than could have been antic.i.p.ated at any former period of French history.

Napoleon's great public works, too, though undertaken chiefly for the purpose of gratifying his own vanity and that of the nation, could not be executed without furnishing subsistence to vast bodies of the labouring poor, and were thus serviceable to more important ends. From his vain attempts to supply the want of English manufactured goods and colonial produce, by new establishments and inventions (such especially as that of manufacturing a subst.i.tute for sugar out of beetroot), partial good, in like manner, resulted.

The evils of the conscription, of a heavy taxation, of an inquisitorial police, and of a totally enslaved press--these, and all other evils attendant on this elaborate system of military despotism, were endured for so many years chiefly in consequence of the skill with which Napoleon, according to his own favourite language, knew "to play on the imagination," and gratify the vanity of the French people. In the splendour of his victories, in the magnificence of his roads, bridges, aqueducts, and other monuments, in the general pre-eminence to which the nation seemed to be raised through the genius of its chief, compensation was found for all financial burdens, consolations for domestic calamities, and an equivalent for that liberty in whose name the Tyrant had achieved his first glories. But it must not be omitted that Napoleon, in every department of his government, made it his first rule to employ the men best fitted, in his mind, to do honour to his service by their talents and diligence; and that he thus attached to himself, throughout the whole of his empire as well as in his army, the hopes and the influence of those whose personal voices were most likely to control the opinions of society.

He gratified the French nation by adorning the capital, and by displaying in the Tuileries a court as elaborately magnificent as that of Louis XIV. himself. The old n.o.bility, returning from their exile, mingled in those proud halls with the heroes of the revolutionary campaigns; and over all the ceremonial of these stately festivities Josephine presided with the grace and elegance of one born to be a queen. In the midst of the pomp and splendour of a court, in whose antechambers kings jostled each other, Napoleon himself preserved the soldier-like simplicity of his original dress and manners. The great Emperor continued throughout to labour more diligently than any subaltern in office. He devoted himself wholly to the ambition to which he compelled all others to contribute.

Napoleon, as Emperor, had little time for social pleasures. His personal friends were few; his days were given to labour, and his nights to study. If he was not with his army in the field, he traversed the provinces, examining with his own eyes into the minutest details of local arrangement; and even from the centre of his camp he was continually issuing edicts which showed the accuracy of his observation during these journeys, and his anxiety to promote by any means, consistent with his great purpose, the welfare of some French district, town, or even village.

The manners of the Court were at least decent. Napoleon occasionally indulged himself in amours unworthy of his character and tormenting to his wife; but he never suffered any other female to possess influence over his mind, nor insulted public opinion by any approach to that system of unveiled debauchery which had, during whole ages, disgraced the Bourbon Court, and undermined their throne.

CHAPTER XXIII

Relations of Napoleon with Spain--Treaty of Fontainebleau--Junot marches to Portugal--Flight of the Braganzas to Brazil--French troops proceed into Spain--Dissensions in the Court--Both parties appeal to Napoleon--Murat occupies Madrid--Charles and Ferdinand abdicate at Bayonne--Joseph Buonaparte crowned King of Spain.

After the ratification of the treaty of Tilsit, Napoleon, returning as we have seen to Paris, devoted all his energies to the perfect establishment of "the continental system." Something has already been said as to the difficulties which this attempt involved: in truth it was a contest between the despotic will of Buonaparte, and the interests and habits, not only of every sovereign in his alliance, but of every private individual on the continent; and it was therefore actually impossible that the imperial policy should not be baffled. The Russian government was never, probably, friendly to a system which, from the nature of the national produce and resources, must, if persisted in for any considerable time, have inflicted irreparable injury on the finances of the landholders, reduced the public establishments, and sunk the effective power of the state. In that quarter, therefore, Napoleon soon found that, notwithstanding all the professions of personal devotion which the young Czar continued, perhaps sincerely, to make, his favourite scheme was systematically violated: but the distance and strength of Russia prevented him from, for the present, pushing his complaints to extremity. The Spanish peninsula lay nearer him, and the vast extent to which the prohibited manufactures and colonial produce of England found their way into every district of that country, and especially of Portugal, and thence through the hands of whole legions of audacious smugglers, into France itself, ere long fixed his attention and resentment. In truth, a proclamation, issued at Madrid shortly before the battle of Jena, and suddenly recalled on the intelligence of that great victory, had prepared the Emperor to regard with keen suspicion the conduct of the Spanish Court, and to trace every violation of his system to its deliberate and hostile connivance.

The court presented in itself the lively image of a divided and degraded nation. The King, old and almost incredibly imbecile, was ruled absolutely by his Queen, a woman audaciously unprincipled, whose strong and wicked pa.s.sions again were entirely under the influence of Manuel G.o.doy, "Prince of the Peace," raised, by her guilty love, from the station of a private guardsman, to precedence above all the grandees of Spain, a matrimonial connection with the royal house, and the supreme conduct of affairs. She, her paramour, and the degraded King, were held in contempt and hatred by a powerful party, at the head of whom were the Canon Escoiquiz, the Duke del Infantado, and Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, heir of the throne. The scenes of dissension which filled the palace and court were scandalous beyond all contemporary example: and, the strength of the two parties vibrating in the scale, according as corrupt calculators looked to the extent of G.o.doy's present power, or to the probability of Ferdinand's accession, the eyes of both were turned to the hazardous facility of striking a balance by calling in support from the Tuileries. Napoleon, on his part, regarding the rival factions with equal scorn, flattered himself that, in their common fears and baseness, he should find the means of ultimately reducing the whole Peninsula to complete submission under his own yoke.

The secret history of the intrigues of 1807, between the French Court and the rival parties in Spain, has not yet been clearly exposed; nor is it likely to be so while most of the chief agents survive. According to Napoleon the first proposal for conquering Portugal by the united arms of France and Spain, and dividing that monarchy into three separate prizes, of which one should fall to the disposition of France, a second to the Spanish King, and a third reward the personal exertions of G.o.doy, came not from him, but from the Spanish minister. It was unlikely that Napoleon should have given any other account of the matter. The suggestion has been attributed, by every Spanish authority, to the Emperor; and it is difficult to doubt that such was the fact. The treaty, in which the unprincipled design took complete form, was ratified at Fontainebleau on the 29th October, 1807, and accompanied by a convention, which provided for the immediate invasion of Portugal by a force of 28,000 French soldiers, under the orders of Junot, and of 27,000 Spaniards; while a reserve of 40,000 French troops were to be a.s.sembled at Bayonne, ready to take the field by the end of November, in case England should land an army for the defence of Portugal, or the people of that devoted country presume to meet Junot by a national insurrection.

Junot forthwith commenced his march through Spain, where the French soldiery were received everywhere with coldness and suspicion, but nowhere by any hostile movement of the people. He would have halted at Salamanca to organise his army, which consisted mostly of young conscripts, but Napoleon's policy outmarched his General's schemes, and the troops were, in consequence of a peremptory order from Paris, poured into Portugal in the latter part of November. G.o.doy's contingent of Spaniards appeared there also, and placed themselves under Junot's command. Their numbers overawed the population, and they advanced, unopposed, towards the capital--Junot's most eager desire being to secure the persons of the Prince Regent and the royal family. The feeble government, meantime, having made, one by one, every degrading submission which France dictated, having expelled the British factory and the British minister, confiscated all English property, and shut the ports against all English vessels, became convinced at length that no measures of subserviency could avert the doom which Napoleon had fulminated. A _Moniteur_, proclaiming that "the House of Braganza had ceased to reign," reached Lisbon. The Prince Regent re-opened his communication with the English admiral off the Tagus (Sir Sydney Smith) and the lately expelled amba.s.sador (Lord Strangford), and being a.s.sured of their protection, embarked on the 27th of November, and sailed for the Brazils on the 29th, only a few hours before Junot made his appearance at the gates of Lisbon. The disgust with which the Portuguese people regarded his flight, the cowardly termination, as they might not unnaturally regard it, of a long course of meanness, was eminently useful to the invader. With the exception of one trivial insurrection, when the insolent conqueror took down the Portuguese arms and set up those of Napoleon in their place, several months pa.s.sed in apparent tranquillity; and these were skilfully employed by the General in perfecting the discipline of his conscripts, improving the fortifications of the coast, and making such a disposal of his force as might best guard the country from any military demonstration on the part of England.

Napoleon thus saw Portugal in his grasp: but that he had all along considered as a point of minor importance, and he had accordingly availed himself of the utmost concessions of the treaty of Fontainebleau, without waiting for any insurrection of the Portuguese, or English debarkation on their territory. His army of reserve, in number far exceeding the 40,000 men named in the treaty, had already pa.s.sed the Pyrenees, in two bodies, under Dupont and Moncey, and were advancing slowly, but steadily, into the heart of Spain. Nay, without even the pretext of being mentioned in the treaty, another French army of 12,000, under Duhesme, had penetrated through the eastern Pyrenees, and being received as friends among the unsuspecting garrisons, obtained possession of Barcelona, Pampeluna, and St. Sebastian, and the other fortified places in the north of Spain, by a succession of treacherous artifices, to which the history of civilised nations presents no parallel. The armies then pushed forwards, and the chief roads leading from the French frontiers to Madrid were entirely in their possession.

It seems impossible that such daring movements should not have awakened the darkest suspicions at Madrid; yet the royal family, overlooking the common danger about to overwhelm them and their country, continued, during three eventful months, to waste what energies they possessed in petty conspiracies, domestic broils, and, incredible as the tale will hereafter appear, in the meanest diplomatic intrigues with the court of France. The Prince of Asturias solicited the honour of a wife from the House of Napoleon. The old King, or rather G.o.doy, invoked anew the a.s.sistance of the Emperor against the treasonable, nay (for to such extremities went their mutual accusations), the parricidal plots of the heir-apparent. Buonaparte listened to both parties, vouchsafed no direct answer to either, and continued to direct the onward movement of those stern arbiters, who were ere long to decide the question. A sudden panic at length seized the King or his minister, and the court, then at Aranjuez, prepared to retire to Seville, and, sailing from thence to America, seek safety, after the example of the House of Braganza, in the work of whose European ruin they had so lately been accomplices. The servants of the Prince of Asturias, on perceiving the preparations for this flight, commenced a tumult, in which the populace of Aranjuez readily joined, and which was only pacified (for the moment) by a royal declaration that no flight was contemplated. On the 18th of March, 1808, the day following, a scene of like violence took place in the capital itself. The house of G.o.doy in Madrid was sacked. The favourite himself was a.s.saulted at Aranjuez, on the 19th; with great difficulty saved his life by the intervention of the royal guards; and was placed under arrest. Terrified by what he saw at Aranjuez, and heard from Madrid, Charles IV. abdicated the throne; and on the 20th, Ferdinand, his son, was proclaimed King of Madrid, amidst a tumult of popular applause.

Murat, Grand Duke of Berg, had before this a.s.sumed the chief command of all the French troops in Spain; and hearing of the extremities to which the court factions had gone, he now moved rapidly on Madrid, surrounded that capital with 30,000 men, and took possession of it in person, at the head of 10,000 more, on the 23rd of March. Charles IV. meantime despatched messengers both to Napoleon and Murat, a.s.serting that his abdication had been involuntary, and invoking their a.s.sistance against his son. Ferdinand, entering Madrid on the 24th, found the French general in possession of the capital, and in vain claimed his recognition as king. Murat accepted the sword of Francis I., which, amidst other adulations, Ferdinand offered to him; but pertinaciously declined taking any part in the decision of the great question, which demanded, as he said, the fiat of Napoleon.

The Emperor heard with much regret of the precipitancy with which his lieutenant had occupied Madrid--for his clear mind had foreseen ere now the imminent hazard of trampling too rudely on the jealous pride of the Spaniards; and the events of the 17th, 18th, and 19th March were well qualified to confirm his impression, that although all sense of dignity and decorum might be extinguished in the court, the ancient elements of national honour still remained, ready to be called into action, among the body of the people. He, therefore, sent Savary, in whose practised cunning and duplicity he hoped to find a remedy for the military rashness of Murat, to a.s.sume the chief direction of affairs at Madrid; and the rumour was actively spread, that the Emperor was about to appear there in person without delay.

Madrid occupied and begirt by forty thousand armed strangers, his t.i.tle unrecognised by Murat, his weak understanding and tumultuous pa.s.sions worked upon incessantly by the malicious craft of Savary, Ferdinand was at length persuaded, that his best chance of securing the aid and protection of Napoleon lay in advancing to meet him on his way to the capital, and striving to gain his ear before the emissaries of G.o.doy should be able to fill it with their reclamations. Savary eagerly offered to accompany him on this fatal journey, which began on the 10th of April. The infatuated Ferdinand had been taught to believe that he should find Buonaparte at Burgos; not meeting him there, he was tempted to pursue his journey as far as Vittoria: and from thence, in spite of the populace, who, more sagacious than their prince, cut the traces of his carriage, he was, by a repet.i.tion of the same treacherous arguments, induced to proceed stage by stage, and at length to pa.s.s the frontier and present himself at Bayonne, where the arbiter of his fate lay anxiously expecting this consummation of his almost incredible folly. He arrived there on the 20th of April--was received by Napoleon with courtesy, entertained at dinner at the imperial table, and the same evening informed by Savary that his doom was sealed--that the Bourbon dynasty had ceased to reign in Spain, and that his personal safety must depend on the readiness with which he should resign all his pretensions into the hands of Buonaparte.

He, meanwhile, as soon as he was aware that Ferdinand had actually set out from Madrid, had ordered Murat to find the means of causing the old King, the Queen, and G.o.doy to repair also to Bayonne; nor does it appear that his lieutenant had any difficulty in persuading these personages that such was the course of conduct most in accordance with their interests. They reached Bayonne on the 4th of May, and Napoleon, confronting the parents and the son on the 5th, witnessed a scene in which the profligate rancour of their domestic feuds reached extremities hardly to have been contemplated by the wildest imagination. The flagitious Queen did not, it is said and believed, hesitate to signify to her son that the King was not his father--and this in the presence of that King and of Napoleon. Could crime justify crime--could the fiendish l.u.s.ts and hatreds of a degenerate race offer any excuse for the deliberate guilt of a masculine genius, the conduct of this abject court might have apologised for the policy which it perhaps tempted the pampered ambition of Napoleon to commence, and which it now encouraged him to consummate by an act of suicidal violence.

Charles IV. resigned the Crown of Spain for himself and his heirs, accepting in return from the hands of Napoleon a safe retreat in Italy and a large pension. G.o.doy, who had entered into the fatal negotiation of Fontainebleau, with the hope and the promise of an independent sovereignty carved out of the Portuguese dominions, was pensioned off in like manner, and ordered to partake the Italian exile of his patrons. A few days afterwards, Ferdinand VII., being desired to choose at length between compliance and death, followed the example of his father, and executed a similar act of resignation. Napoleon congratulated himself on having added Spain and the Indies to his empire, without any cost either of blood or of treasure; and the French people, dazzled by the apparent splendour of the acquisition, overlooked, if there be any faith in public addresses and festivals, the enormous guilt by which it had been achieved. But ere the ink with which the Spanish Bourbons signed away their birthright was dry, there came tidings to Bayonne which might well disturb the proud day-dreams of the spoliator, and the confidence of his worshippers.

Not that Napoleon had failed to measure from the beginning the mighty dangers which surrounded his audacious design. He had been warned of them in the strongest manner by Talleyrand, and even by Fouche; nay, he had himself written to rebuke the headlong haste of Murat in occupying the Spanish capital--to urge on him the necessity of conciliating the people, by preserving the show of respect for their national authorities and inst.i.tutions--to represent the imminent hazard of permitting the Duke del Infantado to strengthen and extend his party in Madrid--and concluding with those ominous words: _Remember, if war breaks out, all is lost_.

Ferdinand, before he left Madrid, invested a council of regency with the sovereign power, his uncle, Don Antonio, being president, and Murat one of the members. Murat's a.s.sumption of the authority thus conferred, the departure of Ferdinand, the liberation and departure of the detested G.o.doy, the flight of the old King--these occurrences produced their natural effects on the popular mind. A dark suspicion that France meditated the destruction of the national independence, began to spread; and, on the 2nd of May, when it transpired that preparations were making for the journey of Don Antonio also, the general rage at last burst out.

A crowd collected round the carriage meant, as they concluded, to convey the last of the royal family out of Spain; the traces were cut; the imprecations against the French were furious. Colonel La Grange, Murat's aide-de-camp, happening to appear on the spot, was cruelly maltreated.

In a moment the whole capital was in an uproar: the French soldiery were a.s.saulted everywhere--about 700 were slain. The mob attacked the hospital--the sick and their attendants rushed out and defended it. The French cavalry, hearing the tumult, entered the city by the gate of Alcala--a column of 3000 infantry from the other side by the street Ancha de Bernardo. Some Spanish officers headed the mob, and fired on the soldiery in the streets of Maravelles: a b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacre ensued: many hundreds were made prisoners: the troops, sweeping the streets from end to end, released their comrades; and, to all appearance, tranquillity was restored ere nightfall. During the darkness, however, the peasantry flocked in armed from the neighbouring country: and, being met at the gates by the irritated soldiery, not a few more were killed, wounded, and made prisoners. Murat ordered all the prisoners to be tried by a military commission, which doomed them to instant death. It is disputed whether the more deliberate guilt of carrying the sentence into execution lies with the commander-in-chief himself, or with Grouchy; it is certain that a considerable number of Spaniards--the English authority most friendly to the French cause admits _ninety-five_[58]--were butchered in cold blood on the 3rd of May.

This commotion had been preceded by a brief insurrection, easily suppressed and not unlikely to be soon forgotten, on the 23rd of April, at Toledo. The events in the capital were of a more decisive character, and the amount of the bloodshed, in itself great, was much exaggerated in the reports which flew, like wildfire, throughout the Peninsula--for the French were as eager to overawe the provincial Spaniards, by conveying an overcharged impression of the consequences of resistance, as their enemies in Madrid were to rouse the general indignation, by heightened details of the ferocity of the invaders and the sternness of their own devotion. In almost every town of Spain, and almost simultaneously, the flame of patriotic resentment broke out in the terrible form of a.s.sa.s.sination. The French residents were slaughtered without mercy: the supposed partisans of Napoleon and G.o.doy (not a few men of worth being causelessly confounded in their fate) were sacrificed in the first tumult of popular rage. At Cadiz, Seville, Carthagena, above all in Valencia, the streets ran red with blood. The dark and vindictive temper of the Spaniards covered the land with scenes, on the details of which it is shocking to dwell. The French soldiery, hemmed in, insulted, and whenever they could be found separately, sacrificed--often with every circ.u.mstance of savage torture--retorted by equal barbarity whenever they had the means. Popular bodies (juntas) a.s.sumed the conduct of affairs in most of the cities and provinces, renounced the yoke of France, reproclaimed Ferdinand king, and at the maritime stations of chief importance entered into communication with the English fleets, from whom they failed not to receive pecuniary supplies, and every encouragement to proceed in their measures. Deputies were sent to England without delay; and welcomed there with the utmost enthusiasm of sympathy and admiration. England could both speak and act openly. Throughout the whole of the enslaved continent the news of the Spanish insurrection was brooded over with a sullen joy.

Napoleon received the intelligence with alarm; but he had already gone too far to retract without disturbing the magical influence of his reputation. He, moreover, was willing to flatter himself that the lower population of Spain alone took an active part in these transactions; that the n.o.bility, whose degradation he could hardly over-estimate, would abide by his voice; in a word, that with 80,000 troops in Spain, besides Junot's army in Portugal, he possessed the means of suppressing the tumult after the first effervescence should have escaped. He proceeded, therefore, to act precisely as if no insurrection had occurred. Tranquillity being re-established in Madrid, the Council of Castile were convoked, and commanded to elect a new sovereign: their choice had of course been settled beforehand: it fell on Joseph Buonaparte, King of Naples; and ere it was announced, that personage was already on his way to Bayonne. Ninety-five _Notables_ of Spain met him in that town; and swore fealty to him and a new Const.i.tution, the manufacture of course of Napoleon. Joseph, on entering Spain, was met by unequivocal symptoms of scorn and hatred:--nay, one great battle had already been fought between the French and the patriots:--but, the main road being strongly occupied throughout with his brother's troops, he reached Madrid in safety.

Lucien Buonaparte, it is understood, received the first offer of this crown; but he did not envy the condition of his brother's royal va.s.sals, and declined the dangerous honour. Murat had expected it, and much resented his disappointment; but Napoleon did not consider him as possessed of the requisite prudence, and he was forced to accept the succession to the vacant throne of Naples.

Joseph had become not unpopular in Naples, and being a peaceful man, would gladly have remained in that humbler kingdom; but Napoleon no more consulted the private wishes of his subaltern princes on such occasions, than he did those of his generals in the arrangements of a campaign.

On the 24th of July (says Colonel Napier), "Joseph 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 const.i.tution which they did not understand, and which few of them had even heard of; his only hope of success resting on the strength of his brother's arms; his claims on the consent of an imbecile monarch and the weakness of a few pusillanimous n.o.bles, in contempt of the rights of millions now arming to oppose him."

[Footnote 58: Colonel Napier, p. 25.]

CHAPTER XXIV

Insurrection of the Spaniards and Portuguese--Their Alliance with England--Battle of Riosecco--Joseph enters Madrid--First Siege of Zaragossa--Dupont's March into Andalusia--The Battle of Baylen--Dupont Surrenders--Joseph quits Madrid--Situation of Junot--Arrival of Sir Arthur Wellesley--Battle of Rorica--Battle of Vimiero--Convention of Cintra.

On the 4th of July the King of England addressed his Parliament on the subject which then fixed the universal enthusiasm of his people. "I view" (said he) "with the liveliest interest the loyal and determined spirit manifested in resisting the violence and perfidy with which the dearest rights of the Spanish nation have been a.s.sailed. The kingdom thus n.o.bly struggling against the usurpation and tyranny of France, can no longer be considered as the enemy of Great Britain, but is recognised by me as a natural friend and ally." It has been already mentioned that the British commanders in the neighbourhood of Spain did not wait for orders from home to espouse openly the cause of the insurgent nation.

The Spanish prisoners of war were forthwith released, clothed, equipped, and sent back to their country. Supplies of arms and money were liberally transmitted thither; and, Portugal catching the flame and bursting into general insurrection also, a formal treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, was soon concluded between England and the two kingdoms of the Peninsula.

This insurrection furnished Great Britain with what she had not yet possessed during the war, a favourable theatre whereon to oppose the full strength of her empire to the arms of Napoleon; and the opportunity was embraced with zeal, though for some time but little skill appeared in the manner of using it. The Emperor, on the other hand, observed with surprise and rage the energy of the Spaniards, and not doubting that England would hasten to their aid, bent every effort to consummate his flagitious purpose. "Thus" (says a distinguished writer) "the two leading nations of the world were brought into contact at a moment when both were disturbed by angry pa.s.sions, eager for great events, and possessed of surprising power."[59]

Napoleon, from the extent and population of his empire, under the operation of the Conscription Code was enabled to maintain an army 500,000 strong; but his relations with those powers on the continent whom he had not entirely subdued were of the most unstable character, and even the states which he had formally united to France were, without exception, pregnant with the elements of disaffection. It was therefore impossible for him to concentrate the whole of his gigantic strength on the soil of Spain. His troops, moreover, being drawn from a mult.i.tude of different countries and tongues, could not be united in heart or in discipline like the soldiers of a purely national army. On the other hand, the military genius at his command has never been surpa.s.sed in any age or country: his officers were accustomed to victory, and his own reputation exerted a magical influence over both friends and foes. The pecuniary resources of the vast empire were great, and they were managed so skilfully by Buonaparte that the supplies were raised within the year, and in a metallic currency.

His ancient enemy was omnipotent at sea; and if the character of her armies stood at the moment much lower both at home and abroad than it ever deserved to do, this was a mistake which one well-organised campaign was likely to extinguish. England possessed at this time a population of twenty millions, united in the spirit of loyalty and regarding the Spanish cause as just, n.o.ble and sacred: a standing army of 200,000 of the best troops in the world, an immense recruiting establishment, and a system of militia which enabled her to swell her muster to any limit. Her colonies occupied a large share of this army; but there remained at her immediate command a force at least equal to that with which Buonaparte had conquered Austria and Prussia. Her credit was unbounded; and her commerce not only supplied means of information altogether unrivalled, but secured for her the secret goodwill of whole cla.s.ses in every country. England possessed Generals worthy to cope with the best of Buonaparte's Marshals, and in the hour of need discovered that she possessed one capable of confronting, and of conquering, the great Emperor himself. Finally, she possessed the incalculable advantage of warring on the side of justice and freedom, against an usurper, whose crimes were on the same gigantic scale with his genius.

The remembrance of their leader's perfidy weighed heavily on the moral strength of the French army throughout the approaching contest; while a proud conviction that their cause was the right sustained the hearts of the English.

Upon them, ultimately, the chief burden and the chief glory of the war devolved: yet justice will ever be done to the virtuous exertions of their allies of the Peninsula. At the moment when the insurrection occurred, 20,000 Spanish troops were in Portugal under the orders of Junot; 15,000 more, under the Marquis de Romana, were serving Napoleon in Holstein. There remained 40,000 Spanish regulars, 11,000 Swiss, and 30,000 militia; but of the best of these the discipline, when compared with French or English armies, was contemptible. The n.o.bility, to whose order the chief officers belonged, were divided in their sentiments--perhaps the greater number inclined to the interests of Joseph. Above all, the troops were scattered, in small sections, over the face of the whole country, and there was no probability that any one regular army should be able to muster so strong as to withstand the efforts of a mere fragment of the French force already established within the kingdom. The fleets of Spain had been destroyed in the war with England: her commerce and revenues had been mortally wounded by the alliance with France and the maladministration of G.o.doy. Ferdinand was detained a prisoner in France. There was no natural leader or chief, around whom the whole energies of the nation might be expected to rally.

It was amidst such adverse circ.u.mstances that the Spanish people rose everywhere, smarting under intolerable wrongs, against a French army, already 80,000 strong, in possession of half the fortresses of the country, and in perfect communication with the mighty resources of Napoleon.

There are authors who still delight to undervalue the motives of this great national movement; according to whom the commercial cla.s.ses rose chiefly, if not solely, from their resentment of the pecuniary losses inflicted on them by G.o.doy's alliance with the author of the "continental system"; the priesthood because G.o.doy had impoverished the church, and they feared that a Buonapartean government would pursue the same course to a much greater extent; the peasantry because their priests commanded them. All these influences unquestionably operated, and all strongly; but who can believe in the absence of others infinitely above these, and common to all the Spaniards who, during six years, fought and bled, and saw their towns ruined and their soil a waste, that they might vindicate their birthright, the independence of their nation? Nor can similar praise be refused to the great majority of the Portuguese. Napoleon summoned a body of the n.o.bles of that kingdom also to meet him early in the year at Bayonne: they obeyed, and being addressed by the haughty usurper in person, resisted all his efforts to cajole them into an imitation of the Spanish Notables, who at the same time and place accepted Joseph for their King. They were in consequence retained as prisoners in France during the war which followed; but their fate operated as a new stimulus upon the general feeling of their countrymen at home, already well prepared for insurrection by the brutal oppression of Junot.

The Spanish arms were at first exposed to many reverses; the rawness of their levies, and the insulated nature of their movements, being disadvantages of which it was not difficult for the experienced Generals and overpowering numbers of the French to reap a full and b.l.o.o.d.y harvest. After various petty skirmishes, in which the insurgents of Arragon were worsted by Lefebre Desnouettes, and those of Navarre and Biscay by Bessieres, the latter officer came upon the united armies of Castile, Leon and Galicia, commanded by the Generals Cuesta and Blake, on the 14th of July, at Riosecco, and defeated them in a desperate action, in which not less than 20,000 Spaniards died. This calamitous battle it was which opened the gates of Madrid to the intrusive king--whose arrival in that capital on the 20th of the same month has already been mentioned.

But Joseph was not destined to remain long in Madrid: the fortune of war, after the great day of Riosecco, was everywhere on the side of the patriots. Duhesme, who had so treacherously possessed himself of Barcelona and Figueras, found himself surrounded by the Catalonian mountaineers, who, after various affairs, in which much blood was shed on both sides, compelled him to shut himself up in Barcelona. Marshal Moncey conducted another large division of the French towards Valencia, and was to have been further reinforced by a detachment from Duhesme.

The course of events in Catalonia prevented Duhesme from affording any such a.s.sistance; and the inhabitants of Valencia, male and female, rising _en ma.s.se_, and headed by their clergy, manned their walls with such determined resolution, that the French marshal was at length compelled to retreat. He fell back upon the main body, under Bessieres, but did not effect a conjunction with them until his troops had suffered miserably in their march through an extensive district, in which every inhabitant was a watchful enemy.

A far more signal catastrophe had befallen another powerful _corps d'armee_, under General Dupont, which marched from Madrid towards the south, with the view of suppressing all symptoms of insurrection in that quarter, and, especially, of securing the great naval station of Cadiz, where a French squadron lay, watched, as usual, by the English. Dupont's force was increased as he advanced, till it amounted to 20,000 men; and with these he took possession of Baylen and La Carolina, in Andalusia, and stormed Jaen. But before he could make these acquisitions, the citizens of Cadiz had universally taken the patriot side; the commander of the French vessels had been forced to surrender them; and the place, having opened a communication with the English fleet, a.s.sumed a posture of determined defence. General Castanos, the Spanish commander in that province, meanwhile, having held back from battle until his raw troops should have had time to be disciplined, began at length to threaten the position of the French. Jaen was attacked by him with such vigour, that Dupont was fain to evacuate it, and fall back to Baylen, where his troops soon suffered severe privations, the peasantry being in arms all around them, and the supply of food becoming from day to day more difficult. On the 16th of July, Dupont was attacked at Baylen by Castanos, who knew from an intercepted despatch the extent of his enemy's distress: the French were beaten, and driven as far as Menjibar.

They returned on the 18th, and attempted to recover Baylen; but, after a long and desperate battle, in which 3000 of the French were killed, Dupont, perceiving that the Spaniards were gathering all around in numbers not to be resisted, proposed to capitulate. In effect, he and 20,000 soldiers laid down their arms at Baylen, on condition that they should be transported in safety into France. The Spaniards broke this convention, and detained them as prisoners--thus, foolishly as well a wickedly, imitating the perfidy of Napoleon's own conduct to Spain. This battle and capitulation of Baylen were termed by the Emperor himself _the Caudine forks_ of the French army. He attributed the disaster to treachery on the part of Dupont: it was the result of the rashness of the expedition, and the incompetency of the conductor. The richest part of Spain was freed wholly of the invaders: the light troops of Castanos pushed on, and swept the country before them; and within ten days, King Joseph perceived the necessity of quitting Madrid, and removed his headquarters to Vittoria.

In the meantime Lefebre Desnouettes, whose early success in Arragon has been alluded to, was occupied with the siege of Zaragossa--the inhabitants of which city had risen in the first outbreak, and prepared to defend their walls to the last extremity. Don Jose Palafox, a young n.o.bleman of no great talents, who had made his escape from Bayonne, was invested with the command; but the real leaders were the priests and some of the private citizens, who selected him for the prominent place as belonging to a family of eminent distinction in their kingdom, but in effect considered and used him as their tool. Some Spanish and Walloon regiments, who had formed the garrisons of strong places treacherously seized by the enemy before the war commenced, had united with Palafox, and various b.l.o.o.d.y skirmishes had occurred--ere the French general was enabled to shut them up in Zaragossa and form the siege. The importance of success in this enterprise was momentous, especially after the failure of Moncey at Valencia. Napoleon himself early saw, that if the Valencians should be able to form an union with the Arragonese at Zaragossa, the situation of the Catalonian insurgents on the one side would be prodigiously strengthened; while, on the other hand, the armies of Leon and Galicia (whose coasts offered the means of continual communication with England) would conduct their operations in the immediate vicinity of the only great road left open between Madrid and Bayonne--the route by Burgos. He therefore had instructed Savary to consider Zaragossa as an object of the very highest importance; but the corps of Lefebre was not strengthened as the Emperor would have wished it to be, ere he sat down before Zaragossa. The siege was pressed with the utmost vigour; but the immortal heroism of the citizens baffled all the valour of the French. There were no regular works worthy of notice: but the old Moorish walls, not above eight or ten feet in height, and some extensive monastic buildings in the outskirts of the city, being manned by crowds of determined men, whose wives and daughters looked on, nay, mingled boldly in their defence--the besiegers were held at bay week after week, and saw their ranks thinned in continual a.s.saults without being able to secure any adequate advantage. Famine came and disease in its train, to aggravate the sufferings of the townspeople; but they would listen to no suggestions but those of the same proud spirit in which they had begun. The French at length gained possession of the great convent of St. Engracia, and thus established themselves within the town itself: their general then sent to Palafox this brief summons: "Headquarters, Santa Engracia--Capitulation"; but he received for answer: "Headquarters, Zaragossa--War to the knife." The battle was maintained literally from street to street, from house to house, and from chamber to chamber. Men and women fought side by side, amidst flames and carnage; until Lefebre received the news of Baylen, and having wasted two months in his enterprise, abandoned it abruptly, lest he should find himself insulated amidst the general retreat of the French armies. Such was the first of the two famous sieges of Zaragossa.

The English government meanwhile had begun their preparations for interfering effectually in the affairs of the Peninsula. They had despatched one body of troops to the support of Castanos in Andalusia; but these did not reach the south of Spain until their a.s.sistance was rendered unnecessary by the surrender of Dupont at Baylen. A more considerable force, amounting to 10,000, sailed early in June, from Cork, for Coruna, under the command of the Honourable Sir Arthur Wellesley. This armament, originally designed to co-operate with another from India in a great attack on Mexico, had its destination altered the moment the Spanish Insurrection was announced. Sir Arthur, being permitted to land at what point of the Peninsula he should judge most advantageous for the general cause, was soon satisfied that Portugal ought to be the first scene of his operations, and accordingly lost no time in opening a communication with the patriots, who had taken possession of Oporto. Here the troops which had been designed to aid Castanos joined him. Thus strengthened, and well informed of the state of the French armies in Spain, Sir Arthur resolved to effect a landing and attack Junot while circ.u.mstances seemed to indicate no chance of his being reinforced by Bessieres.