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Title: A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 1, 1807-1809
From the treaty of Fontainbleau to the battle of Corunna

Author: Charles Oman

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Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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Transcriber's note
Table of Contents
List of Maps
List of Portraits
Index

CARLOS IIII.
REY DE ESPAÑA.

A HISTORY OF THE
PENINSULAR WAR
BY
CHARLES OMAN, M.A.
FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE
AND DEPUTY-PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY (CHICHELE)
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Vol. I
1807-1809
FROM THE TREATY OF FONTAINEBLEAU
TO THE BATTLE OF CORUNNA
WITH MAPS, PLANS AND PORTRAITS

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1902

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK

PREFACE

I t is many years since an attempt has been made in England to deal with
the general history of the Peninsular War. Several interesting and valuable
diaries or memoirs of officers who took part in the great struggle have been
published of late[1], but no writer of the present generation has dared to
grapple with the details of the whole of the seven years of campaigning that
lie between the Dos Mayo and Toulouse. Napier’s splendid work has held
the field for sixty years. Meanwhile an enormous bulk of valuable material
has been accumulating in English, French, and Spanish, which has
practically remained unutilized. Papers, public and private, are accessible
whose existence was not suspected in the ’thirties; an infinite number of
autobiographies and reminiscences which have seen the light after fifty or
sixty years of repose in some forgotten drawer, have served to fill up many
gaps in our knowledge. At least one formal history of the first importance,
that of General Arteche y Moro, has been published. I fancy that its eleven
volumes are practically unknown in England, yet it is almost as valuable as
Toreño’s Guerra de la Independencia in enabling us to understand the
purely Spanish side of the war.
I trust therefore that it will not be considered presumptuous for one who
has been working for some ten or fifteen years at the original sources to
endeavour to summarize in print the results of his investigations; for I
believe that even the reader who has already devoted a good deal of
attention to the Peninsular War will find a considerable amount of new
matter in these pages.
My resolve to take in hand a general history of the struggle was largely
influenced by the passing into the hands of All Souls College of the papers
of one of its most distinguished fellows, the diplomatist Sir Charles
Vaughan. Not only had Vaughan unique opportunities for observing the
early years of the Peninsular War, but he turned them to the best account,
and placed all his observations on record. I suppose that there was seldom a
man who had a greater love for collecting and filing information. His papers

contain not only his own diaries and correspondence, but an infinite number
of notes made for him by Spanish friends on points which he desired to
master, and a vast bulk of pamphlets, proclamations, newspapers, and tables
of statistics, carefully bound together in bundles, which (as far as I can see)
have not been opened between the day of his death and that on which they
passed, by a legacy from his last surviving relative, into the possession of
his old college. Vaughan landed at Corunna in September, 1808, in
company with Charles Stuart, the first English emissary to the Central
Junta. He rode with Stuart to Madrid and Aranjuez, noting everything that
he saw, from Roman inscriptions to the views of local Alcaldes and priests
on the politics of the day. He contrived to interview many persons of
importance—for example, he heard from Cuesta’s own lips of his
treasonable plot to overthrow the Junta, and he secured a long conversation
with Castaños as to the Capitulation of Baylen, from which I have extracted
some wholly new facts as to that event. He then went to Aragon, where he
stayed three weeks in the company of the Captain-General Joseph Palafox.
Not only did he cross-question Palafox as to all the details of his famous
defence of Saragossa, but he induced San Genis (the colonel who conducted
the engineering side of the operations) to write him a memorandum, twelve
pages long, as to the character and system of his work. Vaughan
accompanied Palafox to the front in November, but left the Army of Aragon
a day before the battle of Tudela. Hearing of the disaster from the fugitives
of Castaños’s army, he resolved to take the news to Madrid. Riding hard for
the capital, he crossed the front of Ney’s cavalry at Agreda, but escaped
them and came safely through. On arriving at Madrid he was given
dispatches for Sir John Moore, and carried them to Salamanca. It was the
news which he brought that induced the British general to order his abortive
retreat on Portugal. Moore entrusted to him not only his dispatch to Sir
David Baird, bidding him retire into Galicia, but letters for Lord
Castlereagh, which needed instant conveyance to London. Accordingly
Vaughan rode with headlong speed to Baird at Astorga, and from Astorga to
Corunna, which he reached eleven days after his start from Tudela. From
thence he took ship to England and brought the news of the Spanish
disasters to the British Ministry.
Vaughan remained some time in England before returning to Spain, but
he did not waste his time. Not only did he write a short account of the siege
of Saragossa, which had a great vogue at the moment, but he collected new

information from an unexpected source. General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, the
besieger of Saragossa, arrived as a prisoner in England. Vaughan promptly
went to Cheltenham, where the Frenchman was living on parole, and had a
long conversation with him as to the details of the siege, which he carefully
compared with the narrative of Palafox. Probably no other person ever had
such opportunities for collecting first-hand information as to that famous
leaguer. It will please those who love the romantic side of history, to know
that Vaughan was introduced by Palafox to Agostina, the famous ‘Maid of
Saragossa,’ and heard the tale of her exploit from the Captain-General less
than three months after it had occurred. The doubts of Napier and others as
to her existence are completely dissipated by the diary of this much-
travelled Fellow of All Souls College.
Vaughan returned to Spain ere 1809 was out, and served under various
English ambassadors at Seville and Cadiz for the greater part of the war.
His papers and collections for the later years of the struggle are almost as
full and interesting as those for 1808 which I have utilized in this volume.
I have worked at the Record Office on the British official papers of the
first years of the war, especially noting all the passages which are omitted in
the printed dispatches of Moore and other British generals. The suppressed
paragraphs (always placed within brackets marked with a pencil) contain a
good deal of useful matter, mainly criticisms on individuals which it would
not have been wise to publish at the time. There are a considerable number
of intercepted French dispatches in the collection, and a certain amount of
correspondence with the Spaniards which contains facts and figures
generally unknown. Among the most interesting are the letters of General
Leith, who was attached to the head quarters of Blake; in them I found by
far the best account of the operations of the Army of Galicia in Oct.-Nov.,
1808, which I have come upon.
As to printed sources of information, I have read all the Parliamentary
papers of 1808-9, and the whole file of the Madrid Gazette, as well as many
scores of memoirs and diaries, French, English, and Spanish. I think that no
important English or French book has escaped me; but I must confess that
some of the Spanish works quoted by General Arteche proved
unprocurable, both in London and Paris. The British Museum Library is by
no means strong in this department; it is even short of obvious authorities,
such as the monographs of St. Cyr and of Cabanes on the War in Catalonia.

The memoirs of the Peninsular veterans on both sides often require very
cautious handling; some cannot be trusted for anything that did not happen
under the author’s eye. Others were written so long after the events which
they record, that they are not even to be relied upon for facts which must
have been under his actual observation. For example, General Marbot
claims that he brought to Bayonne the dispatch from Murat informing
Napoleon of the insurrection of Madrid on May 2, and gives details as to
the way in which the Emperor received the news. But it is absolutely
certain, both from the text of Murat’s letter and from Napoleon’s answer to
it, that the document was carried and delivered by a Captain Hannecourt.
The aged Marbot’s memory had played him false. There are worse cases,
where an eye-witness, writing within a short time of the events which he
describes, gives a version which he must have known to be incorrect, for
the glorification of himself or some friend. Thiébault and Le Noble are bad
offenders in this respect: Thiébault’s account of some of the incidents in
Portugal and of the combat of Aldea del Ponte, Le Noble’s narrative of
Corunna, seem to be deliberately falsified. I have found one English
authority who falls under the same suspicion. But on both sides the majority
of the mistakes come either from writers who describe that which did not
pass under their own eyes, or from aged narrators who wrote their story
twenty, thirty, or forty years after the war was over. Their diaries written at
the time are often invaluable correctives to their memoirs or monographs
composed after an interval; e.g. Foy’s rough diary lately published by Girod
de l’Ain contains some testimonials to Wellington and the British army very
much more handsomely expressed than anything which the General wrote
in his formal history of the early campaigns of 1808.
I hope to insert in my second volume a bibliography of all the works
useful for the first two years of the war. The inordinate size to which my
first volume has swelled has made it impossible to include in it a list of
authorities, which covers a good many pages.
It will be noticed that my Appendices include several extensive tables,
giving the organization of the French and Spanish armies in 1808. For part
of them I am indebted to General Arteche’s work; but the larger half has
been constructed at great cost of time and labour from scattered
contemporary papers—from returns to be found in the most varied places
(some of the most important Spanish ones survive only in the Record Office

or in Vaughan’s papers, others only in the Madrid Gazette). No one, so far
as I know, had hitherto endeavoured to construct the complete table of the
Spanish army in October, or of that of the exact composition of Napoleon’s
‘grand army’ in the same month. I hope my Appendices therefore may be
found of some use.
More than one friend has asked me during the last few months whether it
is worth while to rewrite the history of the Peninsular War when Napier’s
great work is everywhere accessible. I can only reply that I no more dream
of superseding the immortal six volumes of that grand old soldier, than Dr.
S. R. Gardiner dreamed of superseding Clarendon’s History of the Great
Rebellion when he started to write the later volumes of his account of the
reign of Charles I. The books of Napier and Clarendon must remain as all-
important contemporary narratives, written by men who saw clearly one
aspect of the events which they describe; in each the personal element
counts for much, and the political and individual sympathies and enmities
of the historian have coloured his whole work. No one would think of going
to Clarendon for an unprejudiced account of the character and career of
Oliver Cromwell. But I do not think that it is generally realized that it is just
as unsafe to go to Napier for an account of the aims and undertakings of the
Spanish Juntas, or the Tory governments of 1808-14. As a narrator of the
incidents of war he is unrivalled: no one who has ever read them can forget
his soul-stirring descriptions of the charge of the Fusilier brigade at
Albuera, of the assault on the Great Breach at Badajoz, or the storming of
Soult’s positions on the Rhune. These and a hundred other eloquent
passages will survive for ever as masterpieces of vigorous English prose.
But when he wanders off into politics, English or Spanish, Napier is a
less trustworthy guide. All his views are coloured by the fact that he was a
bitter enemy of the Tories of his own day. The kinsman not only of Charles
James Fox, but of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, he could never look with
unprejudiced eyes on their political opponents. Canning and Spencer
Perceval were in his ideas men capable of any folly, any gratuitous
perversity. Castlereagh’s splendid services to England are ignored: it would
be impossible to discover from the pages of the Peninsular War that this
was the man who picked out Wellington for the command in Spain, and
kept him there in spite of all manner of opposition. Nor is this all: Napier
was also one of those strange Englishmen who, notwithstanding all the

evidence that lay before them, believed that Napoleon Bonaparte was a
beneficent character, thwarted in his designs for the regeneration of Europe
by the obstinate and narrow-minded opposition of the British Government.
In his preface, he goes so far as to say that the Tories fought the Emperor
not because he was the dangerous enemy of the British Empire, but because
he was the champion of Democracy, and they the champions of caste and
privilege. When the tidings of Napoleon’s death at St. Helena reached him
(as readers of his Life will remember), he cast himself down on his sofa and
wept for three hours! Hence it was that, in dealing with the Tory ministries,
he is ever a captious and unkind critic, while for the Emperor he displays a
respect that seems very strange in an enthusiastic friend of political liberty.
Every one who has read the first chapters of his great work must see that
Bonaparte gets off with slight reproof for his monstrous act of treachery at
Bayonne, and for the even more disgusting months of hypocritical
friendship that had preceded it. While pouring scorn on Charles IV and
Ferdinand VII, the silly father and the rebellious son, whose quarrels were
the Emperor’s opportunity, Napier forgets to rise to the proper point of
indignation in dealing with the false friend who betrayed them. He almost
writes as if there were some excuse for the crimes of robbery and
kidnapping, if the victim were an imbecile or a bigot, or an undutiful son.
The prejudice in favour of the Emperor goes so far that he even endeavours
to justify obvious political and military mistakes in his conduct of the
Peninsular War, by throwing all the blame on the way in which his marshals
executed his orders, and neglecting to point out that the orders themselves
were impracticable.
On the other hand, Napier was just as over-hard to the Spaniards as he
was over-lenient to Bonaparte. He was one of those old Peninsular officers
who could never dismiss the memory of some of the things that he had seen
or heard. The cruelties of the Guerillas, the disgraceful panic on the eve of
Talavera, the idiotic pride and obstinacy of Cuesta, the cowardice of Imaz
and La Peña, prejudiced him against all their countrymen. The turgid
eloquence of Spanish proclamations, followed by the prosaic incapacity of
Spanish performance, sickened him. He always accepts the French rather
than the Spanish version of a story, forgetting that Bonaparte and his official
writers were authorities quite as unworthy of implicit credence as their
opponents. In dealing with individual Spaniards—we may take for example
Joseph Palafox, or the unfortunate Daoiz and Velarde—he is unjust to the

extreme of cruelty. His astounding libel on La Romana’s army, I have had
occasion to notice in some detail on page 416 of this work. He invariably
exaggerates Spanish defeats, and minimizes Spanish successes. He is
reckless in the statements which he gives as to their numbers in battle, or
their losses in defeat. Evidently he did not take the trouble to consult the
elaborate collection of morning-states of armies and other official
documents which the Spanish War Office published several years before he
wrote his first volume. All his figures are borrowed from the haphazard
guesses of the French marshals. This may seem strong language to use
concerning so great an author, but minute investigation seems to prove that
nearly every statement of Napier’s concerning a battle in which the
Spaniards were engaged is drawn from some French source. The Spaniards’
version is ignored. In his indignation at the arrogance and obstinacy with
which they often hampered his hero Wellington, he refuses to look at the
extenuating circumstances which often explain, or even excuse, their
conduct. After reading his narrative, one should turn to Arguelles or Toreño
or Arteche, peruse their defence of their countrymen, and then make one’s
ultimate decision as to facts. Every student of the Peninsular War, in short,
must read Napier: but he must not think that, when the reading is finished,
he has mastered the whole meaning and importance of the great struggle.
The topographical details of most of my maps are drawn from the
splendid Atlas published by the Spanish War Office during the last twenty
years. But the details of the placing of the troops are my own. I have been
particularly careful in the maps of Vimiero and Corunna to indicate the
position of every battalion, French or English.

I am in duty bound to acknowledge the very kind assistance of three
helpers in the construction of this volume. The first compiled the Index,
after grappling with the whole of the proofs. The second, Mr. C. E. Doble,
furnished me with a great number of suggestions as to revision, which I
have adopted. The third, Mr. C. T. Atkinson, of Exeter College, placed at
my disposition his wide knowledge of British regimental history, and put
me in the way of obtaining many details as to the organization of
Wellesley’s and Moore’s armies. I am infinitely obliged to all three.

C. OMAN.
All Souls College,
March 31, 1902.

CONTENTS

SECTION I
Napoleon and the Spanish Bourbons
Chapter PAGE
I. The Treaty of Fontainebleau 1
II. The Court of Spain 12
III. The Conquest of Portugal 26
IV. The French aggression in Spain: Abdication of
Charles IV 33
V. The Treachery at Bayonne 43
VI. The Second of May: Outbreak of the Spanish
Insurrection 57

SECTION II
The Land and the Combatants
I. Military geography of the Peninsula:
Mountains, Rivers, Roads 72
II. The Spanish Army in 1808 89
III. The French Army in Spain 103
IV. The tactics of the French and their adversaries
during the Peninsular War 114

SECTION III
Saragossa and Baylen
I. Opening of hostilities: the French Invasions of
Andalusia and Valencia 123
II. Operations in the North: the siege of Saragossa 140

III. Operations in the North: battle of Medina de
Rio Seco 163
IV. Dupont in Andalusia: the Capitulation of
Baylen 176

SECTION IV
The English in Portugal
I. The outbreak of the Portuguese Insurrection 206
II. Landing of the British: combat of Roliça 220
III. Vimiero 242
IV. The Convention of Cintra 263
V. The French evacuate Portugal 279
VI. The Court of Inquiry 291

SECTION V
The Struggle in Catalonia
I. Duhesme’s operations: first siege of Gerona
(June-July, 1808) 301
II. The struggle continued: the second siege of
Gerona (July-August, 1808) 322

SECTION VI
The Consequences of Baylen
I. The French retreat to the Ebro 334
II. Creation of the ‘Junta General’ 342
III. The ‘Junta General’ in Session 354
IV. An episode in the Baltic 367

SECTION VII
Napoleon’s Invasion of Spain

I. French and Spanish preparations 376
II. The preliminary fighting: arrival of Napoleon 391
III. The misfortunes of Joachim Blake: Zornoza
and Espinosa de los Monteros 402
IV. Napoleon crosses the Ebro: the rout of
Gamonal: Soult’s pursuit of Blake 417
V. Tudela 431
VI. Passage of the Somosierra: Napoleon captures
Madrid 450

SECTION VIII
The Campaign of Sir John Moore
I. Napoleon at Madrid 473
II. Moore at Salamanca 486
III. Moore’s advance to Sahagun 513
IV. Napoleon’s pursuit of Moore: Sahagun to
Astorga 539
V. Soult’s pursuit of Moore: Astorga to Corunna 559
VI. The battle of Corunna 583

APPENDICES
I. Godoy’s Proclamation of Oct. 5, 1806 603
II. The Treaty of Fontainebleau 604
III. Papers relating to the ‘Affair of the Escurial’ 606
IV. Abdication of Charles IV 607
V. The Spanish Army in 1808 607
VI. The first French ‘Army of Spain’ 612
VII. Papers relating to the Treachery at Bayonne 616
VIII. Papers relating to the Capitulation of Baylen 618
IX. Papers relating to the Convention of Cintra 625
X. List of Members of the Central Junta 630

XI. The Spanish Armies, Oct.-Nov. 1808 631
XII. The second French ‘Army of Spain’ 640
XIII. The Army of Sir John Moore, its strength and
its losses 646

INDEX 649

MAPS
1. Madrid 60
2. Saragossa 160
3. Medina de Rio Seco 168
4. Andalusia and Baylen 184
5. Vimiero 249
6. Catalonia 304
7. Northern Spain 384
8. Espinosa 413
9. Tudela 435
10. Corunna 584
11. Large map of Spain At end of volume

PORTRAITS
1. Charles IV Frontispiece
2. Maria Luisa Queen of Spain 17
3. Manuel Godoy, Prince of the Peace 41

NOTE
The coins on the binding of the book are—the first a half-dollar of the
last issue of Charles IV, the second a siege-piece struck at Gerona in 1808.
That on the title-page is a peseta struck at Valencia, with a patriotic legend
on the reverse, RENUEVA VAL. SU JURAM. SELLADO CON SU SANGRE.

SECTION I
NAPOLEON AND THE SPANISH BOURBONS

CHAPTER I
THE TREATY OF FONTAINEBLEAU

‘I am not the heir of Louis XIV, I am the heir of Charlemagne,’ wrote
Napoleon, in one of those moments of epigrammatic self-revelation which
are so precious to the students of the most interesting epoch and the most
interesting personality of modern history[2]. There are historians who have
sought for the origins of the Peninsular War far back in the eternal and
inevitable conflict between democracy and privilege[3]: there are others who
—accepting the Emperor’s own version of the facts—have represented it as
a fortuitous development arising from his plan of forcing the Continental
System upon every state in Europe. To us it seems that the moment beyond
which we need not search backward was that in which Bonaparte
formulated to himself the idea that he was not the successor of the greatest
of the Bourbons, but of the founder of the Holy Roman Empire. It is a
different thing to claim to be the first of European monarchs, and to claim
to be the king of kings. Louis XIV had wide-reaching ambitions for himself
and for his family: but it was from his not very deep or accurate knowledge
of Charlemagne that Napoleon had derived his idea of a single imperial
power bestriding Europe, of a monarch whose writ ran alike at Paris and at
Mainz, at Milan and at Hamburg, at Rome and at Barcelona, and whose
vassal-princes brought him the tribute of all the lands of the Oder, the Elbe,
and the middle Danube[4].
There is no need for us to trace back the growth of Napoleon’s
conception of himself as the successor of Charlemagne beyond the winter

of 1805-6, the moment when victorious at Austerlitz and master for the first
time of Central Europe, he began to put into execution his grandiose
scheme for enfeoffing all the realms of the Continent as vassal states of the
French Empire. He had extorted from Francis of Austria the renunciation of
his meagre and time-worn rights as head of the Holy Roman Empire,
because he intended to replace the ancient shadow by a new reality. The
idea that he might be Emperor of Europe and not merely Emperor of the
French was already developed, though Prussia still needed to be chastised,
and Russia to be checked and turned back on to the ways of the East. It was
after Austerlitz but before Jena that the foundations of the Confederation of
the Rhine were laid[5], and that the Emperor took in hand the erection of
that series of subject realms under princes of his own house, which was to
culminate in the new kingdom of Spain ruled by ‘Joseph Napoleon the
First.’ By the summer of 1806 the system was already well developed: the
first modest experiment, the planting out of his sister Eliza and her
insignificant husband in the duchy of Lucca and Piombino was now twelve
months old. There had followed the gift of the old Bourbon kingdom of
Naples to Joseph Bonaparte in February, 1806, and the transformation of
the Batavian Republic into Louis Bonaparte’s kingdom of Holland in June.
The Emperor’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, had been made Grand-Duke
of Berg in March, his sister, Pauline, Duchess of Guastalla in the same
month. It cannot be doubted that his eye was already roving all round
Europe, marking out every region in which the system of feudatory states
could be further extended.
At the ill-governed realms of Spain and Portugal it is certain that he
must have taken a specially long glance. He had against the house of the
Bourbons the grudge that men always feel against those whom they have
injured. He knew that they could never forgive the disappointed hopes of
1799, nor the murder of the Duc d’Enghien, however much they might
disguise their sentiments by base servility. What their real feelings were
might be guessed from the treacherous conduct of their kinsmen of Naples,
whom he had just expelled from the Continent. The Bourbons of Spain
were at this moment the most subservient and the most ill-used of his allies.
Under the imbecile guidance of his favourite Godoy, Charles IV had
consistently held to the league with France since 1795, and had thereby
brought down untold calamities upon his realm. Nevertheless Napoleon was
profoundly dissatisfied with him as an ally. The seventy-two million francs

of subsidies which he was annually wringing from his impoverished
neighbour seemed to him a trifle. The chief gain that he had hoped to
secure, when he goaded Spain into war with England in 1804, had been the
assistance of her fleet, by whose aid he had intended to gain the control of
the narrow seas, and to dominate the Channel long enough to enable him to
launch his projected invasion against the shores of Kent and Sussex. But the
Spanish navy, always more formidable on paper than in battle, had proved a
broken reed. The flower of its vessels had been destroyed at Trafalgar.
There only remained in 1806 a few ships rotting in harbour at Cadiz,
Cartagena, and Ferrol, unable even to concentrate on account of the
strictness of Collingwood’s blockade. Napoleon was angry at his ally’s
impotence, and was already reflecting that in hands more able and energetic
than those of Charles IV Spain might give aid of a very different kind. In
after years men remembered that as early as 1805 he had muttered to his
confidants that a Bourbon on the Spanish throne was a tiresome neighbour
—too weak as an ally, yet dangerous as a possible enemy[6]. For in spite of
all the subservience of Charles IV the Emperor believed, and believed quite
rightly, that a Bourbon prince must in his heart loathe the unnatural alliance
with the child of the Revolution. But in 1806 Bonaparte had an impending
war with Prussia on his hands, and there was no leisure for interfering in the
affairs of the Peninsula. Spain, he thought, could wait, and it is improbable
that he had formulated in his brain any definite plan for dealing with her.
The determining factor in his subsequent action was undoubtedly
supplied in the autumn of 1806 by the conduct of the Spanish government
during the campaign of Jena. There was a moment, just before that decisive
battle had been fought, during which European public opinion was
expecting a check to the French arms. The military prestige of Prussia was
still very great, and it was well known that Russia had not been able to put
forth her full strength at Austerlitz. Combined it was believed that they
would be too much for Napoleon. While this idea was still current, the
Spanish king, or rather his favourite Godoy, put forth a strange
proclamation which showed how slight was the bond of allegiance that
united them to France, and how hollow their much vaunted loyalty to the
emperor[7]. It was an impassioned appeal to the people of Spain to take arms
en masse, and to help the government with liberal gifts of men, horses and
money. ‘Come,’ it said, ‘dear fellow countrymen, come and swear loyalty
beneath the banners of the most benevolent of sovereigns.’ The God of

Victories was to smile on a people which helped itself, and a happy and
enduring peace was to be the result of a vigorous effort. It might have been
pleaded in defence of Charles IV that all this was very vague, and that the
anonymous enemy who was to be crushed might be England. But
unfortunately for this interpretation, three whole sentences of the document
are filled with demands for horses and an instant increase in the cavalry arm
of the Spanish military establishment. It could hardly be urged with
seriousness that horsemen were intended to be employed against the
English fleet. And of naval armaments there was not one word in the
proclamation.
This document was issued on Oct. 5, 1806: not long after there arrived in
Madrid the news of the battle of Jena and the capture of Berlin. The Prince
of the Peace was thunderstruck at the non-fulfilment of his expectations and
the complete triumph of Napoleon. He hastened to countermand his
armaments, and to shower letters of explanation and apology on the
Emperor, pointing out that his respected ally could not possibly have been
the ‘enemy’ referred to in the proclamation. That document had reached
Napoleon on the very battle-field of Jena, and had caused a violent
paroxysm of rage in the august reader[8]. But, having Russia still to fight, he
repressed his wrath for a moment, affecting to regard as satisfactory
Godoy’s servile letters of explanation. Yet we can hardly doubt that this was
the moment at which he made up his mind that the House of Bourbon must
cease to reign in Spain. He must have reflected on the danger that southern
France had escaped; a hundred thousand Spaniards might have marched on
Bordeaux or Toulouse at the moment of Jena, and there would have been no
army whatever on the unguarded frontier of the Pyrenees to hold them in
check. Supposing that Jena had been deferred a month, or that no decisive
battle at all had been fought in the first stage of the struggle with Prussia, it
was clear that Godoy would have committed himself to open war. A stab in
the back, even if dealt with no better weapon than the disorganized Spanish
army, must have deranged all Napoleon’s plans, and forced him to turn
southward the reserves destined to feed the ‘Grand Army.’ It was clear that
such a condition of affairs must never be allowed to recur, and we should
naturally expect to find that, the moment the war of 1806-7 was ended,
Napoleon would turn against Spain, either to dethrone Charles IV, or at least
to demand the dismissal from office of Godoy. He acknowledged this

himself at St. Helena: the right thing to have done, as he then conceded,
would have been to declare open war on Spain immediately after Tilsit[9].
After eight years of experience of Bonaparte as an ally, the rulers of
Spain ought to have known that his silence during the campaigns of Eylau
and Friedland boded them no good. But his present intentions escaped
them, and they hastened to atone for the proclamation of Oct. 5 by a servile
obedience to all the orders which he sent them. The most important of these
was the command to mobilize and send to the Baltic 15,000 of their best
troops [March, 1807]. This was promptly done, the depleted battalions and
squadrons being raised to war-strength, by drafts of men and horses which
disorganized dozens of the corps that remained at home[10]. The reason
alleged, the fear of Swedish and English descents on the rear of the Grand
Army, was plausible, but there can be no doubt that the real purpose was to
deprive Spain of a considerable part, and that the most efficient, of her
disposable forces. If Godoy could have listened to the interviews of
Napoleon and Alexander of Russia at Tilsit, he would have been terrified at
the offhand way in which the Emperor suggested to the Czar that the
Balearic Isles should be taken from Spain and given to Ferdinand of Naples,
if the latter would consent to cede Sicily to Joseph Napoleon[11]. To despoil
his allies was quite in the usual style of Bonaparte—Godoy cannot have
forgotten the lot of Trinidad and Ceylon—but he had not before proposed to
tear from Spain, not a distant colony, but an ancient province of the
Aragonese crown. The project was enshrined in the ‘secret and
supplementary’ clauses of the Treaty of Tilsit, which Napoleon wished to
conceal till the times were ripe.
It was only when Bonaparte had returned to France from his long
campaign in Poland that the affairs of the Iberian Peninsula began to come
seriously to the front. The Emperor arrived in Paris at the end of July, 1807,
and this was the moment at which he might have been expected to produce
the rod, for the chastisement which the rulers of Spain had merited by their
foolish proclamation of the preceding year. But no sign of any such
intention was displayed: it is true that early in August French troops in
considerable numbers began to muster at Bayonne[12], but Bonaparte openly
declared that they were destined to be used, not against Spain, but against
Portugal. One of the articles of the Peace of Tilsit had been to the effect that
Sweden and Portugal, the last powers in Europe which had not submitted to

the Continental System, should be compelled—if necessary by force—to
adhere to it, and to exclude the commerce of England from their ports. It
was natural that now, as in 1801, a French contingent should be sent to aid
Spain in bringing pressure to bear on her smaller neighbour. With this idea
Godoy and his master persisted in the voluntary blindness to the signs of the
times which they had so long been cultivating. They gave their ambassador
in Lisbon orders to act in all things in strict conjunction with his French
colleague.
On August 12, therefore, the representatives of Spain and France
delivered to John, the Prince-Regent of Portugal (his mother, Queen Maria,
was insane), almost identical notes, in which they declared that they should
ask for their passports and leave Lisbon, unless by the first of September
the Regent had declared war on England, joined his fleet to that of the allied
powers, confiscated all British goods in his harbours, and arrested all
British subjects within the bounds of his kingdom. The prince, a timid and
incapable person, whose only wish was to preserve his neutrality, answered
that he was ready to break off diplomatic relations with England, and to
close his ports against British ships, but that the seizure of the persons and
property of the British merchants, without any previous declaration of war,
would be contrary to the rules of international law and morality. For a
moment he hoped that this half-measure would satisfy Napoleon, that he
might submit to the Continental System without actually being compelled
to declare war on Great Britain. But when dispatches had been interchanged
between the French minister Rayneval and his master at Paris, the answer
came that the Regent’s offer was insufficient, and that the representatives of
France and Spain were ordered to quit Lisbon at once. This they did on
September 30, but without issuing any formal declaration of war.
On October 18, the French army, which had been concentrating at
Bayonne since the beginning of August, under the harmless name of the
‘Corps of Observation of the Gironde,’ crossed the Bidassoa at Irun and
entered Spain. It had been placed under the orders of Junot, one of
Napoleon’s most active and vigorous officers, but not a great strategist after
the style of Masséna, Soult, or Davoust. He was a good fighting-man, but a
mediocre general. The reason that he received the appointment was that he
had already some knowledge of Portugal, from having held the post of
ambassador at Lisbon in 1805. He had been promised a duchy and a

marshal’s bâton if his mission was carried out to his master’s complete
satisfaction.
It is clear that from the first Napoleon had intended that Portugal should
refuse the ignominious orders which he had given to the Prince-Regent. If
he had only been wishing to complete the extension of the Continental
System over all Southern Europe, the form of obedience which had been
offered him by the Portuguese government would have been amply
sufficient. But he was aiming at annexation, and not at the mere assertion of
his suzerainty over Portugal. The fact that he began to mass troops at
Bayonne before he commenced to threaten the Regent is sufficient proof of
his intentions. An army was not needed to coerce the Portuguese: for it was
incredible that in the then condition of European affairs they would dare to
risk war with France and Spain by adhering too stiffly to the cause of
England. The Regent was timid and his submission was certain; but
Napoleon took care to dictate the terms that he offered in such an offensive
form that the Portuguese government would be tempted to beg for changes
of detail, though it sorrowfully accepted the necessity of conceding the
main point—war with England and the acceptance of the Continental
System. The Prince-Regent, as might have been expected, made a feeble
attempt to haggle over the more ignominious details, and then Napoleon
withdrew his ambassador and let loose his armies.
Shortly after Junot had crossed the Bidassoa there was signed at
Fontainebleau the celebrated secret treaty which marks the second stage of
the Emperor’s designs against the Peninsula. It was drawn up by Duroc,
Napoleon’s marshal of the palace, and Eugenio Izquierdo, the agent of
Godoy. For the official ambassador of Spain in Paris, the Prince of
Masserano, was not taken into the confidence of his master[13]. All delicate
matters were conducted by the favourite’s private representative, an obscure
but astute personage, the director of the Botanical Gardens at Madrid,
whose position was legitimized by a royal sign-manual giving him powers
to treat as a plenipotentiary with France. ‘Manuel is your protector: do what
he tells you, and by serving him you serve me,’ the old king had said, when
giving him his commission.
The Treaty of Fontainebleau is a strange document, whose main purpose,
at a first glance, seems to be the glorification of Godoy. It is composed of
fourteen articles[14], the most important of which contain the details of a

projected dismemberment of Portugal. The country was to be cut up into
three parts. Oporto and the northern province of Entre-Douro-e-Minho were
to become the ‘Kingdom of Northern Lusitania,’ and to be ceded to a
Bourbon, the young King of Etruria, whom Napoleon was just evicting
from his pleasant abode at Florence. All Southern Portugal, the large
province of Alemtejo and the coast region of Algarve, was to be given as an
independent principality to Godoy, under the title of ‘Prince of the
Algarves’[15]. The rest of Portugal, Lisbon and the provinces of Beira,
Estremadura and Tras-os-Montes were to be sequestrated till the conclusion
of a general peace, and meanwhile were to be governed and administered
by the French. Ultimately they were to be restored, or not restored, to the
house of Braganza according as the high contracting parties might
determine.
Instead therefore of receiving punishment for his escapade in the autumn
of 1806, Godoy was to be made by Napoleon a sovereign prince! But Spain,
as apart from the favourite, got small profit from this extraordinary treaty:
Charles IV might take, within the next three years, the pompous title of
‘Emperor of the Two Americas,’ and was to be given some share of the
transmarine possessions of Portugal—which meanwhile (treaties or no)
would inevitably fall into the hands of Great Britain, who held the
command of the seas, while Napoleon did not.
It is incredible that Bonaparte ever seriously intended to carry out the
terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleau: they were not even to be divulged (as
Article XIV stipulated) till it was his pleasure. Godoy had deserved badly of
him, and the Emperor was never forgiving. The favourite’s whole position
and character (as we shall presently show) were so odious and disgraceful,
that it would have required an even greater cynicism than Napoleon
possessed, to overthrow an ancient and respectable kingdom in order to
make him a sovereign prince. To pose perpetually as the regenerator of
Europe, and her guardian against the sordid schemes of Britain, and then to
employ as one’s agent for regeneration the corrupt and venal favourite of
the wicked old Queen of Spain, would have been too absurd. Napoleon’s
keen intelligence would have repudiated the idea, even in the state of
growing autolatry into which he was already lapsing in the year 1807. What
profit could there be in giving a kingdom to a false friend, already

convicted of secret disloyalty, incapable, disreputable, and universally
detested?
But if we apply another meaning to the Treaty of Fontainebleau we get a
very different light upon it. If we adopt the hypothesis that Bonaparte’s real
aim was to obtain an excuse for marching French armies into Spain without
exciting suspicion, all its provisions become intelligible. ‘This Prince of the
Peace,’ he said in one of his confidential moments, ‘this mayor of the
palace, is loathed by the nation; he is the rascal who will himself open for
me the gates of Spain[16].’ The phantom principality that was dangled before
Godoy’s eyes was only designed to attract his attention while the armies of
France were being poured across the Pyrenees. It is doubtful whether the
Emperor intended the project of the ‘Principality of the Algarves’ to become
generally known. If he did, it must have been with the intention of making
the favourite more odious than he already was to patriotic Spaniards, at the
moment when he and his master were about to be brushed away by a sweep
of the imperial arm. That Napoleon was already in October preparing other
armies beside that of Junot, and that he purposed to overrun Spain when the
time was ripe, is shown in the Treaty itself. Annexed to it is a convention
regulating the details of the invasion of Portugal: the sixth clause of this
paper mentions that it was the emperor’s intention to concentrate 40,000
more troops at Bayonne—in case Great Britain should threaten an armed
descent on Portugal—and that this force would be ready to cross the
Pyrenees by November 20. Napoleon sent not 40,000 but 100,000 men, and
pushed them into Spain, though no English invasion of Portugal had taken
place, or even been projected. After this is it possible to believe for a
moment in his good faith, or to think that the Treaty of Fontainebleau was
anything more than a snare?
Those who could best judge what was at the back of the emperor’s mind,
such as Talleyrand and Fouché, penetrated his designs long before the treaty
of Fontainebleau had been signed. Talleyrand declares in his memoirs[17]
that the reason for which he was deprived of the portfolio of Foreign Affairs
in August, 1807, was that he had disliked the scheme of invading Spain in a
treacherous fashion, and warned his master against it. No improbability is
added to this allegation by the fact that Napoleon at St. Helena repeatedly
stated that Talleyrand had first thought of the idea, and had recommended it
to him ‘while at the same time contriving to set an opinion abroad that he

was opposed to the design.’ On the other hand, we are not convinced of the
Prince of Benevento’s innocence merely by the fact that he wrote in his
autobiography that he was a strenuous opponent of the plan. He says that
the emperor broached the whole scheme to him the moment that he returned
from Tilsit, asseverating that he would never again expose himself to the
danger of a stab in the back at some moment when he might be busy in
Central Europe[18]. He himself, he adds, combated the project by every
possible argument, but could not move his master an inch from his purpose.
This is probably true; but we believe it not because Talleyrand wrote it
down—his bills require the endorsement of some backer of a less tarnished
reputation—but because the whole of the Spanish episode is executed in the
true Napoleonesque manner. Its scientific mixture of force and fraud is
clearly the work of the same hand that managed the details of the fall of the
Venetian Republic, and of the dethroning of Pope Pius VII. It is impossible
to ascribe the plot to any other author.

SECTION I: CHAPTER II
THE COURT OF SPAIN

Junot’s army was nearing the Portuguese frontier, and the reserve at
Bayonne was already beginning to assemble—it was now styled ‘the
Second Corps of Observation of the Gironde’—when a series of startling
events took place at the Spanish Court. On October 27, the very day that the
treaty of Fontainebleau was signed, Ferdinand, Prince of the Asturias, was
seized by his father and thrown into confinement, on a charge of high
treason, of having plotted to dethrone or even to murder his aged parent.
This astonishing development in the situation need not be laid to
Napoleon’s charge. There have been historians who think that he
deliberately stirred up the whole series of family quarrels at Madrid: but all
the materials for trouble were there already, and the shape which they took
was not particularly favourable to the Emperor’s present designs. They
sprang from the inevitable revolt against the predominance of Godoy, which
had long been due.
The mere fact that an incapable upstart like Godoy had been able to
control the foreign and internal policy of Spain ever since 1792 is a
sufficient evidence of the miserable state of the country. He was a mere
court favourite of the worst class: to compare him to Buckingham would be
far too flattering—and even Piers Gaveston had a pretty wit and no mean
skill as a man-at-arms, though he was also a vain ostentatious fool. After a
few years, we may remember, the one met the dagger and the other the axe,
with the full approval of English public opinion. But Godoy went on
flourishing like the green bay-tree, for sixteen years, decked with titles and
offices and laden with plunder, with no other support than the queen’s
unconcealed partiality for him, and the idiotic old king’s desire to have
trouble taken off his hands. Every thinking man in Spain hated the favourite
as the outward and visible sign of corruption in high places. Every patriot
saw that the would-be statesman who made himself the adulator first of

Barras and then of Bonaparte, and played cat’s-paw to each of them, to the
ultimate ruin and bankruptcy of the realm, ought to be removed. Yet there
was no sign of any movement against him, save obscure plots in the
household of the Prince Royal. But for the interference of Napoleon in the
affairs of Spain, it is possible that the Prince of the Peace might have
enjoyed many years more of power. Such is the price which nations pay for
handing over their bodies to autocratic monarchy and their souls to three
centuries of training under the Inquisition.
It is perhaps necessary to gain some detailed idea of the unpleasant
family party at Madrid. King Charles IV was now a man of sixty years of
age: he was so entirely simple and helpless that it is hardly an exaggeration
to say that his weakness bordered on imbecility. His elder brother, Don
Philip, was so clearly wanting in intellect that he had to be placed in
confinement and excluded from the throne. It might occur to us that it
would have been well for Spain if Charles had followed him to the asylum,
if we had not to remember that the crown would then have fallen to
Ferdinand of Naples, who if more intelligent was also more morally
worthless than his brother. Till the age of forty Charles had been entirely
suppressed and kept in tutelage by an autocratic father: when he came to the
throne he never developed any will or mind of his own, and remained the
tool and servant of those about him. He may be described as a good-natured
and benevolent imbecile: he was not cruel or malicious or licentious, or
given to extravagant fancies. His one pronounced taste was hunting: if he
could get away from his ministers to some country palace, and go out all
day with his dogs, his gun, and his gamekeepers, he was perfectly happy.
His brother of Naples, it will be remembered, had precisely the same hobby.
Of any other tastes, save a slight interest in some of the minor handicrafts,
which he shared with his cousin Louis XVI, we find no trace in the old
king. He was very ugly, not with the fierce clever ugliness of his father
Charles III, but in an imbecile fashion, with a frightfully receding forehead,
a big nose, and a retreating jaw generally set in a harmless grin. He did not
understand business or politics, but was quite capable of getting through
speeches and ceremonies when properly primed and prompted beforehand.
Even his private letters were managed for him by his wife and his favourite.
He had just enough brains to be proud of his position as king, and to resent
anything that he regarded as an attack on his dignity—such as the mention
of old constitutional rights and privileges, or any allusion to a Cortes. He

liked, in fact, to feel himself and to be called an absolute king, though he
wished to hand over all the duties and worries of kingship to his wife and
his chosen servants. Quite contrary to Spanish usage, he often associated
Maria Luisa’s name with his own in State documents, and in popular diction
they were often called ‘los Reyes,’ ‘the Kings,’ as Ferdinand and Isabella
had been three hundred years before.
The Queen was about the most unfit person in Europe to be placed on
the throne at the side of such an imbecile husband. She was his first cousin,
the daughter of his uncle Don Philip, Duke of Parma—Bourbon on the
mother’s side also, for she was the child of the daughter of Louis XV of
France. Maria Luisa was self-confident, flighty, reckless, and utterly
destitute of conscience of any sort. Her celebrated portrait by Goya gives us
at once an idea of the woman, bold, shameless, pleasure-loving, and as
corrupt as Southern court morality allows—which is saying a good deal.
She had from the first taken the measure of her imbecile husband: she
dominated him by her superior force of will, made him her mere
mouthpiece, and practically ruled the realm, turning him out to hunt while
she managed ministers and ambassadors.
For the last twenty years her scandalous partiality for Don Manuel
Godoy had been public property. When Charles IV came to the throne
Godoy was a mere private in the bodyguard—a sort of ornamental corps of
gentlemen-at-arms. He was son of a decayed noble family, a big handsome
showy young man of twenty-one—barely able to read and write, say his
detractors—but a good singer and musician. Within four years after he
caught the Queen’s eye he was a grandee of Spain, a duke, and prime
minister! He was married to a royal princess, the Infanta Teresa, a cousin of
the King, a mésalliance unparalleled in the whole history of the house of
Bourbon. Three years later, to commemorate his part in concluding the
disgraceful peace of Basle, he was given the odd title of ‘Prince of the
Peace,’ ‘Principe de la Paz’: no Spanish subject had ever before been
decorated with any title higher than that of duke[19]. In 1808 he was a man of
forty, beginning to get a little plump and bald after so many years of good
(or evil) living, but still a fine personable figure. He had stowed away
enormous riches, not only from the gifts of the King and Queen, but by the
sale of offices and commissions, the taking of all sorts of illicit percentages,
and (perhaps the worst symptom of all) by colossal speculations on the

stock exchange. A French ambassador recorded the fact that he had to keep
the treaty of peace of 1802 quiet for three days after it was signed, in order
that Godoy might complete his purchases ‘for a rise’ before the news got
about[20]. Godoy was corrupt and licentious, but not cruel or even tyrannical:
though profoundly ignorant, he had the vanity to pose as a patron of art and
science. His foible was to be hailed as a universal benefactor, and as the
introducer of modern civilization into Spain. He endeavoured to popularize
the practice of vaccination, waged a mild and intermittent war with the
Inquisition, and (a most astonishing piece of courage) tried to suppress the
custom of bull-fighting. The last two acts were by far the most creditable
items that can be put down to his account: unfortunately they were also
precisely those which appealed least to the populace of Spain. Godoy was a
notable collector of pictures and antiquities, and had a certain liking for, and
skill in, music. When this has been said, there is nothing more to put down
in his favour. Fifteen years of power had so turned his head that for a long
time he had been taking himself quite seriously, and his ambition had grown
so monstrous that, not contented with his alliance by marriage with the
royal house, he was dreaming of becoming a sovereign prince. The bait by
which Napoleon finally drew him into the trap, the promise that he should
be given the Algarves and Alemtejo, was not the Corsican’s own invention.
It had been an old idea of Godoy’s which he broached to his ally early in
1806, only to receive a severe rebuff. Hence came the joy with which he
finally saw it take shape in the treaty of Fontainebleau[21]. When such
schemes were running in his head, we can perfectly well credit the
accusation which Prince Ferdinand brought against him, of having intended
to change the succession to the crown of Spain, by a coup d’état on the
death of Charles IV. The man had grown capable of any outburst of pride
and ambition. Meanwhile he continued to govern Spain by his hold over the
imbecile and gouty old king and his worthless wife, who was now far over
fifty, but as besotted on her favourite as ever. It was his weary lot to be
always in attendance on them. They could hardly let him out of their sight.
Toreño relates a ridiculous story that, when Napoleon invited them to dinner
on the first night of their unhappy visit to Bayonne, he did not ask the
Prince of the Peace to the royal table. Charles was so unhappy and
uncomfortable that he could not settle down to his meal till the emperor had
sent for Godoy, and found a place for him near his master and mistress[22].

The fourth individual with whose personality it is necessary to be
acquainted when studying the court of Spain in 1808 is the heir to the
throne, Ferdinand, Prince of the Asturias. Little was known of him, for his
parents and Godoy had carefully excluded him from political life. But when
a prince is getting on for thirty, and his father has begun to show signs of
failing health, it is impossible that eyes should not be turned on him from
all quarters. Ferdinand was not an imbecile like his father, nor a scandalous
person like his mother; but (though Spain knew it not) he was coward and a
cur. With such parents he had naturally been brought up very badly. He was
ignominiously excluded from all public business, and kept in absolute
ignorance of all subjects on which a prince should have some knowledge:
history, military science, modern politics, foreign languages, were all sealed
books to him. He had been educated, so far as he was trained at all, by a
clever and ambitious priest, Juan Escoiquiz, a canon of Toledo. An obscure
churchman was not the best tutor for a future sovereign: he could not
instruct the prince in the more necessary arts of governance, but he seems to
have taught him dissimulation and superstition[23]. For Ferdinand was pious
with a grovelling sort of piety, which made him carry about strings of relics,
spend much of his time in church ceremonies, and (as rumour said) take to
embroidering petticoats for his favourite image of the Virgin in his old age.

MARIA LUISA
REYNA DE ESPAÑA.

The prince had one healthy sentiment, a deep hatred for Godoy, who had
from his earliest youth excluded him from his proper place in the court and
the state. But he was too timid to resent the favourite’s influence by
anything but sulky rudeness. If he had chosen, he could at once have put
himself at the head of the powerful body of persons whom the favourite had
disobliged or offended. His few intimate friends, and above all his tutor
Escoiquiz, were always spurring him on to take some active measures

against the Prince of the Peace. But Ferdinand was too indolent and too
cautious to move, though he was in his secret heart convinced that his
enemy was plotting his destruction, and intended to exclude him from the
throne at his father’s death.
To give a fair idea of the education, character, and brains of this
miserable prince it is only necessary to quote a couple of his letters. The
first was written in November, 1807, when he had been imprisoned by his
father for carrying on the famous secret correspondence with Napoleon. It
runs as follows:—

Dear Papa[24],
I have done wrong: I have sinned against your majesty, both as
king and as father; but I have repented, and I now offer your majesty the
most humble obedience. I ought to have done nothing without your
majesty’s knowledge; but I was caught unawares. I have given up the names
of the guilty persons, and I beg your majesty to pardon me for having lied
to you the other night, and to allow your grateful son to kiss your royal feet.
(Signed) Fernando.
San Lorenzo (The Escurial), Nov. 5, 1807.

It is doubtful whether the childish whining, the base betrayal of his
unfortunate accomplices, or the slavish tone of the confession forms the
most striking point in this epistle.
But the second document that we have to quote gives an even worse idea
of Ferdinand. Several years after he had been imprisoned by Napoleon at
Valençay, a desperate attempt was made to deliver him. Baron Colli, a
daring Austrian officer, entered France, amid a thousand dangers, with a
scheme for delivering the prince: he hoped to get him to the coast, and to an
English frigate, by means of false passports and relays of swift horses. The
unfortunate adventurer was caught and thrown into a dungeon at
Vincennes[25]. After the plot had miscarried Ferdinand wrote as follows to
his jailor:—
‘An unknown person got in here in disguise and proposed to Señor
Amezaga, my master of the horse and steward, to carry me off from
Valençay, asking him to pass on some papers, which he had brought, to my

hands, and to aid in carrying out this horrible undertaking. My honour, my
repose, and the good opinion due to my principles might all have been
compromised, if Señor Amezaga had not given proof of his devotion to His
Imperial Majesty and to myself, by revealing everything to me at once. I
write immediately to give information of the matter, and take this
opportunity of showing anew my inviolable fidelity to the Emperor
Napoleon, and the horror that I feel at this infernal project, whose author, I
hope, may be chastised according to his deserts.’
It is not surprising to find that the man who was capable of writing this
letter also wrote more than once to congratulate Joseph Bonaparte on his
victories over the ‘rebels’ in Spain.
It had been clear for some time that the bitter hatred which the Prince
Royal bore to Godoy, and the fear which the favourite felt at the prospect of
his enemy’s accession to the throne, would lead to some explosion ere long.
If Ferdinand had been a man of ordinary ability and determination he could
probably have organized a coup d’état to get rid of the favourite, without
much trouble. But he was so slow and timid that, in spite of all the
exhortations of his partisans, he never did more than copy out two letters to
his father which Escoiquiz drafted for him. He never screwed up his
courage to the point of sending them, or personally delivering them into his
father’s hands. They were rhetorical compositions, setting forth the moral
and political turpitude of Godoy, and warning the King that his favourite
was guilty of designs on the throne. If Charles IV had been given them, he
probably could not have made out half the meaning, and would have
handed them over for interpretation to the trusty Manuel himself. The only
other move which the prince was induced to make was to draw out a
warrant appointing his friend and confidant, the Duke of Infantado,
Captain-General of New Castile. It was to be used if the old king, who was
then labouring under one of his attacks of gout, should chance to be carried
off by it. The charge of Madrid, and of the troops in its vicinity, was to be
consigned to one whom Ferdinand could trust, so that Godoy might be
check-mated.
But the Prince of the Asturias took one other step in the autumn of 1807
which was destined to bring matters to a head. It occurred to him that
instead of incurring the risks of conspiracy at home he would do better to
apply for aid to his father’s all-powerful ally. If Napoleon took up his cause,

and promised him protection, he would be safe against all the machinations
of the Prince of the Peace: for a frank and undisguised terror of the Emperor
was the mainspring of Godoy’s foreign and domestic policy. Ferdinand
thought that he had a sure method of enlisting Bonaparte’s benevolence: he
was at this moment the most eligible parti in Europe: he had lost his first
wife, a daughter of his uncle of Naples, and being childless was bound to
marry again[26]. By offering to accept a spouse of the Emperor’s choice he
would give such a guarantee of future loyalty and obedience that his patron
(who was quite aware of Godoy’s real feelings towards France) would
withdraw all his support from the favourite and transfer it to himself. Acting
under the advice of Escoiquiz, with whom he was always in secret
communication, Ferdinand first sounded the French ambassador at Madrid,
the Marquis de Beauharnais, a brother-in-law of the Empress Josephine.
Escoiquiz saw the ambassador, who displayed much pleasure at his
proposals, and urged him to encourage the prince to proceed with his
plan[27]. The fact was that the diplomatist saw profit to his own family in the
scheme: for in default of eligible damsels of the house of Bonaparte, it was
probable that the lady whom the Emperor might choose as Queen of Spain
would be one of his own relatives—some Beauharnais or Tascher—a niece
or cousin of the Empress. A wife for the hereditary prince of Baden had
been already chosen from among them in the preceding year.
When therefore Escoiquiz broached the matter to the ambassador in
June, 1807, the latter only asked that he should be given full assurance that
the Prince of the Asturias would carry out his design. No private interview
could be managed between them in the existing state of Spanish court
etiquette, and with the spies of Godoy lurking in every corner. But by a
prearranged code of signals Ferdinand certified to Beauharnais, at one of
the royal levées, that he had given all his confidence to Escoiquiz, and that
the latter was really acting in his name. The ambassador therefore
undertook to transmit to his master at Paris any document which the prince
might entrust to him. Hence there came to be written the celebrated letter of
October 11, 1807, in which Ferdinand implored the pity of ‘the hero sent by
providence to save Europe from anarchy, to strengthen tottering thrones,
and to give to the nations peace and felicity.’ His father, he said, was
surrounded by malignant and astute intriguers who had estranged him from
his son. But one word from Paris would suffice to discomfit such persons,
and to open the eyes of his loved parents to the just grievances of their

child. As a token of amity and protection he ventured to ask Bonaparte for
the hand of some lady of his august house. He does not seem to have had
any particular one in his eye, as the demand is made in the most general
terms. The choice would really have lain between the eldest daughter of
Lucien Bonaparte, who was then (as usual) on strained terms with his
brother, and one of the numerous kinswomen of the Empress Josephine.
Godoy was so well served by his numerous spies that the news of the
letter addressed to Bonaparte was soon conveyed to him. He resolved to
take advantage to the full of the mistake which the prince had made in
opening a correspondence with a foreign power behind the back of his
father. He contrived an odious scene. He induced the old king to make a
sudden descent on his son’s apartments on the night of October 27, with an
armed guard at his back, to accuse him publicly of aiming at dethroning or
even murdering his parents, and to throw him into solitary confinement.
Ferdinand’s papers were sequestrated, but there was found among them
nothing of importance except the two documents denouncing Godoy, which
the prince had composed or copied out under the direction of his adviser
Escoiquiz, and a cypher code which was discovered to have belonged to the
prince’s late wife, and to have been used by her in her private letters to her
mother, the Queen of Naples.
There was absolutely nothing that proved any intention on the part of
Ferdinand to commit himself to overt treason, though plenty to show his
deep discontent, and his hatred for the Prince of the Peace. The only act that
an honest critic could call disloyal was the attempt to open up a
correspondence with Napoleon. But Godoy thought that he had found his
opportunity of crushing the heir to the throne, and even of removing him
from the succession. He caused Charles IV to publish an extraordinary
manifesto to his subjects, in which he was made to speak as follows:—
‘God, who watches over all creation, does not permit the success of
atrocious designs against an innocent victim. His omnipotence has just
delivered me from an incredible catastrophe. My people, my faithful
subjects, know my Christian life, my regular conduct: they all love me and
give me constant proof of their veneration, the reward due to a parent who
loves his children. I was living in perfect confidence, when an unknown
hand delated to me the most enormous and incredible plot, hatched in my
own palace against my person. The preservation of my life, which has been

already several times in danger, should have been the special charge of the
heir to my throne, but blinded, and estranged from all those Christian
principles in which my paternal care and love have reared him, he has given
his consent to a plot to dethrone me. Taking in hand the investigation of the
matter, I surprised him in his apartments and found in his hands the cypher
which he used to communicate with his evil counsellors. I have thrown
several of these criminals into prison, and have put my son under arrest in
his own abode. This necessary punishment adds another sorrow to the many
which already afflict me; but as it is the most painful of all, it is also the
most necessary of all to carry out. Meanwhile I publish the facts: I do not
hide from my subjects the grief that I feel—which can only be lessened by
the proofs of loyalty which I know that they will display’[28] [Oct. 30, 1807].
Charles was therefore made to charge his son with a deliberate plot to
dethrone him, and even to hint that his life had been in danger. The only
possible reason for the formulating of this most unjustifiable accusation
must have been that Godoy thought that he might now dare to sweep away
the Prince of the Asturias from his path by imprisonment or exile. There can
be no other explanation for the washing in public of so much of the dirty
linen of the palace. Ferdinand, by his craven conduct, did his best to help
his enemy’s designs: in abject fear he delated to the King the names of
Escoiquiz and his other confidants, the dukes of Infantado and San Carlos.
He gave full particulars of his attempt to communicate with Napoleon, and
of all his correspondence with his partisans—even acknowledging that he
had given Infantado that undated commission as Captain-General of New
Castile, to come into effect when he himself should become king, which we
have already had occasion to mention. This act, it must be owned, was a
little unseemly, but if it had really borne the sinister meaning that Godoy
chose to put upon it, we may guess that Ferdinand would never have
divulged it. In addition the prince wrote the disgusting letter of supplication
to his father which has been already quoted, owning that ‘he had lied the
other night,’ and asking leave to kiss his majesty’s royal feet. It is beyond
dispute that this epistle, with another similar one to the Queen, was written
after a stormy interview with Godoy. The favourite had been allowed by his
master and mistress to visit Ferdinand in prison, and to bully him into
writing these documents, which (as he hoped) would ruin the prince’s
reputation for ever with every man of heart and honour. Godoy was wrong
here: what struck the public mind far more than the prince’s craven tone

was the unseemliness of publishing to the world his miserable letters. That a
prince royal of Spain should have been terrified by an upstart charlatan like
Godoy into writing such words maddened all who read them.
Napoleon was delighted to see the royal family of Spain putting itself in
such an odious light. He only intervened on a side issue by sending
peremptory orders that in any proceedings taken against the Prince of the
Asturias no mention was to be made of himself or of his ambassador, i.e.
the matter of the secret appeal to France (the one thing for which Ferdinand
could be justly blamed) was not to be allowed to transpire. It was probably
this communication from Paris which saved Ferdinand from experiencing
the full consequences of Godoy’s wrath[29]. If any public trial took place, it
was certain that either Ferdinand or some of his friends would speak of the
French intrigue, and if the story came out Napoleon would be angry. The
mere thought of this possibility so worked upon the favourite that he
suddenly resolved to stop the impeachment of the prince. In return for his
humiliating prayers for mercy he was given a sort of ungracious pardon.
‘The voice of nature,’ so ran the turgid proclamation which Godoy dictated
to the old king, ‘disarms the hand of vengeance; I forgive my son, and will
restore him to my good graces when his conduct shall have proved him a
truly reformed character.’ Ferdinand was left dishonoured and humiliated:
he had been accused of intended parricide, made to betray his friends and to
confess plots which he had never formed, and then pardoned. Godoy hoped
that he was so ruined in the eyes of the Spanish people, and (what was more
important) in the eyes of Napoleon, that there would be no more trouble
with him, a supposition in which he grievously erred. After a decent interval
the prince’s fellow conspirators, Escoiquiz and Infantado, were acquitted of
high treason by the court before which they had been sent, and allowed to
go free. Of the dreadful accusations made in the Proclamation of Oct. 30
nothing more was heard.
The whole of the ‘Affair of the Escurial,’ as the arrest, imprisonment,
and forgiveness of Ferdinand came to be called, took place between the
twenty-seventh of October and the fifth of November, dates at which it is
pretty certain that Napoleon’s unscrupulous designs against the royal house
of Spain had long been matured. The open quarrel of the imbecile father
and the cowardly son only helped him in his plans, by making more
manifest than ever the deplorable state of the Spanish court. It served as a

useful plea to justify acts of aggression which must have been planned
many months before. If it had never taken place, it is still certain that
Napoleon would have found some other plea for sweeping out the worthless
house of Bourbon from the Peninsula. He had begun to collect armies at the
roots of the Pyrenees, without any obvious military necessity, some weeks
before Ferdinand was arrested. When that simple fact is taken into
consideration we see at once the hollowness of his plea, elaborated during
his exile at St. Helena[30], that it was the disgraceful explosion of family
hatred in the Spanish royal house that first suggested to him the idea of
removing the whole generation of Bourbons, and giving Spain a new king
and a new dynasty.

NOTE TO CHAPTER II
It may perhaps be worth while to give, for what it is worth, a story which I find in the Vaughan
Papers concerning the causes of the final quarrel between Godoy and the Prince of the Asturias,
ending in the arrest of the latter and the whole ‘Affair of the Escurial.’ Among Vaughan’s large
collection of miscellaneous papers is a long document addressed to him by one of his Spanish
friends, purporting to give the secret history of the rupture; the narrative is said by the author to have
been obtained from the mouth of the minister Caballero, who would certainly have had the best
means of gaining court intelligence in October, 1807. The tale runs as follows: ‘The Queen had for
many years been accustomed to make secret visits to Godoy’s palace under cover of the dark,
escorted only by a lady-in-waiting and a single body-servant. The sentinels round the palace had been
designedly so placed that none of them covered the postern door by which her majesty was
accustomed to pass in and out. One night in the autumn of 1807 the whole system of the palace-
guards was suddenly changed without the Queen’s knowledge, and when she returned from her
excursion she ran into the arms of a corporal’s guard placed in front of the privy entrance. The men,
fortunately for Maria Luisa, did not recognize the three muffled figures who fell into their clutches,
and allowed them to buy their way in for an onza d’oro, or gold twenty-dollar piece. But when
Godoy and the Queen talked the matter over, and found that King Charles had ordered the
inconvenient alterations in the sentinels, they came to the conclusion that Ferdinand had deliberately
induced his father to change the posts of the guard, with the object either of stopping his mother’s
exits or of making a public scandal by causing her to be arrested at this strange place and hour. The
Prince chanced to have had a private conversation with his father on the previous day, and this might
well have been its result.’ In high wrath, the story proceeds, the Queen and the favourite resolved to
crush Ferdinand at once, and to get him excluded from the succession. They chose the very
inadequate excuse of the letter of the Prince to Napoleon, of which they had perfect cognizance from
the very moment of its being written. But, we are assured, they were quite wrong in their suspicions,
the originator of the movement of the sentries, which had so disconcerted them, having been Baron
Versage, the newly appointed colonel of the Walloon Guards. He had got the King’s leave to
rearrange the watching of the palace, and going round it had spied the private door, which he had
blocked with a new picquet, quite unaware of the purpose for which it had been used for so many
years. This Versage, it will be remembered, served under Palafox, and was killed in Aragon during
the first year of the war. I should imagine the whole tale to be an ingenious fiction, in spite of the

name of Caballero cited in its support: of that personage Napoleon wrote [Nap. Corresp. 14,015] ‘il a
une très mauvaise réputation; c’est tout dire que de dire qu’il était l’homme de confiance de la
Reine.’ But the story was current in Spain very soon after the alleged adventure took place.

SECTION I: CHAPTER III
THE CONQUEST OF PORTUGAL

There is certainly no example in history of a kingdom conquered in so
few days and with such small trouble as was Portugal in 1807. That a nation
of three million souls, which in earlier days had repeatedly defended itself
with success against numbers far greater than those now employed against
it, should yield without firing a single shot was astonishing. It is a testimony
not only to the timidity of the Portuguese Government, but to the numbing
power of Napoleon’s name.
The force destined by the Treaty of Fontainebleau for the invasion of
Portugal consisted of Junot’s ‘Army of the Gironde,’ 25,000 strong, and of
three auxiliary Spanish corps amounting in all to about the same numbers.
Of these one, coming from Galicia[31], was to strike at Oporto and the Lower
Douro; another, from Badajoz[32], was to take the fortress of Elvas, the
southern bulwark of Portugal, and then to march on Lisbon by the left bank
of the Tagus. These were flanking operations: the main blow at the
Portuguese capital was to be dealt by Junot himself, strengthened by a third
Spanish force[33]; they were to concentrate at Salamanca and Ciudad
Rodrigo, and make for Lisbon by the high-road that passes by Almeida and
Coimbra.
The Army of the Gironde crossed the Bidassoa on October 18: by the
12th of November it had arrived at Salamanca, having covered 300 miles in
twenty-five days—very leisurely marching at the rate of twelve miles a day.
The Spaniards would not have been pleased to know that, by Napoleon’s
orders, engineer officers were secretly taking sketches of every fortified
place and defile that the army passed, and preparing reports as to the
resources of all the towns of Old Castile and Leon. This was one of the
many signs of the Emperor’s ultimate designs. On the 12th of November, in
consequence we cannot doubt of the outbreak of the troubles of October 27
at the Spanish court, Junot suddenly received new orders, telling him to

hurry. He was informed that every day which intervened before his arrival
at Lisbon was time granted to the Portuguese in which to prepare resistance,
—possibly also time in which England, who had plenty of troops in the
Mediterranean, might make up her mind to send military aid to her old ally.
Junot was directed to quicken his pace, and to strike before the enemy could
mature plans of defence.
For this reason he was told to change his route. The Emperor had
originally intended to invade the country over the usual line of attack from
Spain, by Almeida and Coimbra, which Masséna was to take three years
later, in 1810. But when the events at the Escurial showed that a crisis was
impending in Spain, Napoleon changed his mind: there was the fortress of
Almeida in the way, which might offer resistance and cause delay, and
beyond were nearly 200 miles of difficult mountain roads. Looking at his
maps, Napoleon saw that there was a much shorter way to Lisbon by
another route, down the Tagus. From Alcantara, the Spanish frontier town
on that river, to Lisbon is only 120 miles, and there is no fortress on the
way. The maps could not show the Emperor that this road was for half of its
length a series of rocky defiles through an almost unpeopled wilderness.
Orders were therefore sent to Junot to transfer his base of operations
from Salamanca to Alcantara, and to march down the Tagus. The Spaniards
(according to their orders) had collected the magazines for feeding Junot’s
force at Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo. But for that Napoleon cared little.
He wrote that the army must take the shortest road at all costs, whatever the
difficulty of getting supplies. ‘I will not have the march of the army delayed
for a single day,’ he added; ‘20,000 men can feed themselves anywhere,
even in a desert.’ It was indeed a desert that Junot was ordered to cross: the
hill-road from Ciudad Rodrigo to Alcantara, which hugs the Portuguese
frontier, has hardly a village on it; it crosses ridge after ridge, ravine after
ravine. In November the rains had just set in, and every torrent was full.
Over this stony wilderness, by the Pass of Perales, the French army rushed
in five days, but at the cost of dreadful privations. When it reached
Alcantara half the horses had perished of cold, all the guns but six had been
left behind, stranded at various points on the road, and of the infantry more
than a quarter was missing—the famished men having scattered in all
directions to find food. If there had been a Portuguese force watching
Alcantara, Junot must have waited for many days to get his army together

again, all the more so because every cartridge that his men were carrying
had been spoiled by the wet. But there were no enemies near; Junot found at
the great Tagus bridge only a few Spanish battalions and guns on the way to
join his army. Confiscating their munitions to fill his men’s pouches, and
their food to provide them with two days’ rations, Junot rushed on again
upon the 19th of November. He found, to his surprise, that there was no
road suitable for wheeled traffic along the Tagus valley, but only a poor
track running along the foot of the mountains to Castello Branco, the sole
Portuguese town in this part of the frontier. The march from Alcantara to
Abrantes proved even more trying than that from Ciudad Rodrigo to
Alcantara. It was through a treeless wilderness of grey granite, seamed with
countless ravines. The rain continued, the torrents were even fuller than
before, the country even more desolate than the Spanish side of the border.
It was only after terrible sufferings that the head of the column reached
Abrantes on November 23: the rear trailed in on the 26th. All the guns
except four Spanish pieces of horse artillery had fallen behind: the cavalry
was practically dismounted. Half the infantry was marauding off the road,
or resting dead-beat in the few poor villages that it had passed. If there had
been even 5,000 Portuguese troops at Abrantes the French would have been
brought to a stop. But instead of hostile battalions, Junot found there only
an anxious diplomatist, named Barreto, sent by the Prince-Regent to stop
his advance by offers of servile submission to the Emperor and proffers of
tribute. Reassured as to the possibility that the Portuguese might have been
intending armed resistance, Junot now took a most hazardous step.
Choosing the least disorganized companies of every regiment, he made up
four battalions of picked men, and pushed on again for Lisbon, now only
seventy-five miles distant. This time he had neither a gun nor a horseman
left, but he struggled forward, and on the 30th of November entered the
Portuguese capital at the head of 1,500 weary soldiers, all that had been
able to endure to the end. They limped in utterly exhausted, their clothes in
rags, and their cartridges so soaked through that they could not have fired a
shot had they been attacked. If the mob of Lisbon had fallen on them with
sticks and stones, the starving invaders must have been driven out of the
city. But nothing of the kind happened, and Junot was able to install himself
as governor of Portugal without having to strike a blow. It was ten days
before the last of the stragglers came up from the rear, and even more
before the artillery appeared and the cavalry began to remount itself with

confiscated horses. Meanwhile the Portuguese were digesting the fact that
they had allowed 1,500 famished, half-armed men to seize their capital.
While Junot had been rushing on from Salamanca to Alcantara, and from
Alcantara to Abrantes, Lisbon had been the scene of much pitiful
commotion. The Prince-Regent had long refused to believe that Napoleon
really intended to dethrone him, and had been still occupying himself with
futile schemes for propitiating the Emperor. Of his courtiers and generals,
hardly one counselled resistance: there was no talk of mobilizing the
dilapidated army of some 30,000 men which the country was supposed to
possess, or of calling out the militia which had done such good service in
earlier wars with Spain and France. Prince John contented himself with
declaring war on England on the twentieth of October, and with garrisoning
the coast batteries which protect Lisbon against attacks from the sea. Of
these signs of obedience he sent reports to Napoleon: on the eighth of
November he seized the persons of the few English merchants who still
remained in Portugal; the majority had wisely absconded in October. At the
same time he let the British Government know that he was at heart their
friend, and only driven by brute force to his present course: he even
permitted their ambassador, Lord Strangford, to linger in Lisbon.
In a few days the Regent began to see that Napoleon was inexorable: his
ambassador from Paris was sent back to him, and reported that he had
passed on the way the army of Junot marching by Burgos on Salamanca.
Presently an English fleet under Sir Sydney Smith, the hero of Acre,
appeared at the mouth of the Tagus, and declared Lisbon in a state of
blockade—the natural reply to the Regent’s declaration of war and seizure
of English residents. Other reasons existed for the blockade: there had lately
arrived in the Tagus a Russian squadron on its homeward way from the
Mediterranean. The Czar Alexander was at this time Napoleon’s eager ally,
and had just declared war on England; it seemed wise to keep an eye on
these ships, whose arrival appeared to synchronize in a most suspicious way
with the approach of Junot. Moreover there was the Portuguese fleet to be
considered: if the Prince-Regent intended to hand it over to the French, it
would have to be dealt with in the same way as the Danish fleet had been
treated a few months before.
Lord Strangford retired on board Sydney Smith’s flagship, the Hibernia,
and from thence continued to exchange notes with the miserable Portuguese

Government. The Regent was still hesitating between sending still more
abject proposals of submission to Bonaparte, and the only other alternative,
that of getting on board his fleet and crossing the Atlantic to the great
Portuguese colony in Brazil. The news that Junot had reached Alcantara
only confused him still more; he could not make up his mind to leave his
comfortable palace at Mafra, his gardens, and the countless chapels and
shrines in which his soul delighted, in order to dare the unaccustomed
horrors of the deep. On the other hand, he feared that, if he stayed, he might
ere long find himself a prisoner of state in some obscure French castle. At
last his mind was made up for him from without: Lord Strangford on the
twenty-fifth of November received a copy of the Paris Moniteur of the
thirteenth of October, in which appeared a proclamation in the true
Napoleonesque vein, announcing that ‘the house of Braganza had ceased to
reign in Europe.’ The celerity with which the paper had been passed on
from Paris to London and from London to Lisbon was most fortunate, as it
was just not too late for the prince to fly, though far too late for him to think
of defending himself. Junot was already at Abrantes, but during the four
days which he spent between that place and Lisbon the die was cast.
Abandoning his wonted indecision, the Regent hurried on shipboard his
treasure, his state papers, his insane mother, his young family, and all the
hangers-on of his court. The whole fleet, fifteen men-of-war, was crowded
with official refugees and their belongings. More than twenty merchant
vessels were hastily manned and freighted with other inhabitants of Lisbon,
who determined to fly with their prince: merchants and nobles alike
preferred the voyage to Rio de Janeiro to facing the dreaded French. On the
twenty-ninth of November the whole convoy passed out of the mouth of the
Tagus and set sail for the West. When he toiled in on the thirtieth, Junot
found the birds flown, and took possession of the dismantled city.
Junot’s Spanish auxiliaries were, as might have been expected from the
national character and the deplorable state of the government, much slower
than their French allies. Solano and the southern army did not enter
Portugal till the second of December, three days after Lisbon had fallen.
Taranco and the Galician corps only reached Oporto on the thirteenth of
December. To neither of them was any opposition offered: the sole show of
national feeling which they met was that the Governor of Valenza closed his
gates, and would not admit the Spaniards till he heard that Lisbon was in
the enemy’s hands, and that the Prince-Regent had abandoned the country.

Junot at first made some attempt to render himself popular and to keep
his troops in good discipline. But it was impossible to conciliate the
Portuguese: when they saw the exhausted condition and comparatively
small numbers of the army that had overrun their realm, they were filled
with rage to think that no attempt had been made to strike a blow to save its
independence. When, on the thirteenth of December, Junot made a great
show out of the ceremony of hauling down the Portuguese flag and of
hoisting the tricolour on the public buildings of the metropolis, there broke
out a fierce riot, which had to be dispersed with a cavalry charge. But this
was the work of the mob: both the civil and the military authorities showed
a servile obedience to Junot’s orders, and no one of importance stood
forward to head the crowd.
The first precautionary measure of the French general was to dissolve
the Portuguese army. He ordered the discharge of all men with less than one
and more than six years’ service, dissolved the old regimental cadres, and
reorganized the 6,000 or 7,000 men left into nine new corps, which were
soon ordered out of the realm. Ultimately they were sent to the Baltic, and
remained garrisoned in Northern Germany for some years. At the time of
the Russian War of 1812 there were still enough of these unhappy exiles left
to constitute three strong regiments. Nearly all of them perished in the snow
during the retreat from Moscow.
Further endeavour to make French rule popular in Portugal was soon
rendered impossible by orders from Paris. The Emperor’s mandate not only
bade Junot confiscate and realize all the property of the 15,000 persons,
small and great, who had fled to Brazil with the Prince-Regent; it also
commanded him to raise a fine of 100,000,000 francs, four millions of our
money, from the little kingdom. But the emigrants had carried away nearly
half the coined money in Portugal, and the rest had been hidden, leaving
nothing but coppers and depreciated paper money visible in circulation.
With the best will in the world Junot found it difficult to begin to collect
even the nucleus of the required sum. The heavy taxes and imposts which
he levied had no small effect in adding to the discontent of the people, but
their total did little more than pay for the maintenance of the invaders.
Meanwhile the troops behaved with the usual licence of a French army in a
conquered country, and repeatedly provoked sanguinary brawls with the
peasantry. Military executions of persons who had resisted requisitions by

force began as early as January, 1808. Nothing was wanting to prepare an
insurrection but leaders: of their appearance there was no sign; the most
spirited members of the upper classes had gone off with the Regent. Those
who had remained were the miserable bureaucrats which despotic
governments always breed. They were ready to serve the stranger if they
could keep their posts and places. A discreditable proportion of the old state
servants acquiesced in the new government. The Patriarch of Lisbon issued
a fulsome address in praise of Napoleon. The members of the provisional
government which the Regent had nominated on his departure mostly
submitted to Junot. There was little difficulty found in collecting a
deputation, imposing by its numbers and by the names of some of its
personnel, which travelled to Bayonne, to compliment Bonaparte and
request him to grant some definite form of government to Portugal. The
Emperor treated them in a very offhand way, asked them if they would like
to be annexed to Spain, and on their indignant repudiation of that proposal,
sent them off with a few platitudes to the effect that the lot of a nation
depends upon itself, and that his eye was upon them. But this interview only
took place in April, 1808, when events in Spain were assuming a very
different aspect from that which they displayed at the moment of Junot’s
first seizure of Lisbon.

SECTION I: CHAPTER IV
THE FRENCH AGGRESSION IN SPAIN:
ABDICATION OF CHARLES IV

The ‘Affair of the Escurial’ added some complications to the situation of
affairs in Spain from Napoleon’s point of view. But there was nothing in it
to make him alter the plans which he was at this moment carrying out: if the
Bourbons were to be evicted from Spain, it made the task somewhat easier
to find that the heir to the throne was now in deep disgrace. It would be
possible to urge that by his parricidal plots he had forfeited any rights to the
kingdom which he had hitherto possessed. In dealing with the politics of
Spain he might for the future be disregarded, and there would be no one to
take into consideration save the King and Queen and Godoy. All three were,
as the Emperor knew, profoundly unpopular: if anything had been needed to
make the nation more discontented, it was the late scandalous events at the
Escurial. Nothing could be more convenient than that the favourite and his
sovereigns should sink yet further into the abyss of unpopularity.
Napoleon therefore went steadily on with his plans for pushing more and
more French troops into Spain, with the object of occupying all the main
strategical points in the kingdom. The only doubtful point in his schemes is
whether he ultimately proposed to seize on the persons of the royal family,
or whether he intended by a series of threatening acts to scare them off to
Mexico, as he had already scared the Prince of Portugal off to Rio de
Janeiro. It is on the whole probable that he leaned to the latter plan. Every
week the attitude of the French armies became more aggressive, and the
language of their master more haughty and sinister[34]. The tone in which he
had forbidden the court of Spain to allow any mention of himself or his
ambassador to appear, during the trial of Prince Ferdinand and his fellow
conspirators, had been menacing in the highest degree. After the occupation
of Portugal no further allusion had been made to the project for proclaiming
Godoy Prince of the Algarves. His name was never mentioned either to the

Portuguese or to the officers of Junot. The favourite soon saw that he had
been duped, but was too terrified to complain.
But it was the constant influx into Spain of French troops which
contributed in the most serious way to frighten the Spanish court. Junot had
entered Lisbon on Nov. 30, and the news that he had mastered the place
without firing a shot had reached the Emperor early in December. But long
before, on the twenty-second of November, the French reserves, hitherto
known as the ‘Second Corps of Observation of the Gironde,’ which had
been collected at Bayonne in November, crossed the Spanish frontier. They
consisted of 25,000 men—nearly all recently levied conscripts—under
General Dupont. The treaty of Fontainebleau had contained a clause
providing that, if the English tried to defend Portugal by landing troops,
Napoleon might send 40,000 men to aid Junot after giving due notice to the
King of Spain. Instead of waiting to hear how the first corps had fared, or
apprising his ally of his intention to dispatch Dupont’s corps across the
frontier, the Emperor merely ordered it to cross the Bidassoa without
sending any information to Madrid. The fact was that whether the
preliminary condition stated in the treaty, an English descent on Portugal,
did or did not take place, Bonaparte was determined to carry out his design.
A month later the Spaniards heard, to their growing alarm, that yet a third
army corps had come across the border: this was the ‘Corps of Observation
of the Ocean Coast,’ which had been hastily organized under Marshal
Moncey at Bordeaux, and pushed on to Bayonne when Dupont’s troops
moved forward. It was 30,000 strong, but mainly composed of conscript
battalions of the levy of 1808, which had been raised by anticipation in the
previous spring, while the Russian war was still in progress. On the eighth
of January this army began to pass the Pyrenees, occupying all the chief
towns of Biscay and Navarre, while Dupont’s divisions pressed on and
cantoned themselves in Burgos, Valladolid, and the other chief cities of Old
Castile. They made no further advance towards Portugal, where Junot
clearly did not require their aid.
The Spanish government was terror-stricken at the unexpected
appearance of more than 60,000 French troops on the road to Madrid. If
anything more was required to cause suspicion, it was the news that still
more ‘corps of observation’ were being formed at Bordeaux and Poitiers.
What legitimate reason could there possibly be for the direction of such

masses of troops on Northern Spain? But any thought of resistance was far
from the mind of Godoy and the King. Their first plan was to propitiate
Napoleon by making the same request which had brought the Prince of the
Asturias into such trouble in October—that the hand of a princess of the
house of Bonaparte might be granted to the heir of the Spanish throne. The
Emperor was making an ostentatious tour in Italy while his forces were
overrunning the provinces of his ally—as if the occupation of Castile and
Biscay were no affair of his. His most important act in November was to
evict from Florence the ruling sovereign, the King of Etruria, and the
Regent, his mother, thus annexing the last surviving Bourbon state save
Spain to the French crown. He wrote polite but meaningless letters to
Madrid, making no allusion to the boon asked by Charles IV. The fact was
that Napoleon could now treat Ferdinand as ‘damaged goods’; he was, by
his father’s own avowal, no more than a pardoned parricide, and it suited
the policy of the Emperor to regard him as a convicted criminal who had
played away his rights of succession. If Napoleon visited his brother Lucien
at Mantua, it was not (as was thought at the time) with any real intention of
persuading him to give his daughter to the craven suitor offered her[35], but
in order to tempt her father to accept the crown of Portugal—even perhaps
that of Spain. But Lucien, who always refused to fall in with Napoleon’s
family policy, showed no gratitude for the offer of a thorny throne in the
Iberian Peninsula, and not without reason, for one of the details of the
bargain was to be that he should divorce a wife to whom he was fondly
attached.
It was only after returning from Italy in January that the Emperor
deigned to answer the King of Spain’s letter, now two months old, in
precise terms. He did not object to the principle of the alliance, but doubted
if he could give any daughter of his house to ‘a son dishonoured by his own
father’s declaration.’ This reply was not very reassuring to Godoy and his
master, and worse was to follow. In the end of January the Moniteur, which
the Emperor always used as a means for ventilating schemes which were
before long to take shape in fact, began a systematic course of abusing the
Prince of the Peace as a bad minister and a false friend. More troops kept
pouring across the Pyrenees without any ostensible reason, and now it was
not only at the western passes that they began to appear, but also on the
eastern roads which lead from Roussillon into Catalonia and Valencia.
These provinces are so remote from Portugal that it was clear that the army

which was collecting opposite them could not be destined for Lisbon. But
on February 10, 1808, 14,000 men, half French, half Italians, under General
Duhesme, began to drift into Catalonia and to work their way down towards
its capital—Barcelona. A side-light on the meaning of this development was
given by Izquierdo, Godoy’s agent at Paris, who now kept sending his
master very disquieting reports. French ministers had begun to sound him
as to the way in which Spain would take a proposal for the cession to
France of Catalonia and part of Biscay, in return for Central Portugal. King
Charles would probably be asked ere long to give up these ancient and loyal
provinces, and to do so would mean the outbreak of a revolution all over
Spain.
In the middle of February Napoleon finally threw off the mask, and
frankly displayed himself as a robber in his ally’s abode. On the sixteenth of
the month began that infamous seizure by surprise of the Spanish frontier
fortresses, which would pass for the most odious act of the Emperor’s
whole career, if the kidnapping at Bayonne were not to follow. The
movement started at Pampeluna: French troops were quartered in the lower
town, while a Spanish garrison held, as was natural, the citadel. One cold
morning a large party of French soldiers congregated about the gate of the
fortress, without arms, and pretended to be amusing themselves with
snowballing, while waiting for a distribution of rations. At a given signal
many of them, as if beaten in the mock contest, rushed in at the gate,
pursued by the rest. The first men knocked down the unsuspecting sentinels,
and seized the muskets of the guard stacked in the arms-racks of the guard-
room. Then a company of grenadiers, who had been hidden in a
neighbouring house, suddenly ran in at the gate, followed by a whole
battalion which had been at drill a few hundred yards away. The Spanish
garrison, taken utterly by surprise and unarmed, were hustled out of their
quarters and turned into the town[36].
A high-spirited prince would have declared war at once, whatever the
odds against him, on receiving such an insulting blow. But this was not to
be expected from persons like Godoy and Charles IV. Accordingly they
exposed themselves to the continuation of these odious tricks. On February
29 General Lecchi, the officer commanding the French troops which were
passing through Barcelona, ordered a review of his division before, as he
said, its approaching departure for the south. After some evolutions he

marched it through the city, and past the gate of the citadel; when this point
was reached, he suddenly bade the leading company wheel to the left and
enter the fortress. Before the Spaniards understood what was happening,
several thousand of their allies were inside the place, and by the evening the
rightful owners, who carried their opposition no further than noisy
protestations, had been evicted. A few days later the two remaining frontier
fortresses of Spain, San Sebastian, at the Atlantic end of the Pyrenees, and
Figueras, at the great pass along the Mediterranean coast, suffered the same
fate: the former place was surrendered by its governor when threatened with
an actual assault, which orders from Madrid forbade him to resist [March
5]. Figueras, on the other hand, was seized by a coup de main, similar to
that at Pampeluna; 200 French soldiers, having obtained entrance within the
walls on a futile pretext, suddenly seized the gates and admitted a whole
regiment, which turned out the Spanish garrison [March 18][37]. It would be
hard, if not impossible, to find in the whole of modern history any incident
approaching, in cynical effrontery and mean cunning, to these first hostile
acts of the French on the territory of their allies. The net result was to leave
the two chief fortresses, on each of the main entries into Spain from France,
completely in the power of the Emperor.
Godoy and his employers were driven into wild alarm by these acts of
open hostility. The favourite, in his memoirs[38], tells us that he thought, for
a moment, of responding by a declaration of war, but that the old king
replied that Napoleon could not be intending treachery, because he had just
sent him twelve fine coach-horses and several polite letters. In face of his
master’s reluctance, he tells us that he temporized for some days more. The
story is highly improbable: Charles had no will save Godoy’s, and would
have done whatever he was told. It is much more likely that the reluctance
to take a bold resolve was the favourite’s own. When the French troops still
continued to draw nearer to Madrid, Godoy could only bethink himself of a
plan for absconding. He proposed to the King and Queen that they should
leave Madrid and take refuge in Seville, in order to place themselves as far
as possible from the French armies. Behind this move was a scheme for a
much longer voyage. It seems that he proposed that the court should follow
the example of the Regent of Portugal, and fly to America. At Mexico or
Buenos Ayres they would at least be safe from Bonaparte. To protect the
first stage of the flight, the troops in Portugal were directed to slip away
from Junot and mass in Estremadura. The garrison of Madrid was drawn to

Aranjuez, the palace where the court lay in February and March, and was to
act as its escort to Seville. It is certain that nothing would have suited
Napoleon’s plans better than that Charles IV should abscond and leave his
throne derelict: it would have given the maximum of advantage with the
minimum of odium. It is possible that the Emperor was working precisely
with the object of frightening Godoy into flight. If so his scheme was foiled,
because he forgot that he had to deal not only with the contemptible court,
but with the suspicious and revengeful Spanish nation. In March the people
intervened, and their outbreak put quite a different face upon affairs.
Meanwhile the Emperor was launching a new figure upon the stage. On
February 26 his brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, the new Grand-Duke of
Berg, appeared at Bayonne with the title of ‘Lieutenant of the Emperor,’ and
a commission to take command of all the French forces in Spain. On March
10 he crossed the Bidassoa and assumed possession of his post. Murat’s
character is well known: it was not very complicated. He was a headstrong,
unscrupulous soldier, with a genius for heading a cavalry charge on a large
scale, and an unbounded ambition. He was at present meditating on thrones
and kingdoms: Berg seemed a small thing to this son of a Gascon
innkeeper, and ever since his brothers-in-law Joseph, Louis, and Jerome
Bonaparte had become kings, he was determined to climb up to be their
equal. It has frequently been asserted that Murat was at this moment
dreaming of the Spanish crown: he was certainly aware that the Emperor
was plotting against the Bourbons, and the military movements which he
had been directed to carry out were sufficient in themselves to indicate
more or less his brother-in-law’s intentions. Yet on the whole it is probable
that he had not received more than half-confidences from his august
relative. His dispatches are full of murmurs that he was being kept in the
dark, and that he could not act with full confidence for want of explicit
directions. Napoleon had certainly promised him promotion, if the Spanish
affair came to a successful end: but it is probable that Murat understood that
he was not to be rewarded with the crown of Charles IV. Perhaps Portugal,
or Holland, or Naples (if one of the Emperor’s brothers should pass on to
Madrid) was spoken of as his reward. Certainly there was enough at stake
to make him eager to carry out whatever Bonaparte ordered. In his cheerful
self-confidence he imagined himself quite capable of playing the part of a
Machiavelli, and of edging the old king out of the country by threats and
hints. But if grape-shot was required, he was equally ready to administer an

unsparing dose. With a kingdom in view he could be utterly
unscrupulous[39].
On March 13 Murat arrived at Burgos, and issued a strange proclamation
bidding his army ‘treat the estimable Spanish nation as friends, for the
Emperor sought only the good and happiness of Spain.’ The curious phrase
could only suggest that unless he gave this warning, his troops would have
treated their allies as enemies. The scandalous pillage committed by many
regiments during February and March quite justified the suspicion.
The approach of Murat scared Godoy into immediate action, all the more
because a new corps d’armée, more than 30,000 strong, under Marshal
Bessières, was already commencing to cross the Pyrenees, bringing up the
total of French troops in the Peninsula to more than 100,000 men. He
ordered the departure of the King and his escort, the Madrid garrison, for
Seville on March 18. This brought matters to a head: it was regarded as the
commencement of the projected flight to America, of which rumours were
already floating round the court and capital. A despotic government, which
never takes the people into its confidence, must always expect to have its
actions interpreted in the most unfavourable light. Except Godoy’s personal
adherents, there was not a soul in Madrid who did not believe that the
favourite was acting in collusion with Napoleon, and deliberately betraying
his sovereign and his country. It was by his consent, they thought, that the
French had crossed the Pyrenees, had seized Pampeluna and Barcelona, and
were now marching on the capital. They were far from imagining that of all
the persons in the game he was the greatest dupe, and that the recent
developments of Napoleon’s policy had reduced him to despair. It was
correct enough to attribute the present miserable situation of the realm to
Godoy’s policy, but only because his servility to Bonaparte had tempted the
latter to see how far he could go, and because his maladministration had
brought the army so low that it was no longer capable of defending the
fatherland. Men did well to be angry with the Prince of the Peace, but they
should have cursed him as a timid, incompetent fool, not as a deliberate
traitor. But upstarts who guide the policy of a great realm for their private
profit must naturally expect to be misrepresented, and there can be no doubt
that the Spaniards judged Godoy to be a willing helper in the ruin of his
master and his country.

Aranjuez, ordinarily a quiet little place, was now crowded with the
hangers-on of the court, the garrison of Madrid, and a throng of anxious and
distraught inhabitants of the capital: some had come out to avoid the
advancing French, some to learn the latest news of the King’s intentions,
others with the deliberate intention of attacking the favourite. Among the
latter were the few friends of the Prince of the Asturias, and a much greater
number who sympathized with his unhappy lot and had not gauged his
miserable disposition. It is probable that as things stood it was really the
best move to send the King to Seville, or even to America, and to
commence open resistance to the French when the royal person should be in
safety. But the crowd could see nothing but deliberate treason in the
proposal: they waited only for the confirmation of the news of the departure
of the court before breaking out into violence.

DON MANUEL GODOY
PRINCE OF THE PEACE
AT THE AGE OF 25

On the night of the seventeenth of March Godoy was actually
commencing the evacuation of Aranjuez, by sending off his most precious
possession, the too-celebrated Donna Josepha Tudo, under cover of the
dark. The party which was escorting her fell into the midst of a knot of
midnight loiterers, who were watching the palace. There was a scuffle, a
pistol was fired, and as if by a prearranged plan crowds poured out into the

streets. The cry went round that Godoy was carrying off the King and
Queen, and a general rush was made to his house. There were guards before
it, but they refused to fire on the mob, of which no small proportion was
composed of soldiers who had broken out of their barracks without leave. In
a moment the doors were battered down and the assailants poured into the
mansion, hunting for the favourite. They could not find him, and in their
disappointment smashed all his works of art, and burnt his magnificent
furniture. Then they flocked to the palace, in which they suspected that he
had taken refuge, calling for his head. The King and Queen, in deadly
terror, besought their ill-used son to save them, by propitiating the mob,
who would listen to his voice if to no other. Then came the hour of
Ferdinand’s triumph; stepping out on to the balcony, he announced to the
crowd that the King was much displeased with the Prince of the Peace, and
had determined to dismiss him from office. The throng at once dispersed
with loud cheers.
Next morning, in fact, a royal decree was issued, declaring Godoy
relieved of all his posts and duties and banished from the court. Without the
favourite at their elbow Charles and his queen seemed perfectly helpless.
The proclamation was received at first with satisfaction, but the people still
hung about the palace and kept calling for the King, who had to come out
several times and salute them. It began to look like a scene from the
beginning of the French Revolution. There was already much talk in the
crowd of the benefit that would ensue to Spain if the Prince of the Asturias,
with whose sufferings every one had sympathized, were to be entrusted
with some part in the governance of the realm. His partisans openly spoke
of the abdication of the old king as a desirable possibility.
Next day the rioting commenced again, owing to the reappearance of
Godoy. He had lain concealed for thirty-six hours beneath a heap of mats, in
a hiding-place contrived under the rafters of his mansion; but hunger at last
drove him out, and, when he thought that the coast was clear, he slipped
down and tried to get away. In spite of his mantle and slouched hat he was
recognized almost at once, and would have been pulled to pieces by the
crowd if he had not been saved by a detachment of the royal guard, who
carried him off a prisoner to the palace. The news that he was trapped
brought thousands of rioters under the royal windows, shouting for his
instant trial and execution. The imbecile King could not be convinced that

he was himself safe, and the Queen, who usually displayed more courage,
seemed paralysed by her fears for Godoy even more than for herself. This
was the lucky hour of the Prince of the Asturias; urged on by his secret
advisers, he suggested abdication to his father, promising that he would
disperse the mob and save the favourite’s life. The silly old man accepted
the proposal with alacrity, and drew up a short document of twelve lines, to
the effect ‘that his many bodily infirmities made it hard for him to support
any longer the heavy weight of the administration of the realm, and that he
had decided to remove to some more temperate clime, there to enjoy the
peace of private life. After serious deliberation he had resolved to abdicate
in favour of his natural heir, and wished that Don Ferdinand should at once
be received as king in all the provinces of the Spanish crown. That this free
and spontaneous abdication should be immediately published was to be the
duty of the Council of Castile.’

SECTION I: CHAPTER V
THE TREACHERY AT BAYONNE

The news of the abdication of Charles IV was received with universal
joy. The rioters of Aranjuez dispersed after saluting the new sovereign, and
allowed Godoy to be taken off, without further trouble, to the castle of
Villaviciosa. Madrid, though Murat was now almost at its gates, gave itself
up to feasts and processions, after having first sacked the palaces of the
Prince of the Peace and some of his unpopular relations and partisans.
Completely ignorant of the personal character of Ferdinand VII, the
Spaniards attributed to him all the virtues and graces, and blindly expected
the commencement of a golden age—as if the son of Charles IV and Maria
Luisa was likely to be a genius and a hero.
Looking at the general situation of affairs, there can be no doubt that the
wisest course for the young king to have taken would have been to
concentrate his army, put his person in safety, and ask Napoleon to speak
out and formulate his intentions. Instead of taking this, the only manly
course, Ferdinand resolved to throw himself on the Emperor’s mercy, as if
the fall of Godoy had been Napoleon’s object, and not the conquest of
Spain. Although Murat had actually arrived at Madrid on March 23, with a
great body of cavalry and 20,000 foot, the King entered the city next day
and practically put himself in the hands of the invader. He wrote a fulsome
letter to Napoleon assuring him of his devotion, and begging once more for
the hand of a princess of his house.
His reception in Madrid by the French ought to have undeceived him at
once. The ambassador Beauharnais, alone among the foreign ministers,
refrained from acknowledging him as king. Murat was equally recalcitrant,
and moreover most rude and disobliging in his language and behaviour. The
fact was that the Grand-Duke had supposed that he was entering Madrid in
order to chase out Godoy and rule in his stead. The popular explosion which
had swept away the favourite and the old king, and substituted for them a

young and popular monarch, had foiled his design. He did not know how
Bonaparte would take the new situation, and meanwhile was surly and
discourteous. But he was determined that there should at least be grounds
provided for a breach with Ferdinand, if the Emperor should resolve to go
on with his original plan.
Accordingly, he not only refused to acknowledge the new king’s title,
but hastened to put himself in secret communication with the dethroned
sovereigns. They were only too eager to meet him halfway, and Maria Luisa
especially was half-mad with rage at her son’s success. At first she and her
husband thought of nothing but escaping from Spain: they begged Murat to
pass on to the Emperor letters in which they asked to be permitted to buy a
little estate in France, where they might enjoy his protection during their
declining years. But they begged also that ‘the poor Prince of the Peace,
who lies in a dungeon covered with wounds and contusions and in danger
of death,’ might be saved and allowed to join them, ‘so that we may all live
together in some healthy spot far from intrigues and state business[40].’
Murat saw that the angry old queen might be utilized to discredit her
son, and promised to send on everything to Napoleon. At the first word of
encouragement given by the Grand-Duke’s agent, De Monthion, Maria
Luisa began to cover many sheets with abuse of her son. ‘He is false to the
core: he has no natural affection: he is hard-hearted and nowise inclined to
clemency. He has been directed by villains and will do anything that
ambition suggests: he makes promises, but does not always keep them[41].’
Again she writes:—‘From my son we have nothing to expect but outrages
and persecution. He has commenced by forgery, and he will go on
manufacturing evidence to prove that the Prince of the Peace—that
innocent and affectionate friend of the Emperor, the Duke of Berg, and
every Frenchman!—may appear a criminal in the eyes of the Spanish
people and of Napoleon himself. Do not believe a word that he says, for our
enemies have the power and means to make any falsehood seem true[42].’ In
another letter she says that the riots of Aranjuez were no genuine explosion
of popular wrath, but a deliberate plot got up by her son, who spent
countless sums on debauching the soldiery and importing ruffians from
Madrid. He gave the signal for the outburst himself by putting a lamp in his
window at a fixed hour—and so forth[43].

Finding the Queen in this state of mind, Murat saw his way to dealing a
deadly blow at Ferdinand: with his counsel and consent Charles IV was
induced to draw up and send to Bonaparte a formal protest against his
abdication. He was made to declare that his resignation had not been
voluntary, but imposed on him by force and threats. And so he ‘throws
himself into the arms of the great monarch who has been his ally, and puts
himself at his disposition wholly and for every purpose[44].’ This document
placed in Napoleon’s hands the precise weapon which he required to crush
King Ferdinand. If the Emperor chose to take it seriously, he could declare
the new monarch a usurper—almost a parricide—the legality of whose
accession had been vitiated by force and fraud.
As a matter of fact Bonaparte’s mind had long been made up. The
revolution of Aranjuez had been a surprise and a disappointment to him: his
designs against Spain were made infinitely more difficult of realization
thereby. While he had only the weak and unpopular government of Godoy
and Charles IV to deal with, he had fancied that the game was in his hands.
It had been more than probable that the Prince of the Peace would take
fright, and carry off the King and Queen to America—in which case he
would, as it were, find Spain left derelict. If, however, the emigration did
not take place, and it became necessary to lay hands on Charles and his
favourite, Napoleon calculated that the Spaniards would be more pleased to
be rid of Godoy than angry to see force employed against him. He was so
profoundly ignorant of the character of the nation, that he imagined that a
few high-sounding proclamations and promises of liberal reforms would
induce them to accept from his hands any new sovereign whom he chose to
nominate. It was clear that the accession of a young and popular king would
make matters far more difficult. It was no longer possible to pose as the
deliverer of Spain from the shameful predominance of Godoy. Any move
against Ferdinand must bear the character of an open assault on the national
independence of the kingdom.
But Bonaparte had gone too far to recede: he had not moved 100,000
men across the Pyrenees, and seized Pampeluna and Barcelona, merely in
order that his troops might assist at the coronation ceremonies of another
Bourbon king. In spite of all difficulties he was resolved to persevere in his
iniquitous plan. He would not recognize the new monarch, but would sweep
him away, and put in his place some member of his own family. But his

chosen instrument was not to be Murat, but one of the Bonapartes. He knew
too well the Duke of Berg’s restless spirit and overweening ambition to trust
him with so great a charge as Spain. And he was right—with only Naples at
his back Joachim was powerful enough to do his master grave harm in
1814. The tool was to be one of his own brothers. It was on the night of
March 26 that the news of the abdication of Charles IV reached him: on the
morning of the twenty-seventh he wrote to Amsterdam offering Louis
Bonaparte the chance of exchanging the Dutch for the Spanish crown. The
proposal was made in the most casual form—‘You say that the climate of
Holland does not suit you. Besides the country is too thoroughly ruined to
rise again. Give me a categorical answer: if I nominate you King of Spain
will you take the offer; can I count on you?[45]’ Louis very wisely refused
the proffered crown: but his weaker brother Joseph, tired of Naples and its
brigands, made no scruples when the same proposal was laid before him.
This letter to Louis of Holland having been written on the first news of
the events at Aranjuez, and four days before Murat began to send in his own
plans and the letters of protest from the King and Queen of Spain, it is clear
that the Emperor had never any intention of recognizing Ferdinand, and was
only playing with him during the month that followed. It was not in mere
caution that Beauharnais, the ambassador, and Murat, the military
representative, of France, were bidden never to address the new sovereign
as king but as Prince of the Asturias, and to act as if Charles IV were still
legally reigning until they should have specific directions from Paris[46].
This state of semi-suspended relations lasted for a fortnight, from
Ferdinand’s arrival in Madrid on March 24, down to his departure from it
on April 10. They were very uncomfortable weeks for the new king, who
grew more alarmed as each day passed without a letter from Paris ratifying
his title, while French troops continued to pour into Madrid till some 35,000
were assembled in it and its suburbs.
A very few days after his accession Ferdinand was informed that it was
probable that Napoleon was intending a visit to Madrid, and was at any rate
coming as far as Bayonne. He immediately sent off his eldest brother Don
Carlos (the hero of the unhappy wars of 1833-40) to compliment his patron,
and if necessary to receive him at the frontier [April 5]. Two days later there
appeared in Madrid a new French emissary, General Savary—afterwards
Duke of Rovigo—who purported to come as Bonaparte’s harbinger,

charged with the duty of preparing Madrid for his arrival. He carried the
farce so far that he asked for a palace for the Emperor’s residence, produced
trunks of his private luggage[47], and began to refurnish the apartments
granted him. That he bore secret orders for Murat we know from the latter’s
dispatches, but this was only half his task. Napoleon had confided to him
verbal instructions to lure Ferdinand to come out to meet him in the north of
Spain, among the French armies massed in Biscay and Navarre—if possible
even to get him to Bayonne on French soil. In his St. Helena memoirs
Napoleon denies this, and Savary in his autobiography also states that he
did not act the part of tempter or make any promises to the young king: the
journey to Bayonne, he says, was a silly inspiration of Ferdinand’s own. But
neither Bonaparte nor Savary are witnesses whom one would believe on
their most solemn oath. The former we know well: the latter had been one
of the persons most implicated in the shocking murder of the Duc
d’Enghien. When we find the Spanish witnesses, who conversed with
Savary during his short stay in Madrid, agreeing that the general promised
that Napoleon would recognize Ferdinand as king, give him an imperial
princess as wife, and take him into favour, we need not doubt them. It is not
disputed that Savary, unlike Murat and Beauharnais, regularly addressed his
victim by the royal title, and it is certain that he started in his company and
acted as his keeper during the journey[48]. The move that he at first proposed
was not a long one: the general said that according to his advices the
Emperor must be due at Burgos on April 13: it would be time enough to
start to meet him on the tenth. Burgos lies well inside the frontiers of
Castile, and if it was packed with French troops, so was Madrid: one place
was no more dangerous than the other.
Exactly how far the perjuries of Savary went, or how far he was apprised
of his master’s final intentions, we cannot tell, but it is certain that on April
10 he set out from Madrid in the King’s company: with them went
Escoiquiz, Ferdinand’s clerical confidant, Cevallos the minister of foreign
affairs, and half a dozen dukes and marquises chosen from among the
King’s old partisans. To administer affairs in his absence Ferdinand
nominated a ‘Junta’ or council of regency, with his uncle Don Antonio, a
simple and very silly old man, at its head[49].
On reaching Burgos, on April 12, the party found masses of French
troops but no signs of Napoleon. Savary appeared vexed, said that his

calculation must have been wrong, and got the King to go forward two
more stages, as far as Vittoria, at the southern foot of the Pyrenees [April
14]. Here Ferdinand received a note from his brother Don Carlos, whom he
had sent ahead, saying that Bonaparte had been lingering at Bordeaux, and
was not expected at Bayonne till the fifteenth. Ferdinand, always timid and
suspicious, was getting restive: he had nothing on paper to assure him of
Napoleon’s intentions, and began to suspect Savary’s blandishments. The
latter doubted for a moment whether he should not have the court seized by
the French garrison of Vittoria, but finally resolved to endeavour to get a
letter from his master, which would suffice to lure Ferdinand across the
frontier. He was entrusted with a petition of the same cast that Napoleon
had been in the habit of receiving from his would-be client, full of servile
loyalty and demands for the much-desired Bonaparte princess.
The four days during which Savary was absent, while the royal party
remained at Vittoria, were a period of harassing doubt to Ferdinand. He was
visited by all manner of persons who besought him not to go on, and
especially by Spaniards lately arrived from Paris, who detailed all the
disquieting rumours which they had heard at the French court. Some
besought him to disguise himself and escape by night from the 4,000 troops
of the Imperial Guard who garrisoned Vittoria. Others pointed out that the
Spanish troops in Bilbao, which was still unoccupied by the French, might
be brought down by cross-roads, and assume charge of the king’s person
halfway between Vittoria and the frontier, in spite of the 600 French cavalry
which escorted the cavalcade. Guarded by his own men Ferdinand might
retire into the hills of Biscay. But to adopt either of the courses proposed to
him would have compelled the King to come to an open breach with
Bonaparte, and for this he had not sufficient courage, as long as there was
the slightest chance of getting safely through his troubles by mere servility.
On April 18 Savary reappeared with the expected communication from
Bayonne. It was certainly one of the strangest epistles that one sovereign
ever wrote to another, and one of the most characteristic products of
Napoleon’s pen. It was addressed to the Prince of the Asturias, not to the
King of Spain, which was an ominous preface. But on the other hand the
Emperor distinctly stated that ‘he wished to conciliate his friend in every
way, and to find occasion to give him proofs of his affection and perfect
esteem.’ He added that ‘the marriage of your royal highness to a French

princess seems conformable to the interests of my people, and likely to
forge new links of union between myself and the house of Bourbon.’ The
core of the whole was the explicit statement that ‘if the abdication of King
Charles was spontaneous, and not forced on him by the riot at Aranjuez, I
shall have no difficulty in recognizing your royal highness as King of
Spain. On these details I wish to converse with your royal highness.’ This
was a double-edged saying: Napoleon had in his pocket Charles’s protest,
complaining that the abdication had been forced upon him by fears for his
personal safety: but Ferdinand was not aware of the fact; indeed he so little
realized his parent’s state of mind that he had written to him before quitting
Madrid in the most friendly terms. If he had fathomed the meaning of
Napoleon’s carefully constructed sentence, he would have fled for his life to
the mountains.
These were the main clauses of Napoleon’s letter, but they are embedded
in a quantity of turgid verbiage, in which we are only uncertain whether the
hypocrisy or the bad taste is the more offensive. ‘How perilous is it for
kings to permit their subjects to seek justice for themselves by deeds of
blood! I pray God that your royal highness may not experience this for
yourself some day! It is not for the interest of Spain that the Prince of the
Peace should be hunted down: he is allied by marriage to the royal house
and has governed the realm for many years. He has no friends now: but if
your royal highness were to fall into similar disgrace you would have no
more friends than he. You cannot touch him without touching your parents.
You have no rights to the crown save those which your mother has
transmitted to you: if in trying the Prince you smirch her honour, you are
destroying your own rights. You have no power to bring him to judgement:
his evil deeds are hidden behind the throne.... O wretched Humanity!
Weakness, and Error, such is our device! But all can be hushed up: turn the
Prince out of Spain, and I will give him an asylum in France.’
In the next paragraph Napoleon tells Ferdinand that he should never
have written to him in the preceding autumn without his father’s knowledge
—‘in that your royal highness was culpable; but I flatter myself that I
contributed by my remonstrances in securing a happy end to the affair of
the Escurial.’ Finally Ferdinand might assure himself that he should have
from his ally precisely the same treatment that his father had always

experienced—which again is a double-edged saying, if we take into
consideration the history of the relations of Charles IV and France.
The King and his confidant Escoiquiz read and reread this curious
document without coming to any certain conclusion: probably they thought
(as would any one else who did not know the Emperor thoroughly) that the
meeting at Bayonne would open with a scolding, and end with some
tiresome concessions, but that Ferdinand’s title would be recognized.
Savary’s commentary was reassuring: Spanish witnesses say that he
exclaimed ‘I am ready to have my head taken off if, within a quarter of an
hour of your majesty’s arrival at Bayonne, the Emperor has not saluted you
as King of Spain and the Indies.... The whole negotiation will not take three
days, and your majesty will be back in Spain in a moment[50].’
On April 19, therefore, the royal party set out amid the groans of the
populace of Vittoria, who tried to hold back the horses, and to cut the traces
of the King’s coach: on the twentieth they reached Bayonne. Napoleon
entertained them at dinner, but would not talk politics: after the meal they
were sent home to the not very spacious or magnificent lodgings prepared
for them. An hour later the shameless Savary presented himself at the door,
with the astounding message that the Emperor had thought matters over,
and had come to the conclusion that the best thing for Spain would be that
the house of Bourbon should cease to reign, and that a French prince should
take their place. A prompt acquiescence in the bargain should be rewarded
by the gift of the kingdom of Etruria, which had just been taken from
Ferdinand’s widowed sister and her young son.
The possibility of such an outrage had never occurred to the young king
and his counsellors: when something of the kind had been suggested to
them at Vittoria, they had cried out that it was insulting to the honour of the
greatest hero of the age to dream that he could be plotting treachery[51]. And
now, too late, they learnt the stuff of which heroes were made. Even with
Savary’s words ringing in their ears, they could not believe that they had
heard aright. It must be some mere threat intended to frighten them before
negotiations began: probably it meant that Spain would have to cede some
American colonies or some Catalonian frontier districts. Next morning,
therefore, Ferdinand sent his minister Cevallos to plead his cause: Napoleon
refused to bargain or compromise: he wanted nothing, he said, but a prompt
resignation of his rights by the Prince of the Asturias: there was nothing left

to haggle about. It was gradually borne in upon Ferdinand that the Emperor
meant what he had said. But though timid he was obstinate, and nothing
like an abdication could be got out of him. He merely continued to send to
Napoleon one agent after another—first the minister Cevallos, then his tutor
and confidant Escoiquiz, then Don Pedro Labrador, a councillor of state, all
charged with professions of his great readiness to do anything, short of
resigning the Spanish throne, which might satisfy his captor. Cevallos and
Escoiquiz have left long narratives of their fruitless embassies. That of the
latter is especially interesting: he was admitted to a long conference with
Bonaparte, in which he plied every argument to induce him to leave
Ferdinand on the throne, after marrying him to a French princess and
exacting from him every possible guarantee of fidelity. The Emperor was
ready to listen to every remonstrance, but would not move from his
projects. He laughed at the idea that Spain would rise in arms, and give him
trouble. ‘Countries full of monks, like yours,’ he said, ‘are easy to
subjugate. There may be some riots, but the Spaniards will quiet down
when they see that I offer them the integrity of the boundaries of the
monarchy, a liberal constitution, and the preservation of their religion and
their national customs[52].’
When such were Napoleon’s ideas it was useless to argue with him. But
Ferdinand refused to understand this, and kept reiterating all sorts of
impracticable offers of concession and subservience, while refusing to do
the one thing which the Emperor required of him. Napoleon, much irritated
at the refusal of such a poor creature to bow to his will, has left a sketch of
him during these trying days. ‘The Prince of the Asturias,’ he wrote, ‘is very
stupid, very malicious, a very great hater of France.... He is a thoroughly
uninteresting person, so dull that I cannot get a word out of him. Whatever
one says to him he makes no reply. Whether I scold him, or whether I coax
him, his face never moves. After studying him you can sum him up in a
single word—he is a sulky fellow[53].’
As Ferdinand would not budge, Bonaparte had now to bring his second
device to the front. With the old king’s protest before him, the Emperor
could say that Charles IV had never abdicated in any real sense of the word.
He had been made to sign a resignation ‘with a pistol levelled at his head,’
as a leading article in the Moniteur duly set forth. Such a document was, of
course, worth nothing: therefore Charles was still King of Spain, and might

sign that surrender of his rights which Ferdinand denied. Napoleon
promptly sent for the old king and queen, who arrived under a French escort
on April 30, ten days after their son’s captivity began. At Bayonne they
rejoined their dearly-loved Godoy, whom Murat had extorted from the Junta
of Regency, under cover of a consent sent by Ferdinand to Napoleon from
Vittoria two days before he crossed the frontier.
Charles IV arrived in a state of lachrymose collapse, sank on Napoleon’s
breast and called him his true friend and his only support. ‘I really do not
know whether it is his position or the circumstances, but he looks like a
good honest old man,’ commented the Emperor. ‘The Queen has her past
written on her face—that is enough to define her. As to the Prince of the
Peace, he looked like a prize bull, with a dash of Count Daru about him.’
Godoy and the Queen had only one thought, to avenge themselves on
Ferdinand: after what had taken place they could never go back to rule in
Spain, so they cared little what happened to the country. As to the King, his
wife and his favourite pulled the strings, and he gesticulated in the fashion
that they desired. The Emperor treated them with an ostentatious politeness
which he had always refused to the new king: at the first banquet that he
gave them occurred the absurd scene (already mentioned by us), in which
Charles refused to sit down to table till Godoy had been found and put near
him.
Two days after their arrival Napoleon compelled Ferdinand to appear
before his parents: he himself was also present. The interview[54]
commenced by King Charles ordering his son to sign a complete and
absolute renunciation of the Spanish throne. Bonaparte then threw in a few
threatening words: but Ferdinand, still unmoved, made a steady refusal. At
this the old king rose from his chair—he was half-crippled with rheumatism
—and tried to strike his son with his cane, while the Queen burst in with a
stream of abuse worthy of a fishwife. Napoleon, horrified at the odious
scene, according to his own narrative of it, hurried Ferdinand, ‘who looked
scared,’ out of the room.
The same night [May 1], Ferdinand’s advisers bethought them of a new
and ingenious move—we need not ascribe it to his own brains, which were
surely incapable of the device. He wrote to King Charles to the effect that
he had always regarded the abdication at Aranjuez as free and
unconstrained, but that if it had not been so, he was ready to lay down his

crown again and hand it back to his father. But the ceremony must be done
in an open and honourable way at Madrid, before the Cortes. If his parent
personally resumed the reins of power, he bowed to his authority: but if his
age and infirmities induced him to name a regent, that regent should be his
eldest son.
This proposal did not suit the Emperor at all, so he dictated to the old
king a long letter, in which the Napoleonesque phraseology peeps out in a
score of places. Charles refuses all terms, says that his son’s conduct had
‘placed a barrier of bronze between him and the Spanish throne,’ and
concludes that ‘only the Emperor can save Spain, and he himself would do
nothing that might stir up the fire of discord among his loved vassals or
bring misery on them’ [May 2]. Ferdinand replied with an equally long
letter justifying at large all his conduct of the past year [May 4].
When things stood at this point there arrived from Madrid the news of
the bloody events of the second of May, which we have to relate in the next
chapter. This brought Napoleon up to striking point, and once more he
intervened in his own person. He sent for Ferdinand, and in the presence of
his parents accused him of having stirred up the riot in the capital, and
informed him that if he did not sign an abdication and an acknowledgement
of his father as the only true king by twelve that night ‘he should be dealt
with as a traitor and rebel.’ This is Napoleon’s own version[55], but Spanish
witnesses say that the words used were that ‘he must choose between
abdication and death[56].’
To any one who remembered the fate of the Duc d’Enghien such a
phrase was more than an idle threat. It brought the stubborn Ferdinand to
his knees at last. That evening he wrote out a simple and straightforward
form of abdication—‘without any motive, save that I limited my former
proposal for resignation by certain proper conditions, your majesty has
thought fit to insult me in the presence of my mother and the Emperor. I
have been abused in the most humiliating terms: I have been told that unless
I make an unconditional resignation I and my companions shall be treated
as criminals guilty of conspiracy. Under such circumstances I make the
renunciation which your majesty commands, that the government of Spain
may return to the condition in which it was on March 19 last, the day on
which your majesty spontaneously laid down your crown in my favour[57]’
[May 6].

Ferdinand having abdicated, Napoleon at once produced a treaty which
King Charles had ratified on the previous day, twenty-four hours before his
son gave in. By it the old man ‘resigned all his rights to the throne of Spain
and the Indies to the Emperor Napoleon, the only person who in the present
state of affairs can re-establish order.’ He only annexed two conditions: ‘(1)
that there should be no partition of the Spanish monarchy; (2) that the
Roman Catholic religion should be the only one recognized in Spain: there
should, according to the existing practice, be no toleration for any of the
reformed religions, much less for infidels.’ If anything is wanting to make
the silly old man odious, it is the final touch of bigotry in his abdication.
The rest of the document consists of a recital of the pensions and estates in
France conferred by the Emperor on his dupe in return for the abdication. It
took five days more to extort from Don Ferdinand a formal cession of his
ultimate rights, as Prince of the Asturias, to the succession to the throne. It
was signed on May 10, and purported to give him in return a palace in
France and a large annual revenue. But he was really put under close
surveillance at Talleyrand’s estate of Valençay, along with his brother Don
Carlos, and never allowed to go beyond its bounds. The Emperor’s letter of
instructions to Talleyrand is worth quoting for its cynical brutality. He wrote
to his ex-minister, who was much disgusted with the invidious duty put
upon him: ‘Let the princes be received without any show, but yet
respectably, and try to keep them amused. If you chance to have a theatre at
Valençay there would be no harm in importing some actors now and then.
You may bring over Mme de Talleyrand [the notorious Mme Grand of
1800], and four or five ladies in attendance on her. If the prince should fall
in love with some pretty girl among them, there would be no harm in it,
especially if you are quite sure of her. The prince must not be allowed to
take any false step, but must be amused and occupied. I ought, for political
safety, to put him in Bitche or some other fortress-prison: but as he placed
himself into my clutches of his own free will, and as everything in Spain is
going on as I desire, I have resolved merely to place him in a country house
where he can amuse himself under strict surveillance.... Your mission is
really a very honourable one—to take in three[58] illustrious guests and keep
them amused is a task which should suit a Frenchman and a personage of
your rank[59].’ Napoleon afterwards owned that he was framing what he
called ‘a practical joke’ on Talleyrand, by billeting the Spaniards on him.
The Prince of Benevento had wished to make no appearance in the matter,

and the Emperor revenged himself by implicating him in it as the jailor of
his captives. Talleyrand’s anger may be imagined, and estimated by his after
conduct.
At Valençay the unfortunate Ferdinand was destined to remain for nearly
six years, not amusing himself at all according to Napoleon’s ideas of
amusement, but employed in a great many church services, a little partridge
shooting, and (so his unwilling jailor tells us) the spoiling of much paper,
not with the pen but with the scissors; for he developed a childish passion
for clipping out paper patterns and bestowing them on every one that he
met. One could pardon him everything if he had not spoilt his attitude as
victim and martyr by occasionally sending adulatory letters to the Emperor,
and even to his own supplanter, Joseph Bonaparte the new King of Spain.

SECTION I: CHAPTER VI
THE SECOND OF MAY: OUTBREAK OF THE
SPANISH INSURRECTION

When King Ferdinand had taken his departure to Bayonne, the position
of Murat in Madrid became very delicate. He might expect to hear at any
moment, since the Emperor’s plans were more or less known to him, either
that the Spanish king had been made a prisoner, or that he had taken the
alarm, escaped from his escort, and fled into the mountains. In either case
trouble at Madrid was very probable, though there was no serious military
danger to be feared, for of Spanish troops there were only 3,000 in the city,
while some 35,000 French were encamped in or about it. But there might be
a moment of confusion if the Junta of Regency should take violent
measures on hearing of the King’s fate, or the populace of Madrid (and this
was much more likely) burst into rioting.
From the tenth of April, the day of the King’s departure for the north,
down to the twenty-ninth there was no serious cause for apprehension. The
people were no doubt restless: they could not understand why the French
lingered in Madrid instead of marching on Portugal or Gibraltar, according
to their expressed intention. Rumours of all kinds, some of which hit off
fairly well the true projects of Bonaparte, were current. Murat’s conduct
was not calculated to reassure observers; he gave himself the airs of a
military governor, rather than those of an officer engaged in conducting an
allied army through friendly territory. Some of his acts gave terrible
offence, such as that of insisting that the sword of Francis I, taken at Pavia
in 1525, the pride for three centuries of the royal armoury, should be given
up to him[60]. His call on the Junta for the surrender of the Prince of the
Peace, whom he forwarded under French escort to Bayonne, could not fail
to be unpopular. But the first real signs of danger were not seen till the
twenty-second of April, when Murat, in obedience to his master, intended to
publish the protest of Charles IV against his abdication. It was to be

presented to the Junta in the form of a letter to its president, Don Antonio.
Meanwhile French agents were set to print it: their Spanish underlings stole
and circulated some of the proofs. Their appearance raised a mob, for the
name of Charles IV could only suggest the reappearance of Godoy. An
angry crowd broke into the printing office, destroyed the presses, and
hunted away the Frenchmen. Murat at once made a great matter of the
affair, and began to threaten the Junta. ‘The army which he commanded
could not without dishonouring itself allow disorders to arise: there must be
no more anarchy in Spain. He was not going to allow the corrupt tools of
the English government to stir up troubles.’ The Junta replied with rather
more spirit than might have been expected, asked why an army of 35,000
French troops had now lingered more than a month around the capital, and
expressed an opinion that the riot was but an explosion of loyalty to
Ferdinand. But they undertook to deal severely with factious persons, and to
discourage even harmless assemblies like that of the twenty-second.
Meanwhile Murat wrote to the Emperor that it was absurd that he could
not yet establish a police of his own in Madrid, that he could not print what
he pleased, and that he had to negotiate with the Junta when he wished his
orders published, instead of being able to issue them on his own
authority[61]. He was answered in a style which must have surprised him.
Napoleon was ashamed, he said, of a general who, with 50,000 men at his
back, asked for things instead of taking them. His letters to the Junta were
servile; he should simply assume possession of the reins of power, and act
for himself. If the canaille stirred, let it be shot down[62]. Murat could only
reply that ‘if he had not yet scattered rioters by a blast of grape, it was only
because there were no mobs to shoot: his imperial majesty’s rebuke had
stunned him “like a tile falling on his head” by its unmerited severity[63].’
Within three days of this letter there was to be plenty of grape-shot,
enough to satisfy both Emperor and Grand-Duke. They probably had the
revolt of Cairo and the 13th Vendémiaire in their mind, and were both under
the impression that a good émeute pitilessly crushed by artillery was the
best basis of a new régime.
On the night of April 29 the first clear and accurate account of what was
happening at Bayonne arrived at Madrid. Napoleon had intercepted all the
letters which Don Ferdinand had tried to smuggle out of his prison. He read
them with grave disapproval, for his guest had not scrupled to use the

expression ‘the cursed French,’ and had hinted at the propriety of resistance.
He had not yet been cowed by the threat of a rebel’s death. But on the
twenty-third one of the Spaniards at Bayonne succeeded in escaping in
disguise, crossed the mountains by a lonely track, and reached Pampeluna,
whence he posted to Madrid. This was a certain Navarrese magistrate
named Ibarnavarro, to whom Ferdinand had given a verbal message to
explain Napoleon’s plans and conduct to the Junta, and to inform them that
he would never give in to this vile mixture of force and fraud. He could not
send them any definite instructions, not knowing the exact state of affairs at
Madrid, and a premature stroke might imperil the life of himself, his
brother, and his companions: let them beware therefore of showing their
warlike intentions till preparations had been fully made to shake off the
yoke of the oppressor.
This message Ibarnavarro delivered on the night of April 29-30 to the
Junta[64], who had summoned in to hear it a number of judges and other
magnates of the city. Next morning, of course, the information, in a more or
less garbled shape, spread all round Madrid: there were foolish rumours that
the Biscayans had already taken arms, and that 30,000 of them were
marching on Bayonne to save the King, as also that certain of the coast
towns had invited the English to land. On the thirtieth leaflets, both written
and printed, were being secretly circulated round the city, setting forth the
unhappy condition of the King, and bidding his subjects not to forget
Numancia[65]. It is astonishing that riots did not break out at once,
considering the growing excitement of the people, and the habitual
insolence of the French soldiery. But leaders were wanting, and in especial
the Junta of Regency and its imbecile old president made no move
whatever, on the pretext, apparently, that any commotion might imperil the
lives of Napoleon’s prisoners.
It was Murat himself who brought matters to a head next day, by
ordering the Junta to put into his hands the remaining members of the royal
family, Ferdinand’s youngest brother Don Francisco, a boy of sixteen, and
his sister the widowed and exiled Queen of Etruria, with her children. Only
Don Antonio, the incapable president of the Junta, and the Archbishop of
Toledo, the King’s second-cousin, were to be left behind: the rest were to be
sent to Bayonne. Knowing what had happened to Don Ferdinand and Don
Carlos, the people were horrified at the news; but they trusted that the

Regency would refuse its leave. To its eternal disgrace that body did
nothing: it did not even try to smuggle away the young Don Francisco
before Murat should arrest him.

Madrid in 1808.

On the morning, therefore, of May 2 the streets were filled with people,
and the palace gates in especial were beset by an excited mob. It was soon
seen that the news was true, for the Queen of Etruria appeared and started
for the north with all her numerous family. She was unpopular for having
sided with her mother and Godoy against Don Ferdinand, and was allowed
to depart undisturbed. But when the carriage that was to bear off Don
Francisco was brought up, and one of Murat’s aides-de-camp appeared at
the door to take charge of the young prince, the rage of the crowd burst all

bounds. The French officer was stoned, and saved with difficulty by a
patrol: the coach was torn to pieces. Murat had not been unprepared for
something of the kind: the battalion on guard at his palace was at once
turned out, and fired a dozen volleys into the unarmed mob, which fled
devious, leaving scores of dead and wounded on the ground.
The Grand-Duke thought that the matter was over, but it had but just
begun. At the noise of the firing the excited citizens flocked into the streets
armed with whatever came to hand, pistols, blunderbusses, fowling-pieces,
many only with the long Spanish knife. They fell upon, and slew, a certain
number of isolated French soldiers, armed and unarmed, who were off duty
and wandering round the town, but they also made a fierce attack on
Murat’s guard. Of course they could do little against troops armed and in
order: in the first hour of the fight there were only about 1,000 men at the
Grand-Duke’s disposal, but this small force held its own without much loss,
though eight or ten thousand angry insurgents fell upon them. But within
seventy minutes the French army from the suburban camps came pouring
into the city, brigade after brigade. After this the struggle was little more
than a massacre: many of the insurgents took refuge in houses, and
maintained a fierce but futile resistance for some time; but the majority
were swept away in a few minutes by cavalry charges. Only at one point did
the fight assume a serious shape. Almost the entire body of the Spanish
garrison of Madrid refrained from taking any part in the rising: without the
orders of the Junta the chiefs refused to move, and the men waited in vain
for the orders of their officers. But at the Artillery Park two captains, Daoiz
and Velarde, threw open the gates to the rioters, allowed them to seize some
hundreds of muskets, and when the first French column appeared ran out
three guns and opened upon it with grape[66]. Though aided by no more than
forty soldiers, and perhaps 500 civilians, they beat off two assaults, and
only succumbed to a third. Daoiz was bayonetted, Velarde shot dead, and
their men perished with them; but they had poured three volleys of grape
into a street packed with the enemy, and caused the only serious losses
which the French suffered that day.
The whole struggle had occupied not more than four hours: when it was
over Murat issued an ‘order of the day,’ sentencing all prisoners taken with
arms in their hands, all persons discovered with arms concealed in their
houses, and all distributors of seditious leaflets, ‘the agents of the English

government,’ to be shot. It seems that at least a hundred persons were
executed under this edict, many of them innocent bystanders who had taken
no part in the fighting. Next morning Murat withdrew his Draconian decree,
and no further fusillades took place. It is impossible, in the conflict of
authorities, to arrive at any clear estimate of the numbers slain on each side
on May 2[67]. Probably Toreño is not far out when he estimates the whole at
something over a thousand. Of these four-fifths must have been Spaniards,
for the French only lost heavily at the arsenal: the number of isolated
soldiers murdered in the streets at the first outbreak of the riot does not
seem to have been very large.
Many French authors have called the rising a deliberate and
preconcerted conspiracy to massacre the French garrison. On the other hand
Spanish writers have asserted that Murat had arranged everything so as to
cause a riot, in order that he might have the chance of administering a
‘whiff of grape-shot,’ after his master’s plan. But it is clear that both are
making unfounded accusations: if the insurrection had been premeditated,
the Spanish soldiery would have been implicated in it, for nothing would
have been easier than to stir them up. Yet of the whole 3,000 only forty ran
out to help the insurgents. Moreover, the mob would have been found
armed at the first commencement of trouble, which it certainly was not. On
the other hand, if Murat had been organizing a massacre, he would not have
been caught with no more than two squadrons of cavalry and five or six
companies of infantry under his hand. These might have been cut to pieces
before the troops from outside could come to their help. He had been
expecting riots, and was prepared to deal with them, but was surprised by a
serious insurrection on a larger scale than he had foreseen, and at a moment
when he was not ready.
For a few days after May 2, Murat at Madrid and his master at Bayonne
were both living in a sort of fools’ paradise, imagining that ‘the affairs of
Spain were going off wonderfully well,’ and that ‘the party of Ferdinand
had been crushed by the prompt suppression of its conspiracy.’ The Grand-
Duke had the simplicity or the effrontery to issue a proclamation in which
he said ‘that every good Spaniard had groaned at the sight of such
disorders,’ and another in which the insurrection was attributed to ‘the
machinations of our common enemy, i.e. the British government[68].’ On
May 4 Don Antonio laid down the presidency of the Junta without a word

of regret, and went off to Bayonne, having first borrowed 25,000 francs
from Murat. The latter, by virtue of a decree issued by Charles IV, then
assumed the presidency of the Junta of Regency. The rest of the members of
that ignoble body easily sank into his servile instruments, though they had
at last received a secret note smuggled out from Bayonne, in which
Ferdinand (the day before his abdication) told them to regard his removal
into the interior of France as a declaration of war, and to call the nation to
arms. To this they paid no attention, while they pretended to take the
document of resignation, which Bonaparte had forced him to sign, as an
authentic and spontaneous expression of his will. The fact is that twenty
years of Godoy had thoroughly demoralized the bureaucracy and the court
of Spain: if the country’s will had not found better exponents than her
ministers and officials, Napoleon might have done what he pleased with the
Peninsula.
At present his sole interest seems to have lain in settling the details of his
brother Joseph’s election to the Spanish throne. Ferdinand’s final
resignation of all his rights having been signed on May 10, the field was
open for his successor. The Emperor thought that some sort of deputation to
represent the Spanish nation ought to be got together, in order that his
brother might not seem to receive the crown from his own hands only.
Murat was first set to work to terrorize the Junta of Regency, and the
‘Council of Castile,’ a body which practically occupied much the same
position as the English Privy Council. At his dictation the Junta yielded, but
with an ill grace, and sent petitions to Bayonne asking for a new monarch,
and suggesting (as desired) that the person chosen might be Joseph
Bonaparte, King of Naples [May 13]. Murat had just been informed that as
all had gone well with the Emperor’s plans he should have his reward: he
might make his choice between the thrones of Naples and of Portugal. He
wisely chose the former, where the rough work of subjection had already
been done by his predecessor.
But resolved to get together something like a representative body which
might vote away the liberty of Spain, Napoleon nominated, in the Madrid
Gazette of May 24, 150 persons who were to go to Bayonne and there ask
him to grant them a king. He named a most miscellaneous crowd—
ministers, bishops, judges, municipal officers of Madrid, dukes and counts,
the heads of the religious orders, the Grand Inquisitor and some of his

colleagues, and six well-known Americans who were to speak for the
colonies. To the eternal disgrace of the ruling classes of Spain, no less than
ninety-one of the nominees were base enough to obey the orders given
them, to go to Bayonne, and there to crave as a boon that the weak and
incompetent Joseph Bonaparte might be set to govern their unhappy
country, under the auspices of his brother the hero and regenerator. Long
before the degrading farce was complete, the whole country was in arms
behind them, and they knew themselves for traitors. The election of King
Joseph I was only taken in hand on June 15, while twenty days before the
north and south of Spain had risen in arms in the name of the captive
Ferdinand VII.
It took a week for the news of the insurrection of May 2 to spread round
Spain: in the public mouth it of course assumed the shape of a massacre
deliberately planned by Murat. It was not till some days later that the full
details of the events at Bayonne got abroad. But ever since the surprise of
the frontier fortresses in February and March, intelligent men all over the
country had been suspecting that some gross act of treachery was likely to
be the outcome of the French invasion. Yet in most of the districts of Spain
there was a gap of some days between the arrival of the news of the King’s
captivity and the first outbreak of popular indignation. The fact was that the
people were waiting for the lawful and constituted authorities to take action,
and did not move of themselves till it was certain that no initiative was to be
expected from those in high places. But Spain was a country which had
long been governed on despotic lines; and its official chiefs, whether the
nominees of Godoy or of the knot of intriguers who had just won their way
to power under Ferdinand, were not the men to lead a war of national
independence. Many were mere adventurers, who had risen to preferment
by flattering the late favourite. Others were typical bureaucrats, whose only
concern was to accept as legitimate whatever orders reached them from
Madrid: provided those orders were couched in the proper form and written
on the right paper, they did not look to see whether the signature at the
bottom was that of Godoy or of the Infante Don Antonio, or of Murat.
Others again were courtiers who owed their position to their great names,
and not to any personal ability. It is this fact that accounts for the fortnight
or even three weeks of torpor that followed the events of the second and
sixth of May. Murat’s orders during that space travelled over the country,
and most of the captains-general and other authorities seemed inclined to

obey them. Yet they were orders which should have stirred up instant
disobedience; the Mediterranean squadron was to be sent to Toulon, where
(if it did not get taken on the way by the British) it would fall into the hands
of Napoleon. A large detachment of the depleted regular army was to sail
for Buenos Ayres, with the probable prospect of finding itself ere long on
the hulks at Portsmouth, instead of on the shores of the Rio de la Plata. The
Swiss regiments in Spanish pay were directed to be transferred to the
French establishment, and to take the oath to Napoleon. All this could have
no object save that of diminishing the fighting power of the country.
The first province where the people plucked up courage to act without
their officials, and to declare war on France in spite of the dreadful odds
against them, was the remote and inaccessible principality of the Asturias,
pressed in between the Bay of Biscay and the Cantabrian hills. Riots began
at its capital, Oviedo, as early as the first arrival of the news from Madrid
on May 9, when Murat’s edicts were torn down in spite of the feeble
resistance of the commander of the garrison and some of the magistrates.
The Asturias was one of the few provinces of Spain which still preserved
vestiges of its mediaeval representative institutions. It had a ‘Junta
General,’ a kind of local ‘estates,’ which chanced to be in session at the time
of the crisis. Being composed of local magnates and citizens, and not of
officials and bureaucrats, this body was sufficiently in touch with public
opinion to feel itself borne on to action. After ten days of secret preparation,
the city of Oviedo and the surrounding country-side rose in unison on May
24: the partisans of the new government were imprisoned, and next day the
estates formally declared war on Napoleon Bonaparte, and ordered a levy of
18,000 men from the principality to resist invasion. A great part of the credit
for this daring move must be given to the president of the Junta, the
Marquis of Santa Cruz, who had stirred up his colleagues as early as the
thirteenth by declaring that ‘when and wherever one single Spaniard took
arms against Napoleon, he would shoulder a musket and put himself at that
man’s side.’ The Asturians had knowledge that other provinces would
follow their example; there was only one battalion of regular troops and one
of militia under arms in the province; its financial resources were small. Its
only strength lay in the rough mountains that had once sheltered King
Pelayo from the Moors. It was therefore an astounding piece of patriotism
when the inhabitants of the principality threw down the challenge to the
victor of Jena and Austerlitz, confiding in their stern resolution and their

good cause. All through the war the Asturias played a very creditable part in
the struggle, and never let the light of liberty go out, though often its capital
and its port of Gihon fell into French hands.
One of the first and wisest measures taken by the Asturian Junta was an
attempt to interest Great Britain in the insurrection. On May 30 they sent to
London two emissaries (one of whom was the historian Toreño) on a Jersey
privateer, whose captain was persuaded to turn out of his course for the
public profit. On June 7 they had reached London and had an interview
with Canning, the Foreign Secretary of the Tory government which had
lately come into power. Five days later they were assured that the Asturias
might draw on England for all it required in the way of arms, munitions,
and money. All this was done before it was known in England that any other
Spanish province was stirring, for it was not till June 22 that the
plenipotentiaries of the other juntas began to appear in London.
The revolt of other provinces followed in very quick succession. Galicia
rose on May 30, in spite of its captain-general, Filanghieri, whose resistance
to the popular voice cost him his popularity and, not long after, his life.
Corunna and Ferrol, the two northern arsenals of Spain, led the way. This
addition to the insurgent forces was very important, for the province was
full of troops—the garrisons that protected the ports from English descents.
There were eighteen battalions of regulars and fourteen of militia—a whole
army—concentrated in this remote corner of Spain. Napoleon’s plan of
removing the Spanish troops from the neighbourhood of Madrid had
produced the unintended result of making the outlying provinces very
strong for self-defence.
It is more fitting for a Spanish than an English historian to descend into
the details of the rising of each province of Spain. The general
characteristics of the outburst in each region were much the same: hardly
anywhere did the civil or military officials in charge of the district take the
lead. Almost invariably they hung back, fearing for their places and profits,
and realizing far better than did the insurgents the enormous military power
which they were challenging. The leaders of the movement were either
local magnates not actually holding office—like the celebrated Joseph
Palafox at Saragossa—or demagogues of the streets, or (but less frequently
than might have been expected) churchmen, Napoleon was quite wrong
when he called the Spanish rising ‘an insurrection of monks.’ The church

followed the nation, and not the nation the church: indeed many of the
spiritual hierarchy were among the most servile instruments of Murat.
Among them was the primate of Spain, the Archbishop of Toledo, who was
actually a scion of the house of Bourbon. There were many ecclesiastics
among the dishonoured ninety-one that went to Bayonne, if there were
others who (like the Bishop of Santander) put themselves at the head of
their flocks when the country took arms.
It was a great misfortune for Spain that the juntas, which were
everywhere formed when the people rose, had to be composed in large part
of men unacquainted with government and organization. There were many
intelligent patriots among their members, a certain number of statesmen
who had been kept down or disgraced by Godoy, but also a large proportion
of ambitious windbags and self-seeking intriguers. It was hard to constitute
a capable government, on the spur of the moment, in a country which had
suffered twenty years of Godoy’s rule.
An unfortunate feature of the rising was that in most of the provinces,
and especially those of the south, it took from the first a very sanguinary
cast. It was natural that the people should sweep away in their anger every
official who tried to keep them down, or hesitated to commit himself to the
struggle with France. But there was no reason to murder these weaklings or
traitors, in the style of the Jacobins. There was a terrible amount of
assassination, public and private, during the first days of the insurrection.
Three captains-general were slain under circumstances of brutal cruelty—
Filanghieri in Galicia, Torre del Fresno in Estremadura, Solano at Cadiz.
The fate of Solano may serve as an example: he tried to keep the troops
from joining the people, and vainly harangued the mob: pointing to the
distant sails of the English blockading squadron he shouted, ‘There are your
real enemies!’ But his words had no effect: he was hunted down in a house
where he took refuge, and was being dragged to be hung on the public
gallows, when the hand of a fanatic (or perhaps of a secret friend who
wished to spare him a dishonourable death) dealt him a fatal stab in the
side. Gregorio de la Cuesta, the Governor-General of Old Castile, who was
destined to play such a prominent and unhappy part in the history of the
next two years, nearly shared Solano’s fate. The populace of Valladolid,
where he was residing, rose in insurrection like those of the other cities of
Spain. They called on their military chief to put himself at their head; but

Cuesta, an old soldier of the most unintelligent and brainless sort, hated
mob-violence almost more than he hated the French. He held back, not
from a desire to serve Bonaparte, but from a dislike to being bullied by
civilians. The indignant populace erected a gallows outside his house and
came to hang him thereon. It was not, it is said, till the rope was actually
round his neck that the obstinate old man gave in. The Castilians promptly
released him, and put him at the head of the armed rabble which formed
their only force. Remembering the awful slaughter at Cabezon, at Medina
de Rio Seco, and at Medellin, which his incapacity and mulish obstinacy
was destined to bring about, it is impossible not to express the wish that his
consent to take arms had been delayed for a few minutes longer.
All over Spain there took place, during the last days of May and the first
week of June, scores of murders of prominent men, of old favourites of
Godoy, of colonels who would not allow their regiments to march, of
officials who had shown alacrity in obeying the orders of Murat. In the
Asturias and at Saragossa alone do the new juntas seem to have succeeded
in keeping down assassination. The worst scenes took place at Valencia,
where a mad priest, the Canon Baltasar Calvo, led out a mob of ruffians
who in two days [June 6-7] murdered 338 persons, the whole colony of
French merchants residing in that wealthy town. It is satisfactory to know
that when the Junta of Valencia felt itself firmly seated in the saddle of
power, it seized and executed this abominable person and his chief
lieutenants. In too many parts of Spain the murderers went unpunished: yet
remembering the provocation which the nation had received, and
comparing the blood shed by mob-violence with that which flowed in
Revolutionary France, we must consider the outburst deplorable rather than
surprising.
When the insurrection had reached its full development, we find that it
centred round five points, in each of which a separate junta had seized on
power and begun to levy an army. The most powerful focus was Seville,
from which all Andalusia took its directions: indeed the Junta of Seville had
assumed the arrogant style of ‘supreme Junta of Spain and the Indies,’ to
which it had no legitimate title. The importance of Andalusia was that it was
full of troops, the regular garrisons having been joined by most of the
expeditionary corps which had returned from southern Portugal. Moreover
it was in possession of a full treasury and a fleet, and had free

communication with the English at Gibraltar. On June 15 the Andalusians
struck the first military blow that told on Napoleon, by bombarding and
capturing the French fleet (the relics of Trafalgar) which lay at their mercy
within the harbour of Cadiz.
The second in importance of the centres of resistance was Galicia, which
was also fairly well provided with troops, and contained the arsenals of
Ferrol and Corunna. The risings in Asturias, and the feebler gatherings of
patriots in Leon and Old Castile, practically became branches of the
Galician insurrection, though they were directed by their own juntas and
tried to work for themselves. It was on the army of Galicia that they relied
for support, and without it they would not have been formidable. The
boundaries of this area of insurrection were Santander, Valladolid, and
Segovia: further east the troops of Moncey and Bessières, in the direction of
Burgos and Aranda, kept the country-side from rising. There were sporadic
gatherings of peasants in the Upper Ebro valley and the mountains of
Northern Castile, but these were mere unorganized ill-armed bands that half
a battalion could disperse. It was the same in the Basque Provinces and
Navarre: here too the French lay cantoned so thickly that it was impossible
to meddle with them: their points of concentration were Vittoria and the two
fortresses of Pampeluna and San Sebastian.
The other horn of the half-moon of revolt, which encircled Madrid, was
composed of the insurrections in Murcia and Valencia to the south and
Aragon to the north. These regions were much less favourably situated for
forming centres of resistance, because they were very weak in organized
troops. When the Aragonese elected Joseph Palafox as their captain-general
and declared war on France, there were only 2,000 regulars and one battery
of artillery in their realm. The levies which they began to raise were nothing
more than half-armed peasants, with no adequate body of officers to train
and drill them. Valencia and Murcia were a little better off, because the
arsenal of Cartagena and its garrison lay within their boundaries, but there
were only 9,000 men in all under arms in the two provinces. Clearly they
could not hope to deliver such a blow as Galicia or Andalusia might deal.
The last centre of revolt, Catalonia, did not fall into the same strategical
system as the other four. It looked for its enemies not at Madrid, but at
Barcelona, where Lecchi and Duhesme were firmly established ever since
their coup de main in February. The Catalans had as their task the cutting

off of this body of invaders from its communication with France, and the
endeavour to prevent new forces from joining it by crossing the Eastern
Pyrenees. The residence of the insurrectionary Junta was at Tarragona, but
the most important point in the province for the moment was Gerona, a
fortress commanding the main road from France, which Napoleon had not
had the foresight to seize at the same moment that he won by treachery
Barcelona and Figueras. While the Spaniards could hold it, they had some
chance of isolating the army of Duhesme from its supports. In Catalonia, or
in the Balearic Isles off its coast, there were in May 1808, about 16,000
men of regular troops, among whom there were only 1,200 soldiers of the
cavalry arm. There was no militia, but by old custom the levée en masse
might always be called out in moments of national danger. These irregulars,
somatenes as they were called (from somaten, the alarm-bell which roused
them), turned out in great numbers according to ancient custom: they had
been mobilized thirteen years before in the French War of 1793-5 and their
warlike traditions were by no means forgotten. All through the Peninsular
struggle they made a very creditable figure, considering their want of
organization and the difficulty of keeping them together.
The French armies, putting aside Duhesme’s isolated force at Barcelona,
lay compactly in a great wedge piercing into the heart of Spain. Its point
was at Toledo, just south of Madrid: its base was a line drawn from San
Sebastian to Pampeluna across the Western Pyrenees. Its backbone lay
along the great high road from Vittoria by Burgos to Madrid. The
advantageous point of this position was that it completely split Central
Spain in two: there was no communication possible between the insurgents
of Galicia and those of Aragon. On the other hand the wedge was long and
narrow, and exposed to be pierced by a force striking at it either from the
north-east or the north-west. The Aragonese rebels were too few to be
dangerous; but the strong Spanish army of Galicia was well placed for a
blow at Burgos, and a successful attack in that direction would cut off
Madrid from France, and leave the troops in and about the capital, who
formed the point of the intrusive wedge, in a very perilous condition. This is
the reason why, in the first stage of the war, Napoleon showed great anxiety
as to what the army of Galicia might do, while professing comparative
equanimity about the proceedings of the other forces of the insurrection.

Having thus sketched the strategic position of affairs in the Peninsula
during the first days of June, we must set ourselves to learn the main
characteristics of the military geography of Spain, and to estimate the
character, organization, and fighting value of the two armies which were
just about to engage. Without some knowledge of the conditions of warfare
in Spain, a mere catalogue of battles and marches would be absolutely
useless.

SECTION II
THE LAND AND THE COMBATANTS

CHAPTER I
MILITARY GEOGRAPHY OF THE PENINSULA:
MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, ROADS

Of all the regions of Europe, the Iberian Peninsula possesses the best
marked frontier. It is separated from France, its only neighbour, by one
broad range of mountains, which defines its boundaries even more clearly
than the Alps mark those of Italy. For the Alps are no single chain, but a
system of double and triple chains running parallel to each other, and
leaving between them debatable lands such as Savoy and the Southern
Tyrol. Between Spain and France there is no possibility of any such claims
and counter-claims. It is true that Roussillon, where the eastern end of the
Pyrenean range runs into the sea, was Spanish down to 1659, but that was a
political survival from the Middle Ages, not a natural union: there can be no
doubt that geographically Roussillon is a French and not an Iberian land:
the main backbone of the boundary chain lies south and not north of it.
The Pyrenees, though in height they cannot vie with the Alps, and
though they are not nearly so jagged or scarped as the greater chain, are
extremely difficult to cross, all the more so because the hand of man has
seldom come to help the hand of nature in making practicable lines of
access between France and Spain. In the whole length between the Bay of
Biscay and the Mediterranean there are only two short fronts where
intercommunication is easy, and these lie at the extreme east and west,
where the mountains touch the sea. In the 250 miles which intervene there

is hardly one good pass practicable for wheeled traffic or for the march of
an army: most are mere mule-paths, rarely used save by smugglers and
shepherds. The only one of these minor routes employed in the war was that
which leads from Jaca in Aragon to Oloron in Béarn, and that was not much
used: only on one single occasion in 1813 does it appear prominently in
history, when Clausel’s French division, fleeing before Wellington and
pressed up against the foot of the mountains, escaped across it with some
difficulty.
The only passes that were systematically employed during the war were
those which lie close to the water at each end of the Pyrenean chain. At the
eastern end there are three which lead from Roussillon into Catalonia. One
hugs the water’s edge, and crawls along under the cliffs from Perpignan to
Rosas: this was not in 1808 the most important of the three, though it is the
one by which the railway passes to-day. Inland there are two other roads
over difficult crests—one ten, the other forty miles from the shore—the
former from Bellegarde to Figueras, the other from Mont-Louis to Puycerda
and Vich. The first was the pass most used in the war, being less exposed
than the Rosas route to English descents from the sea: the coast road could
actually be cannonaded by warships at some corners. It was blocked indeed
by the fortress of Figueras, but that stronghold was only in Spanish hands
for a very short period of the war. The inmost, or Mont-Louis-Puycerda
road was bad, led into nothing more than a few upland valleys, and was
very little employed by the French. It would have been of importance had it
led down into the lowlands of Aragon, but after taking a long turn in the
hills it harks back towards the Catalan coast, and joins the other two roads
near Gerona—a fortress which is so placed as practically to command every
possible access into Eastern Spain.
Taking all three of these paths into Catalonia together, they do but form a
sort of back door into the Iberian Peninsula. They only communicate with
the narrow eastern coast-strip from Barcelona to Valencia. There is no direct
access from them into Castile, the heart of the country, and only a
roundabout entrance by Lerida into Aragon. The great mass of the Catalan
and Valencian Sierras bars them out from the main bulk of the Spanish
realm. Catalonia and Valencia, wealthy and in parts fertile as they are, are
but its back premises.

The true front door of the kingdom is formed by the passes at the other,
the western, end of the Pyrenees. Here too we have three available routes,
but they differ in character from the roads at the edge of the Mediterranean,
in that they open up two completely separate lines of advance into Spain,
and do not (like the Catalan defiles) all lead on to the same goal. All three
start from Bayonne, the great southern fortress of Gascony. The first keeps
for some time close to the seaside, and after crossing the Bidassoa, the
boundary river of France and Spain, at Irun, leaves the fortress of San
Sebastian a few miles to its right and then charges the main chain of the
mountains. It emerges at Vittoria, the most northerly town of importance in
the basin of the Ebro. A few miles further south it crosses that stream, and
then makes for Burgos and Madrid, over two successive lines of Sierras. It
opens up the heart of both Old and New Castile. The other two roads from
Bayonne strike inland at once, and do not hug the Biscayan shore like the
Irun-Vittoria route. They climb the Pyrenees, one by the pass of Maya, the
other, twenty miles further east, by the more famous pass of Roncesvalles,
where Charlemagne suffered disaster of old, and left the great paladin,
Roland, dead behind him. The Maya and Roncesvalles roads join, after
passing the mountains, at the great fortress of Pampeluna, the capital of
Navarre. From thence several lines are available for the invader, the two
chief of which are the roads into Old Castile by Logroño and into Aragon
by Tudela. Pampeluna is quite as valuable as Vittoria as the base for an
attack on Central Spain.
The whole Iberian Peninsula has been compared, not inaptly, to an
inverted soup-plate: roughly it consists of a high central plateau, surrounded
by a flat rim. But no comparison of that kind can be pressed too hard, and
we must remember that the rim is variable in width: sometimes, as on the
north coast, and in the extreme south-east of the peninsula, it is very
narrow, and much cut up by small spurs running down to the sea. But as a
rule, and especially in Central Portugal, Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia, it
is broad and fertile. Indeed if we set aside the northern coast—Biscay,
Asturias, and Galicia—we may draw a sharp division between the rich and
semi-tropical coast plain, and the high, wind-swept, and generally barren
central plateau. All the wealth of the land lies in the outer strip: the centre is
its most thinly inhabited and worthless part. Madrid, lying in the very midst
of the plateau, is therefore not the natural centre of the land in anything save
a mathematical sense. It is a new and artificial town of the sixteenth

century, pitched upon as an administrative capital by the Hapsburg kings;
but in spite of the long residence of the court there, it never grew into a city
of the first class. Summing up its ineligibilities, an acute observer said that
Madrid combined ‘the soil of the Sahara, the sun of Calcutta, the wind of
Edinburgh, and the cold of the North Pole.’ Though in no sense the natural
capital of the country, it has yet a certain military importance as the centre
from which the road-system of Spain radiates. There is, as a glance at the
map will show, no other point from which all the main avenues of
communication with the whole of the provinces can be controlled. An
invader, therefore, who has got possession of it can make any combined
action against himself very difficult. But he must not flatter himself that the
capture of Madrid carries with it the same effect that the capture of Paris or
Berlin or Vienna entails. The provinces have no such feeling of dependence
on the national capital as is common in other countries. France with Paris
occupied by an enemy is like a body deprived of its head. But for
Andalusians or Catalonians or Galicians the occupation of Madrid had no
such paralysing effect. No sentimental affection for the royal residence—
and Madrid was nothing more—existed. And a government established at
Seville or Cadiz, or any other point, would be just as well (or as ill) obeyed
as one that issued its orders from the sandy banks of the Manzanares.
The main geographical, as well as the main political, characteristics of
Spain are determined by its very complicated mountain-system. It is a land
where the rivers count for little, and the hills for almost everything, in
settling military conditions. In most countries great rivers are connecting
cords of national life: their waters carry the internal traffic of the realm: the
main roads lie along their banks. But in Spain the streams, in spite of their
length and size, are useless. They mostly flow in deep-sunk beds, far below
the level of the surrounding country-side. Their rapid current is always
swirling round rocks, or dashing over sandbanks: often they flow for mile
after mile between cliffs from which it is impossible to reach the water’s
edge. In the rainy season they are dangerous torrents: in the summer all
save the very largest dwindle down into miserable brooks. A river in Spain
is always a sundering obstacle, never a line of communication. Only for a
few scores of miles near their mouths can any one of them be utilized for
navigation: the Douro can be so employed as far as Freneda on the frontier
of Portugal, the Tagus in good seasons as far as Abrantes, the Guadalquivir

to Seville. For the rest of their long courses they are not available even for
the lightest boats.
Spanish rivers, in short, are of importance not as lines of transit, but as
obstacles. They form many fine positions for defence, but positions
generally rendered dangerous by the fact that a very few days of drought
may open many unsuspected fords, where just before there had been deep
and impassable water. Rivers as broad as the Tagus below Talavera and the
Douro at Toro were occasionally crossed by whole armies in dry weather. It
was always hazardous to trust to them as permanent lines of defence.
It is the mountains which really require to be studied in detail from the
military point of view. Speaking generally we may describe the Iberian
system—as distinct from the Pyrenees—as consisting of one chain running
roughly from north to south, so as to separate the old kingdoms of Castile
and Aragon, while at right angles to this chain run a number of others,
whose general courses are parallel to each other and run from east to west.
There is no single name for the mountains which separate Castile and
Aragon, nor do they form one continuous range. They are a number of
separate systems, often divided from each other by wide gaps, and
sometimes broadening out into high tablelands. The central nucleus, from
which the rest run out, lies between the provinces of New Castile and
Valencia, from Guadalajara in the former to Morella in the latter. Here there
is a great ganglion of chaotic sierras, pierced by hardly a single practicable
road. Northward, in the direction of Aragon, they sink down into the plain
of the Ebro: southward they spread out into the lofty plateau of Murcia, but
rise into higher and narrower ranges again as they get near the frontier of
Andalusia.
This block of chains and plateaus forms the central watershed of Spain,
which throws westward the sources of the Douro, Tagus, Guadiana, and
Guadalquivir, and eastward those of the Xucar and Segura. The basins of
these streams and their tributaries form three-fourths of the Iberian
Peninsula. The rest consists mainly of the great valley of the Ebro: this
hardly falls into the system, and is somewhat exceptional. It has been
described as serving as a sort of wet-ditch to the main fortification of the
peninsula. Starting in the western extension of the Pyrenees, quite close to
the Bay of Biscay, it runs diagonally across Spain, more or less parallel to
the Pyrenees, and falls into the Mediterranean between Catalonia and

Valencia. It is more low-lying than the rest of the main valleys of Spain, is
broader, and is not so much cramped and cut up by mountains running
down to it at right angles to its course.
Behind the Ebro lie, chain after chain, the parallel sierras which mark off
the divisions of the great central plateau of Spain. Arteche compares them
to the waves of a great petrified sea, running some higher and some lower,
but all washing up into jagged crests, with deep troughs between them.
The first and most northerly of these waves is that which we may call the
range of Old Castile, which separates the basin of the Ebro from that of the
Douro. At one end it links itself to the Pyrenean chain in the neighbourhood
of Santander: at the other it curves round to join the more central sierras in
the direction of Soria and Calatayud. It is the lowest of the chains which
bound the central plateau of Spain, and is pierced by three practicable
roads, of which the most important is that from Vittoria to Burgos.
Between this chain on the east and the Cantabrian mountains on the
north lies the great plain of Old Castile and Leon, the heart of the elder
Spanish monarchy, in the days when Aragon was still independent and
Andalusia remained in the hands of the Moor. It is a fairly productive corn-
producing land, studded with ancient cities such as Burgos, Palencia,
Valladolid, Toro, Zamora, Salamanca. The Tierra de Campos (land of the
plains), as it was called, was the granary of Northern Spain, the most
civilized part of the kingdom, and the only one where there existed a fairly
complete system of roads. For want of the isolated mountain chains which
cut up most provinces of the Iberian Peninsula, it was hard to defend and
easy to overrun. If the mountains that divide it from the Ebro valley are
once passed, there is no way of stopping the invader till he reaches the
border of Asturias, Galicia, or New Castile. The whole plain forms the
valley of the Upper Douro and its tributaries, the Adaja, Pisuerga, Esla,
Tormes, and the rest. It narrows down towards Portugal, as the mountains of
Galicia on the one side and Estremadura on the other throw out their spurs
to north and south. Hence the Lower Douro valley, after the Portuguese
frontier has been passed, is a defile rather than a plain. Before Oporto and
the estuary are reached, there are many places where the mountains on
either side come right down to the river’s edge.

The second chain is much more important, and more strongly marked: it
divides Old from New Castile, the valley of the Douro from that of the
Tagus. In its central and western parts it is really a double range, with two
narrow valleys between its chief ridges. These valleys are drained by the
Zezere and Alagon, two tributaries of the Tagus which flow parallel for
many scores of miles to the broad river which they feed. If we call this great
system of mountains the chain of New Castile it is only for convenience’
sake: the Spaniards and Portuguese have no common name for them. In the
east they are styled the Sierra de Ayllon; above Madrid they are known as
the Guadarrama—a name sometimes extended to the whole chain. When
they become double, west of Madrid, the northern chain is the Sierra de
Gata, the southern the Sierra de Gredos. Finally in Portugal the extension of
the Sierra de Gata is called the Sierra da Estrella, the southern parallel ridge
the Sierra do Moradal. The whole system forms a very broad, desolate, and
lofty belt of hills between the Tagus and Douro, through which the
practicable passes are few and difficult. Those requiring notice are (1) the
Somosierra Pass, through which runs the great northern road from Burgos
to Madrid: its name is well remembered owing to the extraordinary way in
which Napoleon succeeded in forcing it (against all the ordinary rules of
war) in the winter of 1808. (2) There is a group of three passes, all within
twelve miles of each other, across the Guadarrama, through which there
debouch on to Madrid the main roads from North-western Spain—those
from (a) Valladolid and Segovia, (b) from Astorga, Tordesillas, and
Arevalo, (c) from Salamanca by Avila. After this group of passes there is a
long space of impracticable hills, till we come to the chief road from north
to south, parallel to the Portuguese frontier: it comes down the valley of the
Alagon from Salamanca, by Baños and Plasencia, on to the great Roman
bridge of Alcantara, the main passage over the Middle Tagus. This is a bad
road through a desolate country, but the exigencies of war caused it to be
used continually by the French and English armies, whenever they had to
transfer themselves from the valley of the Douro to that of the Tagus.
Occasionally they employed a still worse route, a little further west, from
Ciudad Rodrigo by Perales to Alcantara. When we get within the
Portuguese frontier, we find a road parallel to the last, from Almeida by
Guarda to Abrantes, also a difficult route, but like it in perpetual use:
usually, when the French marched from Salamanca to Alcantara, Wellington
moved in a corresponding way from near Almeida to Abrantes. This road

runs along the basin of the Zezere, though not down in the trough of the
river, but high up the hillsides above it. Spanish and Portuguese roads, as
we shall see, generally avoid the river banks and run along the slopes far
above them.
The next great chain across the Peninsula is that which separates the
barren and sandy valley of the Upper Tagus from the still more desolate and
melancholy plateau of La Mancha, the basin of the Guadiana. Of all the
regions of Central Spain, this is the most thinly peopled and uninviting. In
the whole valley there are only two towns of any size, Ciudad Real, the
capital of La Mancha, and Badajoz, the frontier fortress against Portugal.
The mountains north of the Guadiana are called first the Sierra de Toledo,
then the Sierra de Guadalupe, lastly on the Portuguese frontier the Sierra de
San Mamed. Their peculiarity, as opposed to the other cross-ranges of the
Peninsula, is that at their eastern end they do not unite directly with the
mountains of Valencia, but leave a broad gap of upland, through which the
roads from Madrid to Murcia and Madrid to Valencia take their way. When
the Sierra de Toledo once begins roads are very few. There are practically
only three—(1) Toledo by San Vincente to Merida, a most break-neck route
winding among summits for forty miles; (2) Almaraz by Truxillo to Merida,
the main path from Tagus to Guadiana, and the most used, though it is
difficult and steep; (3) Alcantara by Albuquerque to Badajoz, a bad military
road parallel to the Portuguese frontier, continuing the similar route from
Salamanca to Alcantara.
Leaving the barren basin of the Guadiana to proceed southward, we find
across our path a range of first-rate importance, the southern boundary of
the central plateaux of Spain: dropping down from its crest we are no longer
among high uplands, but in the broad low-lying semi-tropical plain of
Andalusia, the richest region of Spain. The chain between the fertile valley
of the Guadalquivir and the barren plateau of La Mancha is known for the
greater part of its course as the Sierra Morena, but in its western section it
takes the name of Sierra de Constantino. The passes across it require special
notice: the most eastern and the most important is that of Despeña Perros,
through which passes the high road from Madrid to Cordova, Seville, and
Cadiz. At its southern exit was fought the fight of Baylen, in which the
armies of Napoleon received their first great check by the surrender of
Dupont and his 20,000 men on July 23, 1808. Higher up the defile lies

another historic spot, on which Christian and Moor fought the decisive
battle for the mastery of Spain in the early years of the thirteenth century,
the well-known fight of Las Navas de Tolosa. The Despeña Perros has two
side-passes close to its left and right: the former is that of San Estevan del
Puerto: the latter is known as the ‘King’s Gate’ (Puerto del Rey). All these
three defiles present tremendous difficulties to an assailant from the north,
yet all were carried in a single rush by the armies of Soult and Sebastiani in
1810. The central pass of the Sierra Morena lies ninety miles to the left, and
is of much less importance, as it starts from the most arid corner of La
Mancha, and does not connect itself with any of the great roads from the
north. It leads down on to Cordova from Hinojosa. Again sixty miles to the
west three more passes come down on to Seville, the one by Llerena, the
second by Monasterio, the third by Fregenal: they lead to Badajoz and
Merida. These are easier routes through a less rugged country: they were
habitually used by Soult in 1811 and 1812, when, from his Andalusian base
at Seville, he used to go north to besiege or to relieve the all-important
fortress of Badajoz.
Last of all the great Spanish chains is that which lies close along the
Mediterranean Sea, forming the southern edge of the fertile Andalusian
plain. It is the Sierra Nevada, which, though neither the longest nor the
broadest of the ranges of the south, contains the loftiest peaks in Spain,
Mulhaçen and La Veleta. This chain runs from behind Gibraltar along the
shore, till it joins the mountains of Murcia, leaving only a very narrow
coast-strip between its foot and the southern sea. Three roads cut it in its
western half, which, starting from Granada, Ronda, and Antequera all come
down to the shore at, or in the neighbourhood of, the great port of Malaga.
The parts of the coast-line that are far from that city are only accessible by
following difficult roads that run close to the water’s edge.
We have still to deal with two corners of the Iberian Peninsula, which do
not fall into any of the great valleys that we have described—Galicia and
Northern Portugal in the north-west, and Catalonia in the north-east. The
geographical conditions of the former region depend on the Cantabrian
Mountains, the western continuation of the Pyrenees. This chain, after
running for many miles as a single ridge, forks in the neighbourhood of the
town of Leon. One branch keeps on in its original direction, and runs by the
coast till it reaches the Atlantic at Cape Finisterre. The other turns south-

west and divides Spain from Portugal as far as the sea. The angle between
these forking ranges is drained by a considerable river, the Minho. The
basins of this stream and its tributary the Sil, form the greater part of the
province of Galicia. Their valleys are lofty, much cut up by cross-spurs, and
generally barren. The access to them from Central Spain is by two
openings. The main one is the high road from Madrid to Corunna by
Astorga; it does not follow the course of either the Sil or the Minho, but
charges cross-ridge after cross-ridge of the spurs of the Galician hills, till at
last it comes down to the water, and forks into two routes leading the one to
Corunna, the other to the still more important arsenal of Ferrol. The other
gate of Galicia is a little to the south of Astorga, where a pass above the
town of Puebla de Sanabria gives access to a steep and winding road
parallel to the Portuguese frontier, which finally gets into the valley of the
Minho, and turns down to reach the port of Vigo. It will be remembered that
Sir John Moore, in his famous retreat, hesitated for some time at Astorga
between the Vigo and Corunna roads, and finally chose the latter. His
judgement was undoubtedly correct, but the best alternative was bad, for in
winter even the Madrid-Corunna road, the main artery of this part of Spain,
is distressing enough to an army. It does not follow any well-marked valley,
but cuts across four separate ranges, every one of which in January was a
nursery of torrents in its lower slopes, and an abode of snow in its upper
levels. Besides the roads with which we have already dealt there is a third
important line of communication in Galicia, that by the narrow coast-plain
of the Atlantic, from Corunna by Santiago to Vigo, and thence into Portugal
as far as Oporto. This would be a good road but for the innumerable river-
mouths, small and great, which it has to cross: the road passes each stream
just where it ceases to be tidal, and at each is fronted at right angles by a
defensible position, which, if held by a competent enemy, is difficult to
force from the front, and still more difficult to turn by a detour up-stream.
Nevertheless it was by this route that Soult successfully invaded Northern
Portugal in the spring of 1809. It must be remembered that he was only
opposed by bands of peasants not even organized into the loosest form of
militia.
The geography of Catalonia, the last Iberian region with which we have
to deal, is more simple than that of Galicia. The land is formed by a broad
mountain belt running out from the eastern end of the Pyrenees, parallel to
the Mediterranean. From this chain the slopes run down and form on the

eastern side a coast-plain, generally rather narrow, on the western a series of
parallel valleys drained by tributaries of the Segre, the most important
affluent of the Ebro. They all unite near Lerida, an important town and a
great centre of roads. But two considerable rivers, the Ter and the
Llobregat, have small basins of their own in the heart of the central
mountain mass, which open down into the coast-plain by defiles, the one
blocked by the peak of Montserrat, the other by the town of Gerona. During
the greater part of the Peninsular War the French held the larger share of the
shoreland, dominating it from the great fortress of Barcelona, which they
had seized by treachery ere hostilities began. In 1811 they captured
Tarragona also, the second capital of the sea coast. But they never
succeeded in holding down all the small upland plains, and the minor passes
that lead from one to the other. Hunted out of one the Spanish army took
refuge in the next, and, though it dwindled down ultimately to a mass of
guerilla bands, was never caught en masse and exterminated. There were
too many bolt-holes among the network of hills, and the invaders never
succeeded in stopping them all, so that down to the end of the war the
patriots always maintained a precarious existence inland, descending
occasionally to the shore to get ammunition and stores from the English
squadrons which haunted the coast. They were supplied and reinforced
from the Balearic Isles, which Napoleon could never hope to touch, for his
power (like that of the witches of old) vanished when it came to running
water. The survival of the Catalan resistance after the French had drawn a
complete cordon around the hill-country, holding the whole coast-plain on
the one hand, and Lerida and the Segre valley on the other, is one of the
incidents of the war most creditable to Spanish constancy.
Having dealt with the physical geography of Spain, it is necessary for us
to point out the way in which the natural difficulties of the country had
influenced its main lines of communication. Roads always take the ‘line of
least resistance’ in early days, and seek for easy passes, not for short cuts.
The idea that ‘time is money,’ and that instead of going round two sides of a
triangle it may be worth while to cut a new path across its base, in spite of
all engineering difficulties, was one very unfamiliar to the Spaniard.
Nothing shows more clearly the state of mediaeval isolation in which the
kingdom still lay in 1808 than the condition of its roads. Wherever the
country presented any serious obstacles, little or no attempt had been made
to grapple with them since the days of the Romans. The energetic Charles

III, alone among the kings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had
done something to improve the system of intercommunication. He had, for
example, superseded the old break-neck road from the plains of Leon into
Galicia, by building the fine new chaussée from Astorga to Villafranca by
Manzanal; but among the line of Hapsburg and Bourbon sovereigns Charles
was a rare exception. Under the imbecile rule of his son (or rather of
Godoy) improvements ceased, and internal communications were as much
neglected as any other branch of state management. What roads there were,
when the war of 1808 broke out, were in a state of dreadful neglect. The
Spaniard was still too prone to go round an intolerable distance rather than
attempt a serious piece of engineering work. Let us take, for example, the
northern coast of Spain: the Cantabrian range is no doubt a most serious
obstacle to intercourse between Castile and Leon, on the one side, and the
maritime provinces of Asturias and Biscay on the other. But who would
have conceived it possible that in a length of 300 miles of mountain, there
should be no more than five roads practicable for wheeled traffic and
artillery? Yet this was so: to get down from the central plateau to the coast
there are only available these five routes—one from Leon to Oviedo, one
from Burgos to Santander, one from Burgos to Bilbao, one from Vittoria to
Bilbao, and one from Vittoria to San Sebastian and Irun. There were many
other points at which a division travelling in light order without guns or
baggage could cross the watershed—as was shown in Blake’s flight from
Reynosa and Ney’s invasion of the Asturias. But for an army travelling with
all its impedimenta such bypaths were impracticable.
Let us take another part of the Peninsula—its eastern side. The ancient
separation between Aragon and Castile is fully reflected by the utter
isolation of the two for intercommunication. To get from Madrid to the east
coast there are only three roads suitable for wheeled traffic: one goes by the
main gap in the hills by Chinchilla to Murcia, another by Requeña to
Valencia. The third passes by Calatayud to Saragossa and ultimately to
Barcelona. Between it and the Valencia road there is a gap of no less than
120 miles unpierced by any good practicable line of communication[69]. This
being so, we begin to understand how it was that the operations on the
eastern side of Spain, during the whole of the struggle, were a sort of
independent episode that never exercised any great influence on the main
theatre of the war, or, on the other hand, was much affected by the progress
of the strife in Castile or Portugal. Soult’s conquest of Andalusia did not

help Suchet to conquer Valencia. On the other hand, when the latter did, in
January, 1812, succeed in his attempt to subdue the eastern coast-line, it did
not much affect him that Wellington was storming Ciudad Rodrigo and
pressing back the French in the west. He was able to hold on to Valencia till
the allies, in 1813, got possession of the upper valley of the Ebro and the
great road from Madrid to Saragossa and Lerida, after the battle of Vittoria.
It was only then that his flank was really turned, and that he was compelled
to retreat and to abandon his southern conquests.
Summing up the general characteristics of the road-system of Spain, we
note first that the main routes are rather at right angles to the great rivers
than parallel to them. The sole exception is to be found in the valley of the
Ebro, where the only good cross-road of Northern Spain does follow the
river-bank from Logroño and Tudela on to Saragossa and Lerida.
Just because the roads do not cling to the valleys, but strike across them
at right angles, they are always crossing watersheds by means of difficult
passes. And so there is hardly a route in the whole Peninsula where it is
possible to find fifty miles without a good defensive position drawn across
the path. Moreover, the continual passes make the question of supplies very
difficult: in crossing a plain an army can live, more or less, on the supplies
of the country-side; but among mountains and defiles there is no
population, and therefore no food to be had. Hence an army on the move
must take with it all that it consumes, by means of a heavy wagon train, or
an enormous convoy of pack-mules. But only the best roads are suitable for
wheeled traffic, and so the lines practicable for a large host are very
restricted in number. The student is often tempted to consider the
movements of the rival generals very slow. The explanation is simply that
to transfer an army from one river-basin to another was a serious matter. It
was necessary to spend weeks in collecting at the base food and transport
sufficient to support the whole force till it reached its goal. In 1811 or 1812
the French and English were continually moving up and down the
Portuguese frontier parallel to each other, the one from Salamanca to
Badajoz, the other from Almeida or Guarda to Elvas. But to prepare for one
of these flittings was such a serious matter that by the time that the army
was able to move, the enemy had usually got wind of the plan, and was able
to follow the movement on his own side of the frontier. There were months
of preparation required before a few weeks of active operations, and when

the concentration was over and the forces massed, they could only keep
together as long as the food held out, and then had to disperse again in order
to live. This was what was meant by the old epigram, that ‘in Spain large
armies starve, and small armies get beaten.’
Half the strategy of the campaigns of 1811-12-13 consisted in one of the
combatants secretly collecting stores, concentrating his whole army, and
then dashing at some important part of his adversary’s line, before the other
could mass his forces in a corresponding way. If prompt, the assailant might
gain a fortnight, in which he might either try to demolish the enemy in
detail before he could concentrate, or else to take from him some important
position or town. In 1811 Marmont and Dorsenne played this trick on
Wellington, during the short campaign of El Bodon and Aldea da Ponte.
They relieved Ciudad Rodrigo, and nearly caught some divisions of the
English army before the rest could join. But missing the instant blow, and
allowing Wellington time to draw in his outlying troops, they failed and
went home. In 1812, on the other hand, the British general successfully
played off this device on the French. He first concentrated in the north, and
captured Ciudad Rodrigo in eleven days, before Marmont could mass his
scattered divisions; then going hastily south he took Badajoz in exactly the
same way, storming it after only nineteen days of siege. Soult drew his
army together at the news of Wellington’s move, but had to bring troops
from such distances, and to collect so much food, that he arrived within
three marches of Badajoz only to hear that the place had just fallen.
In dealing with the main geographical facts of the war it is fair to
recollect that an invasion of Spain from France is one of the most difficult
of undertakings, because the whole river and mountain system of the
Peninsula lies across the main line of advance from Bayonne to Cadiz,
which the invader must adopt. While the French conquest must be pushed
from north to south, both the streams and the Sierras of Spain all run at
right angles to this direction, i.e. from east to west. In advancing from the
Pyrenees to Madrid, and again from Madrid to Seville and Cadiz, the
invader has to cross every main river—Ebro, Douro, Tagus, Guadiana, and
Guadalquivir—and to force the passes of every main range. Moreover, as he
advances southward, he has to keep his flanks safe against disturbance from
the two mountainous regions, Catalonia and Portugal, which lie along the
eastern and western coasts of the Peninsula. Unless the whole breadth of

Spain, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, be occupied step by step as
the invader moves on towards the Straits of Gibraltar, he can always be
molested and have his lines of communication with France threatened. In
the end it may be said that Napoleon’s whole scheme of conquest was
shipwrecked upon the blunder of attacking Andalusia and Cadiz while
Portugal was still unsubdued. Wellington’s constant sallies out of that
country upon the French flank, in Leon and Estremadura, detained such
large forces to protect the valleys of the Central Douro and Tagus that
enough men were never found to finish the conquest of the south and east.
And finally one crushing victory at Salamanca, in the plains of Leon, so
threatened the invader’s line of touch with France, that he had to abandon
the whole south of Spain in order to concentrate an army large enough to
force Wellington back from Burgos and the great northern road.
On the other hand, one tremendous advantage possessed by the French
in the central years of the war must be remembered. It is manifest that
Madrid is the only really important road-centre in Spain, and that its
undisturbed possession by the French in 1809-11 gave them the advantage
of being able to operate from a single point, against enemies who lay in a
vast semicircle around, with no good cross-roads to join them and enable
them to work together. The small ‘Army of the Centre,’ which was always
kept in and around Madrid, could be used as a reserve for any other of the
French armies, and transferred to join it in a few marches, while it was
infinitely more difficult to unite the various forces lying on an outer circle
at Astorga, Almeida, Abrantes, and Cadiz, which the Spaniards and the
British kept in the field. In short, in estimating the difficulties of the two
parties, the advantage of the central position must be weighed against the
disadvantage of long and exposed lines of communication.
One of the cardinal blunders of Napoleon’s whole scheme for the
conquest of the Peninsula was that he persisted in treating it as if it were
German or Italian soil, capable of supporting an army on the march. His
troops were accustomed to live on the country-side while crossing Central
Europe, and therefore made no proper preparations for supplying
themselves by other means than plunder. But in Spain there are only a few
districts where this can be done: it may be possible to get forward without
an enormous train of convoys in Andalusia, the coast plain of Valencia, and
certain parts of the rather fertile plateau of Leon, the wheat-bearing Tierra

de Campos. But over four-fifths of the Peninsula, an army that tries to feed
on the country-side will find itself at the point of starvation in a few days,
and be forced to disperse in order to live.
Till he had seen Spain with his own eyes Napoleon might perhaps have
been excused for ignoring the fact that his ordinary method of ‘making war
support itself’ was not in this case possible. But even after he had marched
from Bayonne to Madrid, and then from Madrid to Astorga, in 1808, he
persisted in refusing to see facts as they were. We find him on his way back
to Paris from the campaign uttering the extraordinary statement that ‘Spain
is a much better country than he had ever supposed, and that he had no idea
what a magnificent present he had made to his brother Joseph till he had
seen it[70].’ Of his utter failure to grasp the difficulties of the country we may
get a fair conception from his orders, given at the same time, to Marshal
Soult, who was at that moment occupied in pushing Sir John Moore
towards Corunna. He told the Duke of Dalmatia that if he reached Lugo on
January 9, and the English got away safely by sea, he was to march on
Oporto, where he ought to arrive on the first of February; after seizing that
city he was to go on to Lisbon, which he might reach on or about February
10. As a matter of fact Soult saw the English depart, and occupied Corunna
on January 19, but his army was so utterly worn out, and his stores so
entirely exhausted, that with the best will in the world he could not move
again till February 20, only took Oporto on March 29, and had not yet
started for Lisbon when Wellesley suddenly fell on him and drove him out
of the country on May 12, 1809. The Emperor, in short, had given Soult
orders executable perhaps, according to the distance, in Lombardy or
Bavaria, but utterly absurd when applied to a country where roads are few
and bad, with a defile or a river crossing the path at every few miles, and
where food has to be carefully collected before a move, and taken on with
the army by means of enormous convoys. Moreover the month was January,
when every brook had become a raging mountain stream, and every
highland was covered with snow! With such conceptions of the task before
him, it is not wonderful that Napoleon was continually issuing wholly
impracticable orders. The one that we have just quoted was sent out from
Valladolid: how much worse would the case be when the Emperor persisted
in directing affairs from Paris or Vienna, the last news that had reached him
from the front being now several weeks old! With all his genius he never
thoroughly succeeded in grasping the state of affairs, and to the very last

continued to send directions that would have been wise enough in Central
Europe, but happened to be inapplicable in the Iberian Peninsula.
It is only fair to Napoleon to add that his Spanish enemies, who ought at
least to have known the limitations of their own road-system, and the
disabilities of their half-starved armies, used habitually to produce plans of
operations far more fantastically impossible than any that he ever drafted.
They would arrange far-reaching schemes, for the co-operation of forces
based on the most remote corners of the Peninsula, without attempting to
work out the ‘logistics’ of the movement. The invariable result was that
such enterprises either ended in disaster, or at the best came to a stop after
the first few marches, because some vital point of the calculation had
already been proved to have been made on erroneous data.

SECTION II: CHAPTER II
THE SPANISH ARMY IN 1808

When the English student begins to investigate the Peninsular War in
detail, he finds that, as regards the Spanish armies and their behaviour, he
starts with a strong hostile prejudice. The Duke of Wellington in his
dispatches, and still more in his private letters and his table-talk, was
always enlarging on the folly and arrogance of the Spanish generals with
whom he had to co-operate, and on the untrustworthiness of their troops.
Napier, the one military classic whom most Englishmen have read, is still
more emphatic and far more impressive, since he writes in a very judicial
style, and with the most elaborate apparatus of references and authorities.
When the reader begins to work through the infinite number of Peninsular
diaries of British officers and men (for there are a very considerable number
of writers from among the rank and file) the impression left upon him is
much the same. It must be confessed that for the most part they had a very
poor opinion of our allies.
Before allowing ourselves to be carried away by the almost unanimous
verdict of our own countrymen, it is only fair to examine the state and
character of the Spanish army when the war broke out. Only when we know
its difficulties can we judge with fairness of its conduct, or decide upon its
merits and shortcomings.
The armed force which served under the banners of Charles IV in the
spring of 1808 consisted of 131,000 men, of whom 101,000 were regulars
and 30,000 embodied militia. The latter had been under arms since 1804,
and composed the greater part of the garrisons of the seaports of Spain, all
of which had to be protected against possible descents of English
expeditions[71].
Of the 101,000 men of the regular army, however, not all were available
for the defence of the country. While the war with Russia was still in

progress, Bonaparte had requested the Spanish government to furnish him
with a strong division for use in the North [March, 1807], and in
consequence the Marquis of La Romana had been sent to the Baltic with
15,000 men, the picked regiments of the army. There remained therefore
only 86,000 regulars within the kingdom. A very cursory glance down the
Spanish army-list of 1808 is sufficient to show that this force was far from
being in a satisfactory condition for either offensive or defensive
operations.
It is well worth while to look at the details of its composition. The
infantry consisted of three sorts of troops—the Royal Guard, the line
regiments, and the foreign corps in Spanish pay. For Spain, more than any
other European state, had kept up the old seventeenth-century fashion of
hiring foreign mercenaries on a large scale. Even in the Royal Guard half
the infantry were composed of ‘Walloon Guards,’ a survival from the day
when the Netherlands had been part of the broad dominions of the
Hapsburg kings. The men of these three battalions were no longer mainly
Walloons, for Belgium had been a group of French departments for the last
thirteen years. There were Germans and other foreigners of all sorts in the
ranks, as well as a large number of native Spaniards. There were also six
regiments of Swiss mercenaries—over 10,000 bayonets—and in these the
men in the ranks did really come from Switzerland and Germany, though
there was a sprinkling among them of strangers from all lands who had ‘left
their country for their country’s good.’ There were also one Neapolitan and
three Irish regiments. These latter were survivals from the days of the
‘Penal Laws,’ when young Irishmen left their homes by thousands every
year to take service with France or Spain, in the hope of getting some day a
shot at the hated redcoats. The regiments bore the names of Hibernia,
Irlanda, and Ultonia (i.e. Ulster). They were very much under their proper
establishment, for of late years Irish recruits had begun to run short, even
after the ’98: they now took service in France and not in Spain. The three
Irish corps in 1808 had only 1,900 men under arms, instead of the 5,000
which they should have produced; and of those the large majority were not
real Irish, but waifs of all nationalities. Of late native Spaniards had been
drafted in, to keep the regiments from dying out. On the other hand we shall
find that not only the foreign regiments but the whole Spanish army was
still full of officers of Irish name and blood, the sons and grandsons of the
original emigrants of two generations back. An astounding proportion of the

officers who rose to some note during the war bore Irish names, and were
hereditary soldiers of fortune, who justified their existence by the
unwavering courage which they always showed, in a time when obstinate
perseverance was the main military virtue. We need only mention Blake, the
two O’Donnells, Lacy, Sarsfield, O’Neill, O’Daly, Mahony, O’Donahue. If
none of them showed much strategical skill, yet their constant readiness to
fight, which no series of defeats could tame, contrasts very well with the
spiritless behaviour of a good many of the Spanish generals. No officer of
Irish blood was ever found among the cowards, and hardly one among the
traitors[72].
The ten foreign corps furnished altogether about 13,000 men to the
Spanish regular army. The rest of the infantry was composed of thirty-five
regiments of troops of the line, of three battalions each, and twelve single-
battalion regiments of light infantry. They were theoretically territorial, like
our own infantry of to-day, and mostly bore local names derived from the
provinces—Asturias, Toledo, Estremadura, and so forth. All the light
infantry corps belonged to the old kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre, which
were therefore scantily represented in the nomenclature of the ordinary line
regiments. There were altogether 147 battalions of Spanish infantry,
excluding the foreign troops, and if all of these had been up to the proper
establishment of 840 men, the total would have amounted to 98,000
bayonets. But the state of disorganization was such that as a matter of fact
there were only 58,000 under arms. The regiments which Napoleon had
requisitioned for service in the North had been more or less brought up to a
war-footing, and each showed on an average 2,000 men in the ranks. But
many of the corps in the interior of Spain displayed the most lamentable
figures: e.g. the three battalions of the regiment of Estremadura had only
770 men between them, Cordova 793, and Navarre 822—showing 250 men
to the battalion instead of the proper 840. Theoretically there should have
been no difficulty in keeping them up to their proper strength, as machinery
for recruiting them had been duly provided. Voluntary enlistment was the
first resource: but when that did not suffice to keep the ranks full, there was
a kind of limited conscription called the Quinta[73] to fall back upon. This
consisted in balloting for men in the regimental district, under certain rules
which allowed an enormous number of exemptions—e.g. all skilled artisans
and all middle-class townsfolk were free from the burden—so that the
agricultural labourers had to supply practically the whole contingent.

Substitutes were allowed, if by any means the conscript could afford to pay
for them. The conscription therefore should have kept the regiments up to
their proper strength, and if many of them had only a third of their
complement under arms, it was merely due to the general demoralization of
the times. Under Godoy’s administration money was always wanting, more
especially since Napoleon had begun to levy his monthly tribute of
6,000,000 francs from the Spanish monarchy, and the gaps in the ranks
probably represented enforced economy as well as corrupt administration.
The 30,000 embodied militia, which formed the remainder of the
Spanish infantry, had been under arms since 1804, doing garrison duty; they
seem in many respects to have been equal to the line battalions in
efficiency. They bore names derived from the towns in whose districts they
had been raised—Badajoz, Lugo, Alcazar, and so forth. Their officering was
also strictly local, all ranks being drawn from the leading families of their
districts, and seems to have been quite as efficient as that of the line.
Moreover their ranks were, on the average, much fuller than those of the
regular regiments—only two battalions in the total of forty-three showed
less than 550 bayonets on parade.
It is when we turn to the cavalry that we come to the weakest part of the
Spanish army. There were twelve regiments of heavy and twelve of light
horse, each with a nominal establishment of 700 sabres, which should have
given 16,800 men for the whole force. There were only about 15,000
officers and troopers embodied, but this was a small defect. A more real
weakness lay in the fact that there were only 9,000 horses for the 15,000
men. It is difficult for even a wealthy government, like our own, to keep its
cavalry properly horsed, and that of Charles IV was naturally unable to
cope with this tiresome military problem. The chargers were not only too
few, but generally of bad quality, especially those of the heavy cavalry: of
those which were to be found in the regimental stables a very large
proportion were not fit for service. When the five regiments which
Napoleon demanded for the expedition to Denmark had been provided with
540 horses each and sent off, the mounts of the rest of the army were in
such a deplorable state that some corps had not the power to horse one-third
of their troopers: e.g. in June, 1808, the Queen’s Regiment, No. 2 of the
heavy cavalry, had 202 horses for 668 men; the 12th Regiment had 259
horses for 667 men; the 1st Chasseurs—more extraordinary still—only 185

horses for 577 men. It resulted from this penury of horses that when
Napoleon made a second demand for Spanish cavalry, asking for a division
of 2,000 sabres to aid Junot in invading Portugal, that force had to be made
up by putting together the mounted men of no less than ten regiments, each
contributing two or at the most three squadrons and leaving the rest of its
men dismounted at the dépôt.
Even if the cavalry had all been properly mounted, they would have
been far too few in proportion to the other arms, only 15,000 out of a total
force of 130,000—one in eight; whereas in the time of the Napoleonic wars
one in six, or even one in five, was considered the proper complement. In
the Waterloo campaign the French had the enormous number of 21,000
cavalry to 83,000 infantry—one to four. What with original paucity, and
with want of remounts, the Spaniards took the field in 1808, when the
insurrection began, with a ridiculously small number of horsemen. At
Medina de Rio Seco they had only 750 horsemen to 22,000 foot-soldiers, at
Baylen only 1,200 to 16,000. Later in the war they succeeded in filling up
the ranks of the old cavalry regiments, and in raising many new ones. But
the gain in number was not in the least accompanied by a gain in efficiency.
For the whole six years of the struggle the mounted arm was the weakest
point of their hosts. Again and again it disgraced itself by allowing itself to
be beaten by half its own numbers, or by absconding early in the fight and
abandoning its infantry. It acquired, and merited, a detestable reputation,
and it is hard to find half a dozen engagements in which it behaved even
reasonably well[74]. When Wellington was made generalissimo of the
Spanish armies in 1813 he would not bring it up to the front at all, and
though he took 40,000 Spaniards over the Pyrenees, there was not a
horseman among them. It is hard to account for the thorough worthlessness
of these squadrons, even when we make allowance for all the difficulties of
the time: Spain was notoriously deficient in decent cavalry officers when
the war began. The horses were inferior to the French, and the equipment
bad. From early disasters the troopers contracted a demoralization which
they could never shake off. But granting all this, it is still impossible to
explain the consistent misbehaviour of these evasive squadrons. The
officers, no doubt, had a harder task in organizing their new levies than
those of the infantry and artillery, but it is curious that they should never
have succeeded in learning their business even after four or five years of
war.

The artillery of the Spanish army, on the other hand, earned on the whole
a good reputation. This was not the result of proper preparation. When the
struggle began it consisted of thirty-four batteries of field artillery, six of
horse, and twenty-one garrison batteries (compañias fijas), with a total of
6,500 men. Forty batteries—that is to say 240 guns or somewhat less, for in
some cases there seem to have been only four instead of six pieces in the
battery—was according to the standard of 1808 a mediocre allowance to an
army of 130,000 men, only about two-thirds of what it should have been[75].
But this was not the worst. Deducting four fully-horsed batteries, which had
been taken off by Napoleon to Denmark, there remained in Spain four horse
and thirty-two field batteries. These were practically unable to move, for
they were almost entirely destitute of horses. For the 216 guns and their
caissons there were only in hand 400 draught animals! When the war began,
the artillery had to requisition, and more or less train, 3,000 horses or mules
before they could move from their barracks! I do not know any fact that
illustrates better the state of Spanish administration under the rule of
Godoy. The raising of the great insurrectionary armies in the summer of
1808 ought to have led to an enormous increase to the artillery arm, but the
trained men were so few that the greatest difficulty was found in organizing
new batteries. Something was done by turning the marine artillery of the
fleet into land troops, and there were a few hundreds of the militia who had
been trained to work guns. But the officers necessary for the training and
officering of new batteries were so scarce, that for many months no fresh
forces of the artillery arm could take the field. In the autumn of 1808, at the
time of the battles of Espinosa and Tudela, if we carefully add up the
number of guns brought into action by the five armies of Galicia,
Estremadura, Aragon, the ‘Centre’ (i.e. Andalusia and Castile), and
Catalonia, we do not find a piece more than the 240 which existed at the
outbreak of the war. That is to say, the Spaniards had raised 100,000 new
levies of infantry, without any corresponding extension of the artillery arm.
During the campaign the conduct of the corps seems on the whole to have
been very good, compared with that of the other arms. This was to be
expected, as they were old soldiers to a much greater extent than either the
infantry or the cavalry. They seem to have attained a fair skill with their
weapons, and to have stuck to them very well. We often hear of gunners cut
down or bayonetted over their pieces, seldom of a general bolt to the rear.
For this very reason the personnel of the batteries suffered terribly: every

defeat meant the capture of some dozens of guns, and the cutting up of the
men who served them. It was as much as the government could do to keep
up a moderate number of batteries, by supplying new guns and
amalgamating the remnants of those which had been at the front. Each
batch of lost battles in 1808-10 entailed the loss and consequent
reconstruction of the artillery. If, in spite of this, we seldom hear complaints
as to its conduct, it must be taken as a high compliment to the arm. But as
long as Spanish generals persisted in fighting pitched battles, and getting
their armies dispersed, a solid proportion of artillery to infantry could never
be established. Its average strength may be guessed from the fact that at
Albuera the best army that Spain then possessed put in line 16,300 men
with only fourteen guns, less than one gun per thousand men—while
Napoleon (as we have already noted) believed that five per thousand was
the ideal, and often managed in actual fact to have three. In the latter years
of the war the pieces were almost always drawn by mules, yoked tandem-
fashion, and not ridden by drivers but goaded by men walking at their side
—the slowest and most unsatisfactory form of traction that can be
imagined. Hence came, in great part, their inability to manœuvre.
Of engineers Spain in 1808 had 169 officers dispersed over the kingdom.
The corps had no proper rank and file. But there was a regiment of sappers,
1,000 strong, which was officered from the engineers. There was no army
service corps, no military train, no organized commissariat of any kind.
When moving about a Spanish army depended either on contractors who
undertook to provide horses and wagons driven by civilians, or more
frequently on the casual sweeping in by requisition of all the mules, oxen,
and carts of the unhappy district in which it was operating. In this respect,
as in so many others, Spain was still in the Middle Ages. The fact that there
was no permanent arrangement for providing for the food of the army is
enough in itself to account for many of its disasters. If, like the British, the
Spaniards had possessed money to pay for what they took, things might
have worked somewhat better. Or if, like the French, they had possessed an
organized military train, and no scruples, they might have contrived to get
along at the cost of utterly ruining the country-side. But as things stood,
depending on incapable civil commissaries and the unwilling contributions
of the local authorities, they were generally on the edge of starvation.
Sometimes they got over the edge, and then the army, in spite of the
proverbial frugality of the Spanish soldier, simply dispersed. It is fair to the

men to say that they generally straggled back to the front sooner or later,
when they had succeeded in filling their stomachs, and got incorporated in
their own or some other regiment. It is said that by the end of the war there
were soldiers who had, in their fashion, served in as many as ten different
corps during the six years of the struggle.
Summing up the faults of the Spanish army, its depleted battalions, its
small and incompetent cavalry force, its insufficient proportion of artillery,
its utter want of commissariat, we find that its main source of weakness was
that while the wars of the French Revolution had induced all the other states
of Europe to overhaul their military organization and learn something from
the methods of the French, Spain was still, so far as its army was concerned,
in the middle of the eighteenth century. The national temperament, with its
eternal relegation of all troublesome reforms to the morrow, was no doubt
largely to blame. But Godoy, the all-powerful favourite who had also been
commander-in-chief for the last seven years, must take the main
responsibility. If he had chosen, he possessed the power to change
everything; and in some ways he had peddled a good deal with details,
changing the uniforms, and increasing the number of battalions in each
regiment. But to make the army efficient he had done very little: the fact
was that the commander-in-chief was quite ignorant of the military needs
and tendencies of the day: all his knowledge of the army was gained while
carpet-soldiering in the ranks of the royal bodyguard. It was natural that the
kind of officers who commended themselves to his haughty and ignorant
mind should be those who were most ready to do him homage, to wink at
his peculations, to condone his jobs, and to refrain from worrying him for
the money needed for reforms and repairs. Promotion was wholly arbitrary,
and was entirely in the favourite’s hands. Those who were prepared to bow
down to him prospered: those who showed any backbone or ventured on
remonstrances were shelved. After a few years of this system it was natural
that all ranks of the army became demoralized, since not merit but the
talents of the courtier and the flatterer were the sure road to prosperity.
Hence it came to pass that when the insurrection began, the level of military
ability, patriotism, and integrity among the higher ranks of the army was
very low. There were a few worthy men like Castaños and La Romana in
offices of trust, but a much greater proportion of Godoy’s protégés. One
cannot condone the shocking way in which, during the first days of the war,
the populace and the rank and file of the army united to murder so many

officers in high place, like Filanghieri, the Captain-General of Galicia, Torre
del Fresno, the Captain-General of Estremadura, and Solano, who
commanded at Cadiz. But the explanation of the atrocities is simple: the
multitude were resenting the results of the long administration of Godoy’s
creatures, and fell upon such of them as refused to throw in their lot
immediately with the insurrection. The murdered men were (rightly or
wrongly) suspected either of an intention to submit to Joseph Bonaparte, or
of a design to hang back, wait on the times, and make their decision only
when it should become obvious which paid better, patriotism or servility.
The people had considerable justification in the fact that a very large
proportion of Godoy’s protégés, especially of those at Madrid, did swear
homage to the intruder in order to keep their places and pensions. They
were the base of the miserable party of Afrancesados which brought so
much disgrace on Spain. The misguided cosmopolitan liberals who joined
them were much the smaller half of the traitor-faction.
Godoy and his clique, therefore, must take the main responsibility for
the state of decay and corruption in which the Spanish army was found in
1808. What more could be expected when for so many years an idle, venal,
dissolute, ostentatious upstart had been permitted to control the
administration of military affairs, and to settle all promotions to rank and
office? ‘Like master like man’ is always a true proverb, and the officers
who begged or bought responsible positions from Godoy naturally followed
their patron’s example in spreading jobs and peculation downwards. The
undrilled and half-clothed soldiery, the unhorsed squadrons, the empty
arsenals, the idle and ignorant subalterns, were all, in the end, the result of
Godoy’s long domination. But we do not wish to absolve from its share of
blame the purblind nation which tolerated him for so long. In another
country he would have gone the way of Gaveston or Mortimer long before.
When this was the state of the Spanish armies, it is no wonder that the
British observer, whether officer or soldier, could never get over his
prejudice against them. It was not merely because a Spanish army was
generally in rags and on the verge of starvation that he despised it. These
were accidents of war which every one had experienced in his own person:
a British battalion was often tattered and hungry. The Spanish government
was notoriously poor, its old regiments had been refilled again and again
with raw conscripts, its new levies had never had a fair start. Hence came

the things which disgusted the average Peninsular diarist of British origin—
the shambling indiscipline, the voluntary dirt, the unmilitary habits of the
Spanish troops. He could not get over his dislike for men who kept their
arms in a filthy, rusty condition, who travelled not in orderly column of
route but like a flock of sheep straggling along a high road, who obeyed
their officers only when they pleased. And for the officers themselves the
English observer had an even greater contempt: continually we come across
observations to the effect that the faults of the rank and file might be
condoned—after all they were only half-trained peasants—but that the
officers were the source and fount of evil from their laziness, their
arrogance, their ignorance, and their refusal to learn from experience. Here
is a typical passage from the Earl of Munster’s Reminiscences:—
‘We should not have been dissatisfied with our allies, malgré their
appearance and their rags, if we had felt any reason to confide in them. The
men might be “capable of all that men dare,” but the appearance of their
officers at once bespoke their not being fit to lead them in the attempt. They
not only did not look like soldiers, but even not like gentlemen, and it was
difficult from their mean and abject appearance, particularly among the
infantry, to guess what class of society they could have been taken from.
Few troops will behave well if those to whom they should look up are
undeserving respect. Besides their general inefficiency we found their moral
feeling different from what we expected. Far from evincing devotion or
even common courage in their country’s cause, they were very often guilty,
individually and collectively, of disgraceful cowardice. We hourly regretted
that the revolution had not occasioned a more complete bouleversement of
society, so as to bring forward fresh and vigorous talent from all classes.
Very few of the regular military showed themselves worthy of command.
Indeed, with the exception of a few self-made soldiers among the Guerillas,
who had risen from among the farmers and peasantry, it would be hard to
point out a Spanish officer whose opinion on the most trivial military
subject was worth being asked. We saw old besotted generals whose armies
were formed on obsolete principles of the ancien régime of a decrepit
government. To this was added blind pride and vanity. No proofs of
inferiority could open their eyes, and they rushed from one error and
misfortune to another, benefiting by no experience, and disdaining to seek
aid and improvement’ [pp. 194-5].

A voice from the ranks, Sergeant Surtees of the Rifle Brigade, gives the
same idea in different words.
‘Most of the Spanish officers appeared to be utterly unfit and unable to
command their men. They had all the pride, arrogance, and self-sufficiency
of the best officers in the world, with the very least of all pretension to have
a high opinion of themselves. It is true they were not all alike, but the
majority were the most haughty, and at the same time the most contemptible
creatures in the shape of officers that ever I beheld’ [p. 109].
As a matter of fact the class of officers in Spain was filled up in three
different ways. One-third of them were, by custom, drawn from the ranks.
In an army raised by conscription from all strata of society excellent
officers can be procured in this way. But in one mainly consisting of the
least admirable part of the surplus population, forced by want or hatred of
work into enlisting, it was hard to get even good sergeants. And the
sergeants made still worse sub-lieutenants, when the colonel was forced to
promote some of them. No wonder that the English observer thought that
there were ‘Spanish officers who did not look like gentlemen.’ This class
were seldom or never allowed to rise above the grade of captain. The
remaining two-thirds of the officers received their commissions from the
war office: in the cavalry they were supposed to show proofs of noble
descent, but this was not required in the infantry. There was a large
sprinkling, however, of men of family, and for them the best places and the
higher ranks were generally reserved—a thing feasible because all
promotion was arbitrary, neither seniority nor merit being necessarily
considered. The rest were drawn from all classes of society: for the last
fifteen years any toady of Godoy could beg or buy as many commissions
for his protégés as he pleased. But a large, and not the worst, part of the
body of officers was composed of the descendants of soldiers of fortune—
Irishmen were most numerous, but there were also French and Italians—
who had always been seen in great numbers in the Spanish army. They held
most of the upper-middle grades in the regiments, for the promoted
sergeants were kept down to the rank of captain, while the nobles got rapid
promotion and soon rose to be colonels and generals. On the whole we
cannot doubt that there was a mass of bad officers in the Spanish army: the
ignorant fellows who had risen from the ranks, the too-rapidly promoted
scions of the noblesse, and the nominees of Godoy’s hangers-on, were none

of them very promising material with which to conduct a war à outrance for
the existence of the realm.
In 1808 there was but one small military college for the training of
infantry and cavalry officers. Five existed in 1790, but Godoy cut them
down to one at Zamora, and only allowed sixty cadets there at a time, so
that five-sixths of the young men who got commissions went straight to
their battalions, there to pick up (if they chose) the rudiments of their
military education. From want of some common teaching the drill and
organization of the regiments were in a condition of chaos. Every colonel
did what he chose in the way of manual exercise and manœuvres. A French
officer says that in 1807 he saw a Spanish brigade at a review, in which,
when the brigadier gave the order ‘Ready, present, fire!’ the different
battalions carried it out in three different times and with wholly distinct
details of execution.
Not only was the Spanish army indifferently officered, but even of such
officers as it possessed there were not enough. In the old line regiments
there should have been seventy to each corps, i.e. 2,450 to the 105
battalions of that arm. But Godoy had allowed the numbers to sink to 1,520.
When the insurrection broke out, the vacant places had to be filled, and
many regiments received at the same moment twenty or thirty subalterns
taken from civil life and completely destitute of military training. Similarly
the militia ought to have had 1,800 officers, and only possessed 1,200 when
the war began. The vacancies were filled, but with raw and often indifferent
material.
Such were the officers with whom the British army had to co-operate.
There is no disguising the fact that from the first the allies could not get on
together. In the earlier years of the war there were some incidents that
happened while the troops of the two nations lay together, which our
countrymen could never forgive or forget. We need only mention the
midnight panic in Cuesta’s army on the eve of Talavera, when 10,000 men
ran away without having had a shot fired at them, and the cowardly
behaviour of La Peña in 1811, when he refused to aid Graham at the bloody
little battle of Barossa.
The strictures of Wellington, Napier, and the rest were undoubtedly well
deserved; and yet it is easy to be too hard on the Spaniards. It chanced that

our countrymen did not get a fair opportunity of observing their allies under
favourable conditions; of the old regular army that fought at Baylen or
Zornoza they never got a glimpse. It had been practically destroyed before
we came upon the field. La Romana’s starving hordes, and Cuesta’s evasive
and demoralized battalions were the samples from which the whole Spanish
army was judged. In the Talavera campaign, the first in which English and
Spanish troops stood side by side, there can be no doubt that the latter (with
few exceptions) behaved in their very worst style. They often did much
better; but few Englishmen had the chance of watching a defence like that
of Saragossa or Gerona. Very few observers from our side saw anything of
the heroically obstinate resistance of the Catalonian miqueletes and
somatenes. Chance threw in our way Cuesta and La Peña and Imaz as types
of Peninsular generals, and from them the rest were judged. No one
supposes that the Spaniards as a nation are destitute of all military qualities.
They made good soldiers enough in the past, and may do so in the future:
but when, after centuries of intellectual and political torpor, they were
called upon to fight for their national existence, they were just emerging
from subjection to one of the most worthless adventurers and one of the
most idiotic kings whom history has known. Charles IV and Godoy account
for an extraordinary amount of the decrepitude of the monarchy and the
demoralization of its army.
It is more just to admire the constancy with which a nation so
handicapped persisted in the hopeless struggle, than to condemn it for the
incapacity of its generals, the ignorance of its officers, the unsteadiness of
its raw levies. If Spain had been a first-rate military power, there would
have been comparatively little merit in the six years’ struggle which she
waged against Bonaparte. When we consider her weakness and her
disorganization, we find ourselves more inclined to wonder at her
persistence than to sneer at her mishaps.

SECTION II: CHAPTER III
THE FRENCH ARMY IN SPAIN

§ 1. The Army of 1808: its Character and Organization.
In dealing with the history of the imperial armies in the Peninsula, it is
our first duty to point out the enormous difference between the troops who
entered Spain in 1807 and 1808, under Dupont, Moncey, and Murat, and the
later arrivals who came under Bonaparte’s personal guidance when the first
disastrous stage of the war was over.
Nothing can show more clearly the contempt which the Emperor
entertained, not only for the Spanish government but for the Spanish nation,
than the character of the hosts which he first sent forth to occupy the
Peninsula. After Tilsit he was the master of half a million of the best troops
in the world; but he did not consider the subjugation of Spain and Portugal
a sufficiently formidable task to make it necessary to move southward any
appreciable fraction of the Grand Army. The victors of Jena and Friedland
were left in their cantonments on the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Oder, while a
new force, mainly composed of elements of inferior fighting value, was sent
across the Pyrenees.
This second host was at Napoleon’s disposition mainly owing to the fact
that during the late war he had been anticipating the conscription. In the
winter of 1806-7 he had called out, a year too soon, the men who were due
to serve in 1808. In the late autumn of 1807, while his designs in Spain
were already in progress, he had summoned forth the conscription of 1809.
He had thus under arms two years’ contingents of recruits raised before
their proper time. The dépôts were gorged, and, even after the corps which
had been depleted in Prussia and Poland had been made up to full strength,
there was an enormous surplus of men in hand.

To utilize this mass of conscripts the Emperor found several ways. Of
the men raised in the winter of 1806-7 some thousands had been thrown
into temporary organizations, called ‘legions of reserve,’ and used to do
garrison duty on the Atlantic coast, in order to guard against possible
English descents. There were five of these ‘legions’ and two
‘supplementary legions’ in the army sent into Spain: they showed a strength
of 16,000 men. None of them had been more than a year under arms, but
they were at any rate organized units complete in themselves. They formed
the greater part of the infantry in the corps of Dupont.
A shade worse in composition were twenty ‘provisional regiments’
which the Emperor put together for Spain. Each regimental dépôt in the
south of France was told to form four companies from its superabundant
mass of conscripts. These bodies, of about 560 men each, were united in
fours, and each group was called a ‘provisional regiment.’ The men of each
battalion knew nothing of those of the others, since they were all drawn
from separate regiments: there was not a single veteran soldier in the ranks:
the officers were almost all either half-pay men called back to service, or
young sub-lieutenants who had just received their commissions. These
bodies, equally destitute of esprit de corps and of instruction, made up
nearly 30,000 men of the army of Spain. They constituted nearly the whole
of the divisions under Bessières and Moncey, which lay in Northern Spain
at the moment of the outbreak of the war.
But there were military units even less trustworthy than the ‘provisional
regiments’ which Napoleon transferred to Spain in the spring of 1808.
These were the five or six régiments de marche, which were to be found in
some of the brigades which crossed the Pyrenees when the state of affairs
was already growing dangerous. They were formed of companies, or even
smaller bodies, hastily drawn together from such southern dépôts, as were
found to be still in possession of superfluous conscripts even after
contributing to the ‘provisional regiments.’ They were to be absorbed into
the old corps when the pressing need for instant reinforcements for the
Peninsula should come to an end. In addition to all these temporary units,
Bonaparte was at the same moment making a vast addition to his permanent
regular army. Down to the war of 1806-7 the French regiments of infantry
had consisted of three battalions for the field and a fourth at the dépôt,
which kept drafting its men to the front in order to fill up the gaps in the

other three. Napoleon had now resolved to raise the establishment to five
battalions per regiment, four for field service, while the newly created fifth
became the dépôt battalion. When the Peninsular War broke out, a good
many regiments had already completed their fourth field-battalion, and
several of these new corps are to be found in the rolls of the armies which
had entered Spain. The multiplication of battalions had been accompanied
by a reduction of their individual strength: down to February, 1808, there
were nine companies to each unit, and Junot’s corps had battalions of a
strength of 1,100 or 1,200 bayonets. But those which came later were six-
company battalions, with a strength of 840 bayonets when at their full
establishment.
All the troops of which we have hitherto spoken were native Frenchmen.
But they did not compose by any means the whole of the infantry which the
Emperor dispatched into Spain between October, 1807, and May, 1808.
According to his usual custom he employed great numbers of auxiliaries
from his vassal kingdoms: we note intercalated among the French units
seven battalions of Swiss, four of Italians, two each of Neapolitans and
Portuguese[76], and one each of Prussians, Westphalians, Hanoverians, and
Irish. Altogether there were no less than 14,000 men of foreign infantry
dispersed among the troops of Junot, Dupont, Bessières, Moncey, and
Duhesme. They were not massed, but scattered broadcast in single
battalions, save the Italians and Neapolitans, who formed a complete
division under Lecchi in the army of Catalonia.
The cavalry of the army of Spain was quite as heterogeneous and ill
compacted as the infantry. Just as ‘provisional regiments’ of foot were
patched up from the southern dépôts of France, so were ‘provisional
regiments’ of cavalry. The best of them were composed of two, three, or
four squadrons, each contributed by the dépôt of a different cavalry
regiment. The worst were escadrons de marche, drawn together in a
haphazard fashion from such of the dépôts as had a surplus of conscripts
even after they had given a full squadron to the ‘provisional regiments.’
There were also a number of foreign cavalry regiments, Italians,
Neapolitans, lancers of Berg, and Poles. Of veteran regiments of French
cavalry there were actually no more than three, about 1,250 men, among the
12,000 horsemen of the army of Spain.

When we sum up the composition of the 116,000 men who lay south of
the Pyrenees on the last day of May, 1808, we find that not a third part of
them belonged to the old units of the regular French army. It may be worth
while to give the figures:—
Of veterans we have—
Infantry. Cavalry.
(1) A detachment of the Imperial Guard, which was
intended to serve as the Emperor’s special escort during his
irruption into Spain 3,600 1,750
(2) Twenty-six battalions of infantry of the line and
light infantry, being all first, second, or third battalions,
and not newly raised fourth battalions 25,800
(3) Three old regiments of cavalry of the line 1,250
(4) Three newly raised fourth battalions of infantry
regiments of the line 1,800
This gives a total of regularly organized French troops
of the standing army of 31,200 3,000
(5) Five legions of reserve, and two ‘supplementary
legions of reserve’ 16,000
(6) Fifteen ‘provisional regiments’ from the dépôts of
Southern France [the remaining five had not crossed the
frontier on May 31] 31,000
(7) Six régiments de marche of conscripts 3,200
(8) Eighteen battalions of Italian, Swiss, German, and
other auxiliaries 14,000
(9) Sixteen ‘provisional regiments’ of cavalry, and a
few detached ‘provisional squadrons,’ and escadrons de
marche 9,500
(10) Three regiments of foreign cavalry 1,000
This makes a total of troops in temporary organization,
or of foreign origin, of 64,200 10,500

Napoleon, then, intended to conquer Spain with a force of about 110,000
men, of which no more than 34,000 sabres and bayonets belonged to his
regular army; the rest were conscripts or foreign auxiliaries. But we must
also note that the small body of veteran troops was not distributed equally

in each of the corps, so as to stiffen the preponderating mass of conscripts.
If we put aside the division of Imperial Guards, we find that of the
remaining 25,000 infantry of old organization no less than 17,500 belonged
to Junot’s army of Portugal, which was the only one of the corps that had a
solid organization. Junot had indeed a very fine force, seventeen old line
battalions to two battalions of conscripts and three of foreigners. The rest of
the veteran troops were mainly with Duhesme in Catalonia, who had a good
division of 5,000 veterans. In the three corps of Dupont, Moncey, and
Bessières on the other hand old troops were conspicuous by their absence:
among the 19,000 infantry of Dupont’s corps, on which (as it chanced) the
first stress of the Spanish war was destined to fall, there was actually only
two battalions (1,700 men) of old troops. In Moncey’s there was not a
single veteran unit; in Bessières’, only four battalions. This simple fact goes
far to explain why Dupont’s expedition to Andalusia led to the capitulation
of Baylen, and why Moncey’s march on Valencia ended in an ignominious
retreat. Countries cannot be conquered with hordes of undrilled conscripts
—not even countries in an advanced stage of political decomposition, such
as the Spain of 1808.

§ 2. The Army of 1808-14: its Character and Organization.
Baylen, as we shall see, taught Napoleon his lesson, and the second
army which he brought into the Peninsula in the autumn of 1808, to repair
his initial disasters, was very differently constituted from the heterogeneous
masses which he had at first judged to be sufficient for his task. It was
composed of his finest old regiments from the Rhine and Elbe, the flower of
the victors of Jena and Friedland. Even when the despot had half a million
good troops at his disposition, he could not be in force everywhere, and the
transference of 200,000 veterans to Spain left him almost too weak in
Central Europe. In the Essling-Wagram campaign of 1809 he found that he
was barely strong enough to conquer the Austrians, precisely because he
had left so many men behind him in the Peninsula. In the Russian campaign
of 1812, vast as were the forces that he displayed, they were yet not over
numerous for the enterprise, because such an immense proportion of them
was composed of unwilling allies and disaffected subjects. If the masses of
Austrians, Prussians, Neapolitans, Portuguese, Westphalians, Bavarians,
and so forth had been replaced by half their actual number of old French

troops from Spain, the army would have been far more powerful. Still more
was this the case in 1813: if the whole of the Peninsular army had been
available for service on the Elbe and Oder at the time of Lützen and
Bautzen, the effect on the general history of Europe might have been
incalculable. Truly, therefore, did the Emperor call the Spanish War ‘the
running sore’ which had sapped his strength ever since its commencement.
A word as to the tactical organization of the French army in 1808 is
required. The infantry regiments of normal formation consisted, as we have
seen, of four field battalions and one dépôt battalion; the last named never,
of course, appeared at the front. Each field battalion was composed of six
companies of 140 men: its two flank companies, the grenadiers and
voltigeurs, were formed of the pick of the corps[77]: into the grenadiers only
tall, into the voltigeurs only short men were drafted. Thus a battalion should
normally have shown 840 and a regiment 3,360 men in the field. But it was
by no means the universal rule to find the whole four battalions of a
regiment serving together. In the modern armies of France, Germany, or
Russia, a regiment in time of peace lives concentrated in its recruiting
district, and can take the field in a compact body. This was not the case in
Napoleon’s ever-wandering hosts: the chances of war were always isolating
single battalions, which, once dropped in a garrison or sent on an
expedition, did not easily rejoin their fellows. Many, too, of the new fourth
battalions raised in 1807 had never gone forward to Germany to seek the
main body of their regiments. Of the corps which were brought down to
Spain in the late autumn of 1808 there were more with three battalions than
with four concentrated under the regimental eagle. Some had only two
present, a few no more than one[78]. But the Emperor disliked to have single
isolated battalions, and preferred to work them in pairs, if he could not get
three or four together. The object of this was that, if one or two battalions
got much weakened in a campaign, the men could be fused into a single
unit, and the supernumerary officers and sergeants sent back to the dépôt,
where they would form a new battalion out of the stock of conscripts. But
the fresh organization might very likely be hurried, by some sudden chance
of war, to Flushing, or Italy, or the Danube, while the eagle and the main
body remained in Spain—or vice versa.
There was therefore, in consequence of the varying strength of the
regiments, no regularity or system in the brigading of the French troops in

Spain: in one brigade there might be five or six isolated battalions, each
belonging to a separate regiment; in another three from one regiment and
two from a second; in a third four from one regiment and one from another.
Nor was there any fixed number of battalions in a brigade: it might vary
from three (a very unusual minimum) up to nine—an equally rare
maximum. Six was perhaps the most frequent number. A division was
composed of two, or less frequently of three, brigades, and might have any
number from ten up to sixteen or eighteen battalions—i.e. it varied,
allowing for casual losses, from 6,000 to 10,000 men. This irregularity was
part of Napoleon’s system: he laid it down as an axiom that all military
units, from a brigade to an army corps, ought to differ in strength among
themselves: otherwise the enemy, if he had once discovered how many
brigades or divisions were in front of him, could calculate with accuracy the
number of troops with which he had to do.
Much confusion is caused, when we deal with Napoleon’s army, by the
strange system of numeration which he adopted. The infantry, whether
called ‘line regiments’ or ‘light infantry regiments,’ were drilled and
organized in the same way. But the Emperor had some odd vagaries: he
often refused to raise again a regiment which had been exterminated, or
taken prisoners en masse. Hence after a few years of his reign there were
some vacant numbers in the list of infantry corps. The regiments, for
example, which were garrisoning the colonies at the time of the rupture of
the Peace of Amiens, fell one after another into the hands of the English as
the war went on. They were never replaced, and left gaps in the army list.
On the other hand the Emperor sometimes raised regiments with duplicate
numbers, a most tiresome thing for the military historian of the next age. It
is impossible to fathom his purpose, unless he was set on confusing his
enemies by showing more battalions than the list of existing corps seemed
to make possible. Or perhaps he was thinking of the old legions of the
Roman Empire, of which there were always several in existence bearing the
same number, but distinguished by their honorary titles. Those who wish to
read the story of one of these duplicate regiments may follow in the history
of Nodier the tale of the raising and extermination of Colonel Oudet’s
celebrated ‘9th Bis’ of the line[79].
There is another difficulty caused by a second freak of the Emperor: all
regiments ought, as we have said, to have shown four field battalions. But

Bonaparte sometimes added one or even two more, to corps which stood
high in his favour, or whose dépôts produced on some occasions a very
large surplus of conscripts. Thus we find now and then, in the morning state
of a French army corps, a fifth or even a sixth[80] battalion of some regiment.
But as a rule these units had not a very long existence: their usual fate was
to be sent home, when their numbers ran low from the wear and tear of war,
in order to be incorporated in the normal cadres of their corps. On the
authority of that good soldier and admirable historian, Foy, we are able to
state that on the first of June, 1808, Napoleon had 417 field battalions, over
and above the dépôts, on his army rolls. If the 113 regiments of the line, and
the thirty-two light infantry regiments had all been in existence and
complete, there should have been 580 field battalions. Clearly then some
corps had disappeared and many others had not more than three battalions
ready. But the units were always being created, amalgamated, or dissolved,
from week to week, so that it is almost impossible to state the exact force of
the whole French army at any given moment. The most important change
that was made during the year 1808 was the conversion of those of the
provisional regiments which escaped Dupont’s disaster into new permanent
corps. By combining them in pairs the 114th-120th of the line and the 33rd
léger were created[81]. In the succeeding five years more and more corps
were raised: the annexation of Holland and Northern Germany in 1810-11
ultimately enabled the Emperor to carry the total of his line regiments up to
156 [1813], and of his light infantry regiments up to thirty-six[82].
Of the French cavalry we need not speak at such length. When the
Spanish war broke out, Bonaparte was possessed of about eighty regiments
of horsemen, each taking the field with four squadrons of some 150 to 200
men. There were twelve regiments of cuirassiers, two of carabineers, thirty
of dragoons, twenty-six of chasseurs à cheval, ten of hussars, i.e. fourteen
regiments of heavy, thirty of medium, and thirty-six of light horse. The
cuirassiers were hardly ever seen in Spain—not more than two or three
regiments ever served south of the Pyrenees[83]. On the other hand the
greater part of the dragoons were employed in the Peninsula—there were in
1809 twenty-five of the thirty regiments of them in the field against the
English and Spaniards. More than half of the hussars also served in Spain.
To the veteran corps of regulars there were added, at the outset of the war,
as will be remembered, a great number of ‘provisional regiments,’ but these
gradually disappeared, by being incorporated in the older cadres, or in a

few cases by being formed into new permanent units. There was also a mass
of Polish, German, and Italian cavalry; but these auxiliaries did not bear
such a high proportion to the native French as did the foreign part of the
infantry arm. By far the most distinguished of these corps were the Polish
lancers, whom the English came to know only too well at Albuera. The
Italians were almost exclusively employed on the east coast of Spain, in the
army of Catalonia. The Germans—mostly from Westphalia, Berg, and
Nassau—were scattered about in single regiments among the cavalry corps
of the various armies. They were always mixed with the French horse, and
never appeared in brigades (much less in divisions) of their own.
The average strength of a French cavalry regiment during the years
1809-14 was four squadrons of about 150 men each. It was very seldom
that a corps showed over 600 men in the ranks: not unfrequently it sank to
450[84]. When it grew still further attenuated, it was usual to send back the
cadres of one or two squadrons, and to complete to full numbers the two or
three which kept the field. These figures do not hold good for the raw
‘provisional regiments’ which Bonaparte used during the first year of the
war: they sometimes rose to 700 or even 800 strong, when the dépôts from
which they had been drawn chanced to be exceptionally full of recruits[85].
But such large corps are not to be found in the later years of the war. By
1812, when Napoleon, busied in Central Europe, ceased to reinforce his
Spanish armies, the average of a cavalry regiment had shrunk to 500 men.
In 1813 it was seldom that 400 effective sabres could be mustered by any
mounted corps.
As to the scientific arms of the French service, the artillery and
engineers, there is no doubt that throughout the war they deserved very well
of their master. Artillery cannot be improvised in the manner that is possible
with infantry, and the batteries which accompanied Dupont’s and Moncey’s
conscripts into Spain in 1808 were veterans. Without them the raw infantry
would have fared even worse than it did, during the first year of the
struggle. The proportion of guns which the French employed during the
wars of the Empire was generally very large in comparison with the size of
their armies—one of the many results of the fact that Bonaparte had
originally been an artillery officer. He raised, as was remarked, the number
of gunners in the French service to a figure as large as that of the whole
regular army of Louis XVI at the moment when the Revolution broke out.

But in Spain the difficulties of transport and the badness of the roads seem
to have combined to keep down the proportion of guns to something very
much less than was customary in the more favourable terrain of Italy or
Germany. A large part, too, of the pieces were of very light metal—four-
and even three-pounders, which were found easier to transport across the
mountains than six- or eight-pounders, though much less effective in the
field. In many of the campaigns, therefore, of the Peninsular War the French
artillery stood in a proportion to the total number of men present, which
was so low that it barely exceeded that customary among the British, who
were notoriously more ‘under-gunned’ than any other European army save
that of Spain. Junot at Vimiero had twenty-three guns to 13,500 men: Victor
at Talavera had eighty guns to about 50,000 men: Masséna in 1810 invaded
Portugal with some 70,000 men and 126 guns; at Fuentes d’Oñoro he only
showed forty-two guns to 40,000 bayonets and sabres[86]. Soult at Albuera
had (apparently) forty guns to 24,000 men: in the autumn campaign of 1813
the same marshal had 125 guns to 107,000 men. It will be noted that the
proportion never rises to two guns per thousand men, and occasionally does
not much exceed one gun per thousand[87]. This contrasts remarkably with
the 350 guns to 120,000 men which Bonaparte took out for the campaign of
Waterloo, or even with the 1,372 guns to 600,000 men of the Russian
expedition and 1,056 guns to 450,000 men of the ill-compacted army of
1813.

SECTION II: CHAPTER IV
THE TACTICS OF THE FRENCH AND THEIR
ADVERSARIES DURING THE PENINSULAR
WAR

An account of the numbers and the organization of an army is of
comparatively little interest, unless we understand the principles on which
its leaders are accustomed to handle it on the day of battle, and its value as a
fighting machine.
Speaking generally, the tactics of the French infantry during the
Peninsular War were those which had been developed fifteen years before,
during the first struggles of the Revolution. They nearly always attacked
with a thick cloud of tirailleurs covering one or two lines of battalions in
column. The idea was that the very numerous and powerful skirmishing line
would engage the enemy sufficiently to attract all his attention, so that the
massed battalions behind arrived at the front of battle almost without
sustaining loss. The momentum of the columns ought then to suffice to
carry them right through the enemy’s lines, which would already have
suffered appreciably from the fire of the tirailleurs. This form of attack had
won countless victories over Prussian, Austrian, and Russian; and many
cases had been known where a hostile position had been carried by the mere
impetus of the French columns, without a shot having been fired save by
their skirmishers. But this method, which Wellington called ‘the old French
style,’ never succeeded against the English. It had the fatal defect that when
the column came up through the tirailleurs and endeavoured to charge, it
presented a small front, and only the first two ranks could fire. For the
normal French battalion advanced in column of companies, or less
frequently of double companies, i.e. with a front of forty or at most of
eighty men, and a depth of nine or of eighteen, since the company was
always three deep, and there were six companies to a battalion. The rear

ranks only served to give the front ranks moral support, and to impress the
enemy with a sense of the solidity and inexorable strength of the
approaching mass. Sometimes a whole regiment or brigade formed one
dense column. Now if the enemy, as was always the case with the British,
refused to be impressed, but stood firm in line, held their ground, and
blazed into the head of the mass, the attack was certain to fail. For 800 men
in the two-deep line, which Wellington loved, could all use their muskets,
and thus poured 800 bullets per volley into a French battalion of the same
strength, which only could return 160. The nine-deep, or eighteen-deep,
column was a target which it was impossible to miss. Hence the front ranks
went down in rows and the whole came to a standstill. If, as was often the
case, the French battalion tried to deploy in front of the English line, so as
to bring more muskets to bear, it seldom or never succeeded in
accomplishing the manœuvre, for each company, as it straggled out from
the mass, got shot down so quickly that the formation could never be
completed. No wonder that Foy in his private journal felt himself
constrained to confess that, for a set battle with equal numbers on a limited
front, the English infantry was superior. ‘I keep this opinion to myself,’ he
adds, ‘and have never divulged it; for it is necessary that the soldier in the
ranks should not only hate the enemy, but also despise him[88].’ Foy kept his
opinion so closely to himself that he did not put it in his formal history of
the Peninsular War: it has only become public property since his journals
were published in 1900.
But the fact that with anything like equal numbers the line must beat the
column was demonstrated over and over again during the war. It had first
been seen at Maida in 1806, but that obscure Calabrian battle was hardly
known, even by name, save to those who had been present. It was at
Talavera, and still more at Busaco and Albuera, that it became patent to
everybody that the attack in battalion column, even if preceded by a
vigorous swarm of skirmishers, could never succeed against the English. At
the two former fights the French attacked uphill, and laid the blame of their
defeat upon the unfavourable ground. But when at Albuera three English
brigades drove double their own numbers from the commanding ridge on
which Soult had ranged them, simply by the superiority of their musketry
fire, there was no longer any possibility of disguising the moral. Yet to the
end of the war, down to Waterloo itself, the French stuck to their old
formation: at the great battle in 1815, as Wellington tersely said, ‘The

French came on once more in the old style, and we beat them in the old
style.’
But when Napoleon’s armies were opposed to troops who could not
stand firm to meet them in a line formation, they generally succeeded. The
Spaniards, in their earlier battles, often tried to resist in a line of deployed
battalions, but their morale was not good enough when the attacking
column drew close to them, and they generally gave way at the critical
moment and let their assailants break through[89]. The same had often been
the case with the Austrians and Prussians, who in their earlier wars with
Napoleon used the line formation which Frederick the Great had
popularized fifty years before. The great king had accustomed his troops to
fight in a three- or four-deep line, with a comparatively small provision of
skirmishers to cover their front, for it was by the fire of the whole battalion
that his troops were intended to win. The masses of tirailleurs which the
French sent forward in front of their columns generally succeeded in
engaging the Prussian or Austrian line so closely, that the columns behind
them came up without much loss, and then broke the line by their mere
momentum and moral effect. Hence in their later wars the German powers
copied their enemies, and took to using a very thick skirmishing line backed
by battalion columns in the French style.
Wellington never found any reason to do so. His method was to conceal
his main line as long as possible by a dip in the ground, a hedge, or a wall,
or to keep it behind the crest of the position which it was holding. To face
the tirailleurs each battalion sent out its light company, and each brigade
had assigned to it several detached companies of riflemen: from 1809
onward some of the 60th Rifles and one or two foreign light corps[90] were
broken up and distributed round the various divisions for this special
purpose. This gave a line of skirmishers strong enough to hold back the
tirailleurs for a long time, probably till the supporting columns came up to
help them. It was only then that the British skirmishing line gave way and
retired behind its main body, leaving the deployed battalions in face of the
French column, of which they never failed to give a satisfactory account.
The covering screen of light troops often suffered terribly; e.g., at Barossa,
Brown’s ‘light battalion’ lost fourteen out of twenty-one officers and more
than half its rank and file[91], while holding off the French advance from the
line which was forming in its rear. But the combat always went well if the

enemy’s skirmishers could be kept back, and his supporting columns forced
to come to the front, to engage with the regiments in two-deep formation
which were waiting for them.
Charges with the bayonet are often heard of in narratives—especially
French narratives—of the Peninsular War. But it was very seldom that the
opposing troops actually came into collision with the white weapon. There
were occasions, almost invariably in fighting in villages or enclosed
ground, on which considerable numbers of men were killed or wounded
with the bayonet, but they were but few. It is certain, however, that the 43rd
at Vimiero, the 71st and 88th at Fuentes d’Oñoro, and the 20th at
Roncesvalles, engaged in this fashion[92]; and other cases could be quoted.
But as a rule a ‘bayonet charge’ in a French historian merely means the
advance of a column up to the enemy’s position without firing: it does not
imply actual contact or the crossing of weapons. An English charge on the
other hand was practically an advance in line with frequent volleys, or
independent file-firing. At Albuera, or Barossa, or Salamanca it was the ball
not the bayonet which did the work; the enemy was shot down, or gave way
without any hand-to-hand conflict.
French cavalry tactics had by 1808 developed into as definite a system
as those of the infantry. Napoleon was fond of massing his horsemen in
very large bodies and launching them at the flank, or even at the centre, of
the army opposed to him. He would occasionally use as many as 6,000 or
8,000, or (as at Waterloo) even 12,000 men for one of these great strokes.
Two or three of his famous battles were won by tremendous cavalry charges
—notably Marengo and Dresden, while Eylau was just saved from falling
into a disaster by a blow of the same kind. But cavalry must be used at
precisely the right moment, must be skilfully led and pushed home without
remorse, and even then it may be beaten off by thoroughly cool and
unshaken troops. It is only against tired, distracted, or undisciplined
battalions that it can count on a reasonable certainty of success. All through
the war the Spanish armies supplied the French horsemen with exactly the
opportunities that they required: they were always being surprised, or
caught in confusion while executing some complicated manœuvre; and as if
this was not enough, they were often weak enough in morale to allow
themselves to be broken even when they had been allowed time to take their
ground and form their squares. The battles of Gamonal (1808), Medellin,

Alba de Tormes, and Ocaña (1809), the Gebora, and Saguntum (1811) were
good examples of the power of masses of horse skilfully handled over a
numerous but ill-disciplined infantry.
On the other hand, against the English the French cavalry hardly ever
accomplished anything worthy of note. It is only possible to name two
occasions on which they made their mark: the first was at Albuera, where,
profiting by an opportune cloud-burst which darkened the face of day, two
regiments of lancers came in upon the flank of a British brigade (Colborne’s
of the second division), and almost entirely cut it to pieces. The second
incident of the kind was at Fuentes d’Oñoro, in the same summer, when
Montbrun’s cavalry charged with some effect on Houston’s division and
hustled it back for some two miles, though they never succeeded in
breaking its squares.
On the other hand the cases where the French horsemen found
themselves utterly unable to deal with the British infantry were very
numerous—we need only mention Cacabellos (during Moore’s retreat), El
Bodon, Salamanca, and several skirmishes during the retreat from Burgos in
1812. After such experiences it was no wonder that Foy, and other old
officers of the army of Spain, looked with dismay upon Napoleon’s great
attempt at Waterloo to break down the long line of British squares between
La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont, by the charges of ten or twelve thousand
heavy cavalry massed on a short front of less than a mile[93]. The Emperor
had never seen the British infantry fight, and was entirely ignorant of their
resisting power.
Of fights between cavalry and cavalry, where the two sides were present
in such equal numbers as to make the struggle a fair test of their relative
efficiency, there were but few in the Peninsular War. In the early years of
the struggle Wellington was very scantily provided with horsemen, and
never could afford to engage in a cavalry battle on a large scale. Later on,
when he was more happily situated in this respect, he showed such a
marked reluctance to risk great cavalry combats that the old saying that he
was ‘pre-eminently an infantry general’ seems justified. That he could use
his horsemen vigorously enough, when he saw his opportunity, he showed
at Assaye, long before he had made his name known in Europe. Yet the only
one of his great battles in Spain where his dragoons took a prominent part
in the victory was Salamanca, where Le Marchant’s brigade struck such a

smashing blow on the flank of the French army. We have his own
authority[94] for the fact that he hesitated to mass great bodies of horse,
because he doubted the tactical skill of his officers, and the power of the
regiments to manœuvre. ‘I considered our cavalry,’ he wrote ten years after
the war was over, ‘so inferior to the French from want of order, that
although I considered one squadron a match for two French, I did not like to
see four British opposed to four French: and as the numbers increased and
order, of course, became more necessary, I was the more unwilling to risk
our men without having a superiority in numbers. They could gallop, but
could not preserve their order.’
Foy, in his excellent history of the Spanish War, emits an opinion in
words curiously similar to those of Wellington, stating that for practical
purposes the English troopers were inferior to the French on account of
their headlong impetuosity and want of power to manœuvre[95]. When two
such authorities agree, there must clearly have been some solid foundation
for their verdict. Yet it is hard to quote many combats in their support: there
were cases, no doubt, where English regiments threw their chances away by
their blind fury in charging, as did the 23rd Light Dragoons at Talavera, the
13th Light Dragoons near Campo Mayor on March 25, 1811, and Slade’s
brigade at Maguilla on June 11, 1812. Yet with the memory before us of
Paget’s admirable operations at Sahagun and Benavente in December, 1808,
of Lumley’s skilful containing of Latour Maubourg’s superior numbers at
Albuera, and his brilliant success at Usagre over that same general in 1811,
as well as Cotton’s considerable cavalry fight at Villa Garcia in 1812, it
seems strange to find Wellington disparaging his own troopers. No doubt
we must concede that the British horsemen did not show that marked
superiority over their rivals of the same arm which Wellington’s infantry
always asserted. But fairly balancing their faults and their merits, it would
seem that there was something wanting in their general no less than in
themselves. A lover of the cavalry arm would have got more profit out of
the British horse than Wellington ever obtained. It is noticeable that not one
of the successful fights cited above took place under the eye or the direction
of the Duke.
As to the Spanish cavalry, it was (as we have already had occasion to
remark) the weakest point in the national army. In the first actions of the
war it appeared on the field in such small numbers that it had no chance

against the French. But later on, when the juntas succeeded in raising large
masses of horsemen, their scandalous conduct on a score of fields was the
despair of Spanish generals. We need only mention Medellin and Ocaña as
examples of their misbehaviour. No French cavalry-general ever hesitated
to engage with double of his own number of Spanish horse. When
vigorously charged they never failed to give way, and when once on the
move it was impossible to rally them. It was often found on the night of a
battle that the mass of the cavalry was in flight twenty miles ahead of the
infantry, which it had basely deserted.
Napoleon, as every student of the art of war knows, had started his
career as an officer of artillery, and never forgot the fact. He himself has left
on record the statement that of all his tactical secrets the concentration of an
overwhelming artillery fire on a given point was the most important. ‘When
once the combat has grown hot,’ he wrote, ‘the general who has the skill to
unite an imposing mass of artillery, suddenly and without his adversary’s
knowledge, in front of some point of the hostile position, may be sure of
success.’ His leading idea was to secure an overwhelming artillery
preparation for his infantry attacks: for this reason his typical battle began
with the massing of a great number of guns on the points of the enemy’s
line which he intended ultimately to break down. In this respect he
abandoned entirely the vicious tactics that prevailed in the earlier years of
the revolutionary war, when the cannon, instead of being concentrated, were
distributed about in twos and threes among the infantry battalions. We shall
find that his method had been perfectly assimilated by his subordinates:
when the ground allowed of it, they were much given to collecting many
guns at some salient point of the line, and bringing a concentrated fire to
bear on the weak spot in the enemy’s position. At Ocaña a battery of this
kind had a great share in the credit of the victory; at Albuera it saved Soult’s
routed troops from complete destruction. The names of artillery generals
like Senarmont and Ruty need honourable mention for such achievements.
If the French artillery had less effect against the English than against most
of Napoleon’s foes, it was because of Wellington’s admirable custom of
hiding his troops till the actual moment of battle. Austrian, Russian, or
Prussian generals occupied a hillside by long lines drawn up on the hither
slope, of which every man could be counted. Hence they could be
thoroughly searched out and battered by the French guns, long before the
infantry was let loose. Wellington, on the other hand, loved to show a

position apparently but half-defended, with his reserves, or even his main
line, carefully hidden behind the crest, or covered by walls and hedges, or
concealed in hollows and ravines. Hence the French artillery-preparation
was much embarrassed: there were no masses to fire at, and it was
impossible to tell how any part of the line was held. By the end of the war
the French marshals grew very chary of attacking any position where
Wellington showed fight, for they never could tell whether they were
opposed by a mere rearguard, or by a whole army skilfully concealed.
The English armies, unlike the French, always took with them a
comparatively small proportion of artillery, seldom so much as two guns to
the thousand men, as Foy remarks. But what there was was excellent, from
its high discipline and the accuracy of its fire. The Duke preferred to work
with small and movable units, placed in well-chosen spots, and kept dark
till the critical moment, rather than with the enormous lines of guns that
Bonaparte believed in. His horse artillery was often pushed to the front in
the most daring way, in reliance on its admirable power of manœuvring and
its complete steadiness. At Fuentes d’Oñoro, for example, it was made to
cover the retreat of the right wing before the masses of French cavalry, in a
way that would have seemed impossible to any one who was not personally
acquainted with Norman Ramsay and his gunners. Hence came the
astounding fact that during the whole war the Duke never in the open field
lost an English gun. Several times cannon were taken and retaken; once or
twice guns not belonging to the horse or field batteries were left behind in a
retreat, when transport failed. But in the whole six years of his command
Wellington lost no guns in battle. Foy gives an unmistakable testimony to
the English artillery in his history, by remarking that in its material it was
undoubtedly superior to the French[96]: the same fact may be verified from
the evidence of our own officers, several of whom have left their opinion on
record, that after having inspected captured French cannon, limbers, and
caissons they much preferred their own.
This statement, it must be remembered, only applies to the field and
horse artillery. The English siege artillery, all through the war, was notably
inferior to the French. Wellington never possessed a satisfactory battering
train, and the awful cost at which his sieges were turned into successes is a
testimony to the inadequacy of his resources. The infantry were sent in to
win, by sheer courage and at terrible expense of life, the places that could

not be reduced by the ill-equipped siege artillery. There can be no doubt that
in poliorcetics the enemy was our superior: but with a very small number of
artillery officers trained to siege work, an insignificant body of Royal
Engineers[97], and practically no provision of trained sappers[98], what was to
be expected? It was not strange that the French showed themselves our
masters in this respect. But the fault lay with the organization at head
quarters, not with the artillery and engineer officers of the Peninsular army,
who had to learn their trade by experience without having received any
proper training at home.

SECTION III
SARAGOSSA AND BAYLEN

CHAPTER I
OPENING OF HOSTILITIES: THE FRENCH
INVASIONS OF ANDALUSIA AND VALENCIA

While the provinces of Spain were bursting out, one after another, into
open insurrection, Murat at Madrid and Bonaparte at Bayonne were still
enjoying the fools’ paradise in which they had dwelt since the formal
abdication of Ferdinand VII. The former was busy in forcing the Junta of
Regency to perform the action which he elegantly styled ‘swallowing the
pill,’ i.e. in compelling it to do homage to Napoleon and humbly crave for
the appointment of Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain. He imagined that
his only serious trouble lay in the lamentable emptiness of the treasury at
Madrid, and kept announcing smooth things to his master—‘The country
was tranquil, the state of public opinion in the capital was far happier than
could have been hoped: the native soldiery were showing an excellent
disposition, the captains-general kept sending in good reports: the new
dynasty was likely to be popular, and the only desire expressed by the
people was to see their newly designated king arrive promptly in their
midst[99].’ Letters of this kind continued to flow from the pen of the Duke of
Berg till almost the end of the month. Even after details of the insurrection
of Aragon and the Asturias began to reach him, he could write on May 31
that a strong flying column would suffice to put everything right. About this
time he was seized by a violent fever and took to his bed, just as things
were commencing to grow serious. On his convalescence he left for France,
after putting everything in charge of Savary, the man who of all Frenchmen

most deserved the hatred of Spain. About the middle of June he recrossed
the French frontier, and after a few weeks went off to Naples to take up his
new kingship there. Spain was never to see him again: the catastrophe
which he had, by his master’s orders, brought about, was to be conducted to
its end by other hands.
While Murat lay sick at the suburban palace of Chamartin, and while
Napoleon was drafting acts and constitutions which the assembly of
notables at Bayonne were to accept and publish, the first acts of war
between the insurgents and the French army of occupation took place.
We have already had occasion to point out that the main military
strength of the insurrection lay in Galicia and Andalusia, the two districts in
which large bodies of regular troops had placed themselves at the
disposition of the newly organized juntas. In Valencia, Catalonia, and
Murcia the movement was much weaker: in Old Castile, Aragon, and the
Asturias it had hardly any other forces at its disposal than hordes of half-
armed peasants. Clearly then Galicia and Andalusia were the dangerous
points for the French, and the former more than the latter, since an army
descending from its hills, and falling on the long line of communications
between France and Madrid, might cause the gravest inconvenience. If
there had been any organized Spanish forces in Aragon, there would have
been an equal danger of an attack directed from Saragossa against the
eastern flank of the French communications. But while Galicia was
possessed of a numerous army of regular troops, Aragon had nothing to
show but a mass of hastily assembled peasants, who were not yet fully
provided with arms and were only just beginning to be told off into
battalions.
Napoleon, at the moment when he began to order his troops to move,
was under the impression that he had to deal with a number of isolated riots
rather than with a general insurrection of the Spanish nation. His first orders
show that he imagined that a few flying columns would be able to scour the
disaffected districts and scatter the bands of insurgents without much
trouble. Instead of a strategical plan for the conquest of Spain, we find in
his directions nothing more than provisions for the launching of a small
column against each point where he had been informed that a rising had
broken out. He presupposes that the kingdom as a whole is quiet, and that
bodies of 3,000 or 4,000 men may march anywhere, without having to

provide for the maintenance of their communications with Madrid, or with
each other. Only in a friendly country would it have been possible to carry
out such orders.
There were at the Emperor’s disposition, at the end of May, some
116,000 men beyond the Pyrenees: but the 26,000 troops under Junot in
Portugal were so completely cut off from the rest, by the insurrection in
Castile and Estremadura, that they had to be left out of consideration. Of the
remainder the corps of Dupont and Moncey, 53,000 strong, lay in and about
Madrid: Bessières, to whom the preservation of the main line of
communications with France fell, had some 25,000 between Burgos and
San Sebastian: Duhesme, isolated at Barcelona, and communicating with
France by Perpignan and not by Bayonne, had only some 13,000 at his
disposal in Catalonia. Up to the first week in June the Emperor thought that
the 91,000 men of these four corps would be enough to pacify Spain.
His first design was somewhat as follows: Bessières was to keep a firm
hand on the line of communications, but also to detach a division of 4,000
men under Lefebvre-Desnouettes against Saragossa, and a brigade under
Merle to pacify Santander and the northern littoral. The Emperor does not at
first seem to have realized that, with the army of Galicia hanging on his
western flank, Bessières might not be able to spare men for such distant
enterprises. He dealt with the corps as if it had nothing to face save the local
insurgents of Aragon and Old Castile. From the large body of troops which
lay about Madrid, Toledo, and Aranjuez, two strong columns were to be
dispatched to strike at the two main centres of the insurrection in Southern
Spain. Dupont was to take the first division of his army corps, with two
brigades of cavalry and a few other troops, and march on Cordova and
Seville. This gave him no more than about 13,000 men for the subjugation
of the large and populous province of Andalusia. The other two infantry
divisions of his corps remained for the present near Madrid[100].
On the other side of the capital, Marshal Moncey with a somewhat
smaller force—one division of infantry from his own army corps and one
brigade of cavalry, 9,000 men in all—was to move on Valencia, and to take
possession of that city and of the great naval arsenal of Cartagena. His
expedition was to be supported by a diversion from the side of Catalonia,
for Duhesme (in spite of the small number of his army) was told to send a
column along the sea-coast route, by Tarragona and Tortosa, to threaten

Valencia from the north. Moncey’s remaining infantry divisions, which
were not detailed for the expedition that he was to lead, remained near
Madrid, available (like Dupont’s second and third divisions) for the
reinforcement of Bessières or the strengthening of the two expeditionary
columns, as circumstances might decide.
Clearly Dupont and Moncey were both sent forth to undertake
impossible tasks. Napoleon had not comprehended that it was not provincial
émeutes that he had to crush, but the regular resistance of a nation. To send
a column of 12,000 men on a march through 300 miles of hostile territory to
Cadiz, or a column of 9,000 men on a march of 180 miles to Valencia,
presupposes the idea that the expeditions are affairs of police and not
strategical operations. Our astonishment grows greater when we consider
the character of the troops which Dupont and Moncey commanded. In the
army of the former there was one veteran French battalion—that of the
Marines of the Guard, six of raw recruits of the Legions of Reserve, two of
Paris Municipal Guards (strangely distracted from their usual duties), one of
the contingent of the Helvetic Confederation, and four of Swiss mercenaries
in the Spanish service, who had just been compelled to transfer their
allegiance to Napoleon. The cavalry consisted of four ‘provisional
regiments’ of conscripts. It was a military crime of the first order to send
13,000 troops of this quality on an important expedition. Moncey’s force
was of exactly the same sort—eight battalions of conscripts formed in
‘provisional regiments’ and two ‘provisional regiments’ of dragoons, plus a
Westphalian battalion, and two Spanish corps, who deserted en masse when
they were informed that they were to march against Valencia in company
with the marshal’s French troops. He had not one single company or
squadron of men belonging to the old imperial army.
Bessières was much more fortunate, as, among the 25,000 men of whom
he could dispose, there were four veteran battalions of the line and two old
regiments of cavalry; moreover there were sent ere long to his aid three of
the battalions of the Imperial Guard which lay at Madrid, and four hundred
sabres of the dragoons, chasseurs, and gendarmes of the same famous
corps.
The march of the two expeditionary columns began on May 24, a date at
which Murat and his master had but the faintest notion of the wide-
spreading revolt which was on foot. Moncey and Dupont were both officers

of distinction: the marshal was one of the oldest and the most respected
officers of the imperial army: he had won the grade of general of division in
the days of the Republic, and did not owe his first start in life to Napoleon.
Of all the marshals he was by several years the senior. He passed as a
steady, capable, and prudent officer of vast experience. Dupont on the other
hand was a young man, who had first won a name by his brilliant courage at
the combat of Dirnstein in the Austrian war of 1805. Since then he had
distinguished himself at Friedland: he was on the way to rapid promotion,
and, if his expedition to Andalusia had succeeded, might have counted on a
duchy and a marshal’s bâton as his reward. Napoleon knew him as a brave
and loyal subordinate, but had never before given him an independent
command. He could hardly guess that, when left to his own inspirations,
such a brilliant officer would turn out to be dilatory, wanting in initiative,
and wholly destitute of moral courage. It is impossible to judge with
infallible accuracy how a good lieutenant will behave, when first the load of
responsibility is laid upon his shoulders. On May 24, Dupont quitted Toledo
with his 13,000 men: in the broad plains of La Mancha he met with no
opposition. Everywhere the people were sullen, but no open hostility was
shown. Even in the tremendous defiles of the Sierra Morena he found no
enemy, and crossed the great pass of Despeña Perros without having to fire
a shot. Coming out at its southern end he occupied Andujar, the town at the
main junction of roads in Eastern Andalusia, on June 5. Here he got clear
intelligence that the whole country-side was up in arms: Seville had risen
on May 26, and the rest of the province had followed its example. There
was a large assembly of armed peasants mustering at Cordova, but the
regular troops had not yet been brought up to the front. General Castaños,
whom the Junta had placed in chief command, was still busily engaged in
concentrating his scattered battalions, forming them into brigades and
divisions, and hastily filling up with recruits the enormous gaps which
existed in the greater part of the corps. The regulars were being got together
at a camp at Carmona, south of the Guadalquivir, and not far from Seville.
The organization of new battalions, from the large number of volunteers
who remained when the old regiments were completed, took place
elsewhere. It would be weeks, rather than days, before the unorganized
mass took shape as an army, and Dupont might count on a considerable
respite before being attacked. But it was not only with the forces of
Castaños that he had to reckon: at Cordova, Seville, Granada, and all the

other towns of Andalusia, the peasants were flocking in to be armed and
told off into new regiments. There was every probability that in a few days
the movement would spread northward over the Sierra Morena into La
Mancha. An insurrection in this district would sever Dupont’s
communications with Madrid, for he had not left behind him any sufficient
detachments to guard the defiles which he had just passed, or to keep open
the great post-road to the capital across the plains of New Castile. When he
started he had been under the impression that it was only local troubles in
Andalusia that he had to suppress.
Dupont was already beginning to find that the insurgents were in much
greater numbers than he had expected when he crossed the Sierra Morena,
but till he had made trial of their strength he considered that it would be
wrong to halt. He had close before him the great city of Cordova, a most
tempting prize, and he resolved to push on at least so far before taking it
upon himself to halt and ask for reinforcements. His continued movement
soon brought about the first engagement of the war, as at the bridge of
Alcolea he found his advance disputed by a considerable hostile force [June
7].
The military commandant of the district of Cordova was a certain Don
Pedro de Echávarri, a retired colonel whom the local Junta had just placed
in command of its levies. His force consisted of 10,000 or 12,000 peasants
and citizens, who had only received their arms three days before, and had
not yet been completely told off into regiments and companies. On the 4th
of June he had been sent a small body of old troops—one battalion of light
infantry (Campo Mayor), and one of militia (the 3rd Provincial Grenadiers
of Andalusia)—1,400 men in all, and with them eight guns. To have
abandoned Cordova without a fight would have discouraged the new levies,
and probably have led to Echávarri’s own death; for the armed mob which
he commanded would have torn him to pieces as a traitor if he had refused
to give battle. Accordingly he resolved to defend the passage of the
Guadalquivir at the point where the high-road from Andujar crossed it, six
miles outside Cordova. He barricaded the bridge and placed his guns and
the two old battalions on the hither side of the river, in a position
commanding the defile. On each flank of them some thousands of the
Cordovan insurgents were drawn up, while the remainder of the levy,
including all the mounted men, were sent across the bridge, and hidden in

some hills which overhung the road by which the French were coming.
They were ordered to show themselves, and to threaten to fall upon the
enemy from the flank, when he should have developed his attack upon the
bridge. If Echávarri had been guided by military considerations he would
not have dared to offer battle with such a raw and motley force to 12,000
French troops—even if the latter were but the conscripts of Dupont. But
political necessity compelled him to make the attempt.
When Dupont found the position of Alcolea occupied, he cannonaded
the Spaniards for a time, and then launched his vanguard against the bridge.
The leading battalion (it was one of those formed of the Paris Municipal
Guards) stormed the barricades with some loss, and began to cross the river.
After it the rest of Pannetier’s brigade followed, and began to deploy for the
attack on the Spanish position. At this moment the Cordovan levies beyond
the river showed themselves, and began to threaten a flank attack on
Dupont. The latter sent his cavalry against them, and a few charges soon
turned back the demonstration, and scattered the raw troops who had made
it. Meanwhile Dupont’s infantry advanced and overpowered the two regular
battalions opposed to them: seeing the line broken, the masses of insurgents
on the flanks left the field without any serious fighting. The whole horde
gave way and poured back into Cordova and right through the city, whose
ruined walls they made no attempt to defend. They had lost very few men,
probably no more than 200 in all, while the French had suffered even less,
their only casualties being thirty killed and eighty wounded, wellnigh all in
the battalion which had forced the barricades at the bridge.
There would be no reason to linger even for a moment over this
insignificant skirmish, if it had not been for the deplorable events which
followed—events which did more to give a ferocious character to the war
than any others, save perhaps the massacre by Calvo at Valencia, which was
taking place (as it chanced) on that very same day, June 7.
Dupont, after giving his army a short rest, led it, still ranged in battle
array, across the six miles of plain which separated him from Cordova. He
expected to find the defeated army of Echávarri rallying itself within the
city. But on arriving in front of its gates, he found the walls unoccupied and
the suburbs deserted. The Cordovans had closed their gates, but it was
rather for the purpose of gaining time for a formal surrender than with any
intention of resisting. Dupont had already opened negotiations for the

unbarring of the gates, when a few scattered shots were fired at the French
columns from a tower in the wall, or a house abutting on it. Treating this as
a good excuse for avoiding the granting of a capitulation, Dupont blew open
one of the gates with cannon, and his troops rushed into the empty streets
without finding any enemy to defeat. The impudent fiction of Thiers to the
effect that the entry of the French was seriously resisted, and that desperate
street-fighting took place, is sufficiently disproved by the fact that in the so-
called storming of Cordova the French lost altogether two killed and seven
wounded.
Nevertheless the city was sacked from cellar to garret. Dupont’s
undisciplined conscripts broke their ranks and ran amuck through the
streets, firing into windows and battering down doors. Wherever there was
the least show of resistance they slew off whole households: but they were
rather intent on pillage and rape than on murder. Cordova was a wealthy
place, its shops were well worth plundering, its churches and monasteries
full of silver plate and jewelled reliquaries, its vaults of the strong wines of
Andalusia. All the scenes of horror that afterwards occurred at Badajoz or
San Sebastian were rehearsed for the first time at Cordova; and the army of
Dupont had far less excuse than the English marauders and murderers of
1812 and 1813. The French had taken the city practically without loss and
without opposition, and could not plead that they had been maddened by the
fall of thousands of their comrades, or that they were drunk with the fury of
battle after many hours of desperate fighting at the breaches. Nevertheless,
without any excuse of this sort, Dupont’s army behaved in a way that would
have suited better the hordes of Tilly and Wallenstein. Their commanders
could not draw them away from their orgies and outrages till the next day:
indeed, it seems that many of the French officers disgraced themselves by
joining in the plunder. While the men were filling their haversacks with
private property, there were found colonels and even generals who were not
ashamed to load carts and coaches with pictures, tapestries, and metal-work
from churches and public buildings, and bags of dollars from the treasury,
where no less than 10,000,000 reals of specie had been found. Laplanne,
whom Dupont appointed commandant of the place, took 2,000 ducats of
blackmail from the Count of Villanueva, on whom he had billeted himself,
in return for preserving his mansion from pillage. When the French left
Cordova, nine days later, they had with them more than 500 wheeled
vehicles seized in the place which were loaded with all sorts of plunder[101].

Dupont had hardly settled down in Cordova, and begun to substitute
crushing military contributions for unsystematic pillage, when he found
himself cut off from his base. The valley of the Upper Guadalquivir, and the
slopes of the Sierra Morena, on both the southern and the northern sides of
the passes, rose in arms in the second week of June. The French had left no
detachments behind to preserve their communications: between Cordova
and Toledo there were only a few posts where stragglers and sick had been
collected, some isolated officers busy on surveying or on raising
contributions, and some bodies of ten or twenty men escorting couriers or
belated trains of wagons bearing food or ammunition to the front. Most of
these unfortunate people were cut up by the insurgents, who displayed from
the first a most ferocious spirit. The news of the sack of Cordova drove
them to the commission of inhuman cruelties; some prisoners were blinded,
others tortured to death: Foy says that the brigadier-general Réné, surprised
while crossing the Morena, was thrown into a vat of boiling water and
scalded to death[102]. The parties, which escaped massacre hastily drew back
towards Madrid and Toledo, and soon there was not a French soldier within
150 miles of Dupont’s isolated division.
That general did not at first realize the unpleasantness of his position. He
had been sufficiently surprised by the opposition offered at Alcolea, and the
rumours of the concentration of the army of Castaños, to make him
unwilling to advance beyond Cordova. He wrote to Murat asking for
reinforcements, and especially for troops to keep open his lines of
communication. There were, he said, at least 25,000 regular troops
marching against him: the English might disembark reinforcements at
Cadiz: the whole province was in a flame: it was impossible to carry out the
Grand-Duke of Berg’s original orders to push straight on to Seville. But
matters were even worse than he thought: in a few days he realized, from
the non-arrival of couriers from Madrid, that he was cut off: moreover, his
foraging parties, even when they were only a few miles outside Cordova,
began to be molested and sometimes destroyed.
After waiting nine days, Dupont very wisely resolved to fall back, and to
endeavour to reopen communications with his base. On June 16 he
evacuated Cordova, much to the regret of his soldiers, who resented the
order to abandon such comfortable quarters. On the nineteenth, dragging
with him an enormous convoy of plunder, he reached Andujar, the great

junction of roads where the routes from the passes of the Morena come
down to the valley of the Guadalquivir. It would have been far wiser to go
still further back, and to occupy the debouches of the defiles, instead of
lingering in the plain of Andalusia. He should have retired to Baylen, the
town at the foot of the mountains, or to La Carolina, the fortress in the
upland which commands the southern exit of the Despeña Perros. But he
was vainly dreaming of resuming the attempt to conquer the whole south of
Spain when reinforcements should arrive, and Andujar tempted him, since it
was the best point from which he could threaten at once Cordova, Jaen, and
Granada, the three chief towns of Eastern Andalusia. Here, therefore, he
abode from June 19 to July 18, a wasted month during which the whole
situation of affairs in Spain was changed.
Here we must leave Dupont, while we treat of the doings of the other
French generals during the month of June. While the invasion of Andalusia
was running its course, both Moncey and Bessières had been seriously
engaged.
The first named of the two marshals was placed in charge of one-half of
the offensive part of Napoleon’s plan for the subjugation of Spain, while
Bessières was mainly responsible for the defensive part, i.e. for the
maintaining of the communications between Madrid and Bayonne. It is with
Moncey’s expedition against Valencia, therefore, that we must first deal.
Although he started a few days later than Dupont, that marshal was (like his
colleague) still dominated by the idea that possessed both Napoleon and
Murat—that the insurrections were purely local, and that their suppression
was a mere measure of police. This notion accounts for his choice of route:
there are two roads from Madrid to Valencia, a long and fairly easy one
which passes through the gap between the mountains of Murcia and those
of Cuenca, by San Clemente, Chinchilla, and the plain of Almanza, and a
shorter one, full of dangerous defiles and gorges, which cuts through the
heart of the hills by Tarancon, Valverde, and Requeña. The former crosses
the watershed between the valley of the Tagus and those of the rivers
flowing into the Mediterranean Sea at the easiest point, the latter at one of
the most difficult ones. But Moncey, thinking only of the need to deal
promptly with the Valencian insurgents, chose the shorter and more difficult
route.

He left Madrid on June 4: a week later he was near Cuenca, in the midst
of the mountains. Not a shot had yet been fired at him, but as he pressed
eastward he found the villages more and more deserted, till at last he had
reached a region that seemed to have become suddenly depopulated. He
turned a little out of his way on the eleventh to occupy the city of
Cuenca[103], the capital of this wild and rugged country, but resumed his
advance on the eighteenth, after receiving from Madrid peremptory orders
to press forward[104]. There lay before him two tremendous defiles, which
must be passed if he was to reach Valencia. The first was the deep-sunk
gorge of the river Cabriel, where the highway plunges down a cliff, crosses
a ravine, and climbs again up a steep opposing bank. The second, thirty
miles further on, was the Pass of the Cabrillas, the point where the road, on
reaching the edge of the central plateau of Spain, suddenly sinks down into
the low-lying fertile plain of Valencia.
If the Conde de Cervellon, the general whom the Valencian Junta had put
in charge of its army, had concentrated on these defiles the 7,000 or 8,000
regular troops who were to be found in the province and in the
neighbouring district of Murcia, it is probable that Moncey would never
have forced his way through the mountains; for each of the positions, if
held in sufficient force, is practically impregnable. But the Spaniards had
formed a deeply rooted notion that the invader would come by the easy road
over the plains, by San Clemente and Almanza, and not through the
mountains of Cuenca. The whole of the troops of Murcia and the greater
part of those of Valencia had been directed on Almanza, where there was a
good position for opposing an army descending from Castile. Only a small
detachment had been sent to watch the northern road, and its commander,
Don Pedro Adorno, had stationed at the bridge of the Cabriel no more than
one battalion of Swiss mercenaries (No. 1 of Traxler’s regiment) and 500
armed peasants with four guns. The position was too extensive to be held by
1,500 men: Moncey found that the river was fordable in several places, and
detached a small column to cross at each, while two battalions dashed at the
bridge. In spite of the steepness of the ravine the French got over at more
than one point, and climbed the opposite slope, whereupon the peasants
fled, and half the Swiss battalion was surrounded and captured while it was
trying to cover the retreat of the guns[105]. Adorno, who was lying some
miles to the rear, at Requeña, when he should have been present in full
force at the bridge, ought now to have fallen back to cover Valencia, but in

a moment of panic he fled across country to join the army at Almanza [June
21].
This disgraceful flight left the Valencian Junta almost destitute of troops
for the defence of the still stronger defile of the Cabrillas, which Moncey
had yet to force before he could descend into the plain. The Junta hurried up
to it two regiments of recruits—one of which is said to have been first
practised in the manual exercise the day before it went into action[106].
These, with 300 old soldiers, the wrecks of the combat at the Cabriel, and
three guns, tried to hold the pass. Moncey turned both flanks of this very
inadequate defending force, and then broke through its centre. Many of the
Spaniards dispersed, 500 were slain or captured, and the rest fled down the
pass to Valencia. After riding round the position, Moncey remarked that it
was so strong that with 6,000 steady troops he would undertake to hold it
against Napoleon himself and the Grand Army [June 24].
Two days later, after a rapid march down the defile and across the fertile
Valencian plain, Moncey presented himself before the gates of its capital,
and demanded its surrender. But he found that there was still much fighting
to be done: a small column of regulars had arrived in the city, though the
main army from Almanza was still far distant. With three battalions of old
troops and 7,000 Valencian levies, Don José Caro, a naval officer and
brother of the celebrated Marquis of La Romana, had taken up a position
four miles outside the city at San Onofre. He had covered his front with
some irrigation canals, and barricaded the road. Moncey had to spend the
twenty-seventh in beating back this force into Valencia, not without some
sharp fighting.
On the next day he made a general assault upon the city. Valencia was
not a modern fortress: it had merely a wet ditch and an enceinte of
mediaeval walls. There were several points where it seemed possible to
escalade the defences, and the marshal resolved to storm the place. But he
had forgotten that he had to reckon with the auxiliary fortifications which
the populace had constructed during the last three days. They had built up
the gates with beams and earth, barricaded the streets, mounted cannon on
the walls where it was possible, and established several batteries of heavy
guns to sweep the main approaches from the open country. The city being
situated in a perfectly level plain, and in ground much cut up by irrigation
canals, it had been found possible to inundate much of the low ground. As

the river Guadalaviar washed the whole northern side of the walls,
Moncey’s practicable points of attack were restricted to certain short spaces
on their southern front.
The marshal first sent a Spanish renegade, a Colonel Solano, to summon
the place. But the Valencians were exasperated rather than cowed by their
late defeats; their leaders—especially Padre Rico, a fighting priest of
undoubted courage and capacity—had worked them up to a high pitch of
enthusiasm, and they must have remembered that, if they submitted, they
would have to render an account for Calvo’s abominable massacre of the
French residents. Accordingly the Junta returned the stirring answer that
‘the people of Valencia preferred to die defending itself rather than to open
any sort of negotiations.’ A mixed multitude of 20,000 men, of whom some
8,000 were troops of one sort and another[107], manned the walls and
barricades and waited for the assault.
After riding round the exposed front of the city, Moncey resolved to
attack only the south-eastern section. He formed two columns, each of a
brigade, of which one assailed the gate of San José near the river, while
another marched on the gate of Quarte, further to the south. Considering the
weak resistance that he had met at the Cabriel and at the Pass of the
Cabrillas, he had formed a sanguine expectation that the Valencians would
not make a firm stand, even behind walls and barricades. In this he was
wofully deceived: the French had yet to learn that the enemy, though
helpless in the open, was capable of the most obstinate resistance when
once he had put himself under cover of bricks and earth. The first assault
was beaten off with heavy loss, though Moncey’s conscripts showed great
dash, reached the foot of the defences, and tried to tear down the palisades
with their hands. The marshal should have seen at once that he had too large
a business in hand for the 8,000 men of whom he could dispose. But he
persevered, bringing forward his field artillery to batter the gates and
earthworks before a second assault should be made. It was to no purpose, as
they were soon silenced by the guns of position which the besieged had
prepared for this very purpose. Late in the afternoon Moncey risked a
second general attack, embracing the gate of Santa Lucia as well as the
other points which he had before assailed. But the stormers were beaten off
with even heavier loss than on the first assault, and bodies of the defenders,

slipping out by posterns and side-gates, harassed the retreating columns by
a terrible flanking fire.
Clearly the game was up: Moncey had lost at least 1,200 men, a sixth of
his available infantry force[108]. He was much to blame for pressing the
attack when his first movement failed, for as Napoleon (wise after the
event) said in his commentary on the marshal’s operations: ‘On ne prend
pas par le collet une ville de quatre-vingt mille âmes.’ If the first charge did
not carry the walls, and the garrison stood firm, the French could only get in
by the use of siege artillery, of which they did not possess a single piece.
Moncey’s position was now very dangerous: he knew that the country
was up in arms behind him, and that his communications with Madrid were
completely cut. He was also aware that Cervellon’s army from Almanza
must be marching towards him, unless it had taken the alternative course of
pressing in on his rear, to occupy the difficult passes by which he had come
down into the Valencian coast-plain. His conscripts were dreadfully
discouraged by their unexpected reverse: he was hampered by a great
convoy of wounded men, whose transport would cause serious delays.
Nothing had been heard of the diversion which General Chabran, with
troops detached from Duhesme’s army in Catalonia, had been ordered to
execute towards the northern side of Valencia. As a matter of fact that
general had not even crossed the Ebro. Retreat was necessary: of the three
possible lines on which it could be executed, that along the coast road, in
the direction where Chabran was to be expected, was thought of for a
moment, but soon abandoned: it was too long, and the real base of the
marshal’s corps was evidently Madrid, and not Barcelona. The route by
Tarancon and the Cabrillas, by which the army had reached Valencia, was
terribly difficult: clearly it would be necessary to force again the defiles
which had been cleared on the way down to the coast. And it was possible
that 9,000 or 10,000 regular troops might now be occupying them.
Accordingly, Moncey resolved to retire by the third road, that through
the plains by Almanza and San Clemente. If, as was possible, Cervellon’s
whole army was now blocking it, they must be fought and driven off: a
battle in the plain would be less dangerous than a battle at the Cabrillas or
the bridge of the Cabriel. Before daylight on June 29, therefore, the marshal
moved off on this road.

Luck now came to his aid: the incapable Spanish commander had made
up his mind that the French would retreat by the way that they had come,
and had sent forward General Llamas with all the troops of Murcia to seize
the defile of the Cabrillas. He himself followed with the rest of the regulars,
but halted at Alcira, behind the Xucar. Thus while Moncey was marching to
the south, the main body of his enemies was moving northward. Cervellon
refused to fight in the absence of Llamas, so nothing was left in the
marshal’s way save bands of peasants who occupied the fords of the Xucar
and the road between Jativa and Almanza: these he easily brushed away in a
couple of skirmishes. Nor did a small column detached in pursuit from
Valencia dare to meddle seriously with his rearguard. So without even
exchanging a shot with the Spanish field-army, which Cervellon had so
unwisely scattered and sent off on a false track, Moncey was able to make
his way by Jativa, Almanza, and Chinchilla back towards La Mancha [July
2-6].
At San Clemente he met with reinforcements under General Frère,
consisting of the third division of Dupont’s original corps, some 5,000
strong. This division had been sent to search for him by Savary, who had
been filled with fears for his safety when he found that the communications
were cut, and that Cuenca and all the hill-country had risen behind the
expeditionary force. After vainly searching for Moncey on the northern
road, in the direction of Requeña, Frère at last got news that he had taken
the southern line of retreat, and successfully joined him on July 8. At San
Clemente the marshal intended to halt and to wait for Cervellon’s arrival, in
the hope of beating him in the open. But a few days later he received news
from Madrid, to the effect that Savary wished to draw back the French
forces nearer to the capital, and that Frère, at least, must move in to Ocaña
or Toledo. Much displeased at finding a junior officer acting as the
lieutenant of the Emperor—for Savary was but a lieutenant-general, while
he himself was a marshal—Moncey threw up the whole scheme of waiting
to fight the Valencian army, and marched back to the immediate
neighbourhood of Madrid [July 15].
There can be no doubt that the marshal had extraordinary luck in this
short campaign. If he had been opposed by a general less timid and
incapable than the Conde de Cervellon, he might have found arrayed
against him, at the bridge of the Cabriel, or at the Cabrillas, a considerable

body of regulars—eight or nine thousand men—with a numerous artillery,
instead of the insignificant forces which he actually defeated. Again, while
he was trying to storm Valencia, Cervellon might have attacked him in the
rear with great chance of success; or the Spaniard might have kept his
forces united, and opposed Moncey as he retreated from before Valencia.
Instead of doing so he split up his army into detachments, and the greater
part of it was sent off far from the central point of his operations, and did
not fire a shot. Truly such a general was, as Thucydides remarks concerning
the Spartans of old, ‘very convenient for his adversaries.’ A less considerate
enemy would have had a fair chance of bringing Moncey’s campaign to the
same disastrous end that befell that of Dupont.

SECTION III: CHAPTER II
OPERATIONS IN THE NORTH: THE SIEGE OF
SARAGOSSA

Having watched the failure of the expeditions by which Napoleon had
hoped to complete the conquest of Southern Spain, we must turn our eyes
northward, to Madrid and the long line of communications which joined the
capital to the French base of operations at Vittoria, Pampeluna, and San
Sebastian. At the moment when the Valencian and Andalusian expeditions
were sent out from Madrid and Toledo, Murat had still under his hand a
large body of troops, the second and third division of Moncey’s corps, the
second and third of Dupont’s, and the 5,000 horse and foot of the Imperial
Guard—in all more than 30,000 men. Bessières, if the garrison of the
northern fortresses and some newly arrived reinforcements are added to his
original force, had more than 25,000. With these the grand-duke and the
marshal had to contain the insurrection in Northern Spain, and to beat back
the advance of the army of Galicia.
The furthest points to the north and east to which the wave of
insurrection had washed up were Logroño and Tudela in the Ebro valley,
Santander on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, and Palencia and Valladolid in
Old Castile. All these places lay in Bessières’ sphere of action, and he
promptly took measures to suppress the rising at each point. On June 2 a
column sent out from Vittoria reoccupied Logroño, slaying some hundreds
of half-armed peasants, and executing some of their leaders who had been
taken prisoners. On the same day a stronger force, six battalions and two
squadrons under General Merle, marched from Burgos on Santander.
Driving before him the insurgents of the Upper Ebro valley, Merle
advanced as far as Reynosa, and was about to force the defiles of the
Cantabrian Mountains and to descend on to Santander, when he received
orders to return and to take part in suppressing the more dangerous rising in
the plains of Old Castile. News had arrived that the captain-general, Cuesta,

was collecting a force at Valladolid, which threatened to cut the road
between Burgos and Madrid. To deal with him Bessières told off Merle, and
another small column of four battalions and two regiments of chasseurs
under his brilliant cavalry-brigadier, Lasalle, one of the best of Napoleon’s
younger generals. After sacking Torquemada (where some peasants
attempted an ineffectual resistance) and ransoming the rich cathedral town
of Palencia, Lasalle got in touch with the forces of Cuesta at the bridge of
Cabezon, where the main road from Burgos to Valladolid crosses the river
Pisuerga. On the eleventh of June Merle joined him: on the twelfth their
united forces, 9,000 strong, fell upon the levies of the Captain-general.
Throughout the two years during which he held high command in the
field, Gregorio de la Cuesta consistently displayed an arrogance and an
incapacity far exceeding that of any other Spanish general. Considering the
state of his embryo ‘army of Castile,’ it was insane for him to think of
offering battle. He had but four cannon; his only veteran troops were 300
cavalry, mainly consisting of the squadrons which had accompanied
Ferdinand VII as escort on his unhappy journey to Bayonne. His infantry
was composed of 4,000 or 5,000 volunteers of the Valladolid district, who
had not been more than a fortnight under arms, and had seen little drill and
still less musketry practice. It was absolutely wicked to take them into
action. But the men, in their ignorance, clamoured for a battle, and Cuesta
did not refuse it to them. His dispositions were simply astounding; instead
of barricading or destroying the bridge and occupying the further bank, he
led his unhappy horde across the river and drew them up in a single line,
with the bridge at their backs.
On June 12 Lasalle came rushing down upon the ‘army of Castile,’ and
dashed it into atoms at the first shock. The Spanish cavalry fled (as they
generally did throughout the war), the infantry broke, the bridge and the
guns were captured. Some hundreds of the unfortunate recruits were sabred,
others were drowned in the river. Cuesta fled westwards with the survivors
to Medina de Rio Seco, abandoning to its fate Valladolid, which Lasalle
occupied without opposition on the same evening. The combat by which
this important city was won had cost the French only twelve killed and
thirty wounded.
This stroke had completely cleared Bessières’ right flank: there could be
no more danger from the north-west till the army of Galicia should think

proper to descend from its mountains to contest with the French the
dominion of the plains of Leon and Old Castile. The marshal could now
turn his attention to other fronts of his extensive sphere of command. After
the fight of Cabezon Merle’s division was sent northward, to conquer the
rugged coastland of the province of Santander. There were frightful defiles
between Reynosa and the shore of the Bay of Biscay: the peasants had
blocked the road and covered the hillsides with sungahs. But the defence
was feeble—as might be expected from the fact that the district could only
put into the field one battalion of militia[109] and a crowd of recent levies,
who had been about three weeks under arms. On June 23 Merle finished
clearing the defiles and entered Santander, whose bishop and Junta fled,
with the wreck of their armed force, into the Asturias.
Meanwhile the troops under Bessières had been equally active, but with
very different results, on the Middle Ebro and in the direction of Aragon. It
was known at Burgos and at Bayonne that Saragossa had risen like the rest
of the Spanish cities. But it was also known that there was hardly a man of
regular troops in the whole kingdom of Aragon: here, as in Old Castile or in
Santander, the invaders would have to deal only with raw levies, who would
probably disperse after their first defeat. Saragossa itself, the central focus
of the rising, was no modern fortress, but a town of 60,000 souls,
surrounded by a mediaeval wall more fitted to assist in the levy of octroi
duties, than in a defence against a regular army. Accordingly the column
under Lefebvre Desnouettes, which was directed to start from Pampeluna
against the Aragonese insurgents, was one of very moderate size—3,500
infantry, 1,000 horse, and a single battery of field artillery[110]. But it was to
be joined a few days later by another brigade[111] and battery, which would
bring its total force up to something more than 6,000 men.
The resources of the kingdom of Aragon were large, but the patriots
were, when the war broke out, in a condition most unfavourable for
strenuous action. The province was one of those which had been denuded of
its usual garrison: there only remained part of a cavalry regiment, the
‘King’s Dragoons,’ whose squadrons had been so depleted that it had only
300 men and ninety horses, with a weak battalion of Volunteers of Aragon
—some 450 men—and 200 gunners and sappers. In addition there had
straggled into Saragossa about 500 men from various Spanish corps at
Madrid, Burgos, and elsewhere, who had deserted their colours when the

news of the insurrection reached them. This was a small cadre on which to
create a whole army, but the feat was accomplished by the energetic young
man who put himself at the head of the rising in the middle valley of the
Ebro. Joseph Palafox, the second son of a noble family of Aragon, had been
one of the suite which accompanied Ferdinand VII to Bayonne, and was an
indignant spectator of the abominable treachery which there took place.
When the tragedy was over he was fortunate enough to escape to Spain: he
retired to his native district, took a prominent part in rousing the Aragonese,
and was chosen by them as Captain-general when the weak or incapable
Guillelmi was deposed. He was only twenty-eight years of age, and had no
military experience, for he had only served in the peaceful ranks of the
king’s bodyguard[112]. He had been a courtier rather than a soldier, yet at the
critical moment of his life it cannot be denied that he displayed a courage
and energy which justified the high opinions which the Aragonese
entertained of him. He kept Saragossa clean from the plague of political
assassination, which was so rife in every other corner of Spain. He wisely
got his appointment as Captain-general confirmed by the Cortes of Aragon,
which he summoned to meet in its ancient form. He found out the most
capable leaders of the populace, and always asked their advice before
taking any important step. But his main virtue was his untiring activity:
considering the procrastination and want of organizing power displayed by
most of the Spanish generals, his talent for rapid work seems remarkable.
He was only placed in power on May 26, and by June 8 he was already
engaged with the French. In this short time he had raised and organized
seven regiments of new levies—7,400 men in all. They were stiffened with
the deserters from Madrid, and commanded by such retired and half-pay
officers as could be got together. There were some scores of cannon in the
arsenal of Saragossa, but hardly any gunners, and a very small store of
ammunition. Palafox started a powder factory and a manufactory of small
arms, turned the workmen of the Canal of Aragon into a corps of sappers,
and made a general levy of horses to remount his single regiment of
dragoons, and to provide his artillery with draught animals. This was but the
commencement of Palafox’s activity: ere Saragossa was saved he had raised
the whole kingdom, and got more than 30,000 men under arms[113].
Already by the eighth of June he had hurried out a small force to meet
Lefebvre Desnouettes at Tudela, the frontier town on the Ebro, which in the
Middle Ages had been known as ‘the key of Aragon.’ This force, which

consisted of 2,000 of his new levies, was placed under the command of his
own elder brother the Marquis of Lazan, who had escaped from Madrid
under the pretext that he would bring pressure to bear upon the Captain-
general and induce him to submit to Murat. The marquis, though joined by
3,000 or 4,000 peasants and citizens of Tudela, was easily routed by the
French column, and forced back to Mallen sixteen miles nearer to
Saragossa. Lefebvre followed him, after having executed a certain number
of the notables of Tudela and sacked the town. Reinforced by more of his
brother’s new levies, Lazan offered battle again at Mallen, in a bad position,
where his men had little protection against the enemy’s artillery and the
charges of his Polish lancers. He was naturally routed with severe losses.
But even then the Aragonese were not broken in spirit: Palafox himself
marched out with the remainder of his new levies, some of whom had not
been five days under arms. At Alagon, only seventeen miles from the gates
of Saragossa, he drew up 6,000 infantry (of whom 500 were regulars) 150
dragoons and four guns, trying to cover himself by the line of the Canal of
Aragon and some olive groves. It is hardly necessary to say that his artillery
was overpowered by the fourteen pieces of the French, and that his infantry
gave back when furiously assailed by the Poles. Palafox charged at the head
of his two squadrons of dragoons, but was wounded in the arm and had his
horse killed under him. His routed followers carried him back into the city,
where the majority took refuge, while the more faint-hearted fled beyond it
to Alcaniz and other points in Upper Aragon.
Elated by three easy victories, Lefebvre thought that there was nothing
more to do but to enter Saragossa in triumph. He was much deceived: the
citizens were standing at bay behind their flimsy defences, having
recovered in a single night from the dismay caused by the arrival of the
broken bands who had fought at Alagon. The military conditions were not
unlike those which Moncey had to face in another region, a fortnight later:
Saragossa like Valencia lies in an extensive plain, with its northern side
washed by the waters of the Ebro, and its eastern by those of the shallow
and fordable Huerba: but its southern and western fronts are exposed to
attack from the open. It was surrounded by a brick wall of ten to twelve feet
high, interrupted in several places by convents and barracks whose blank
back-faces continued the line of the enceinte[114]. Inside the wall were the
crowded lanes in which dwelt the 60,000 citizens, a tangle of narrow streets
save the one broad Coso which intersects the place from east to west. The

houses were mostly solid and lofty structures of brick and stone, with the
heavy barred windows and doors usual in Spain. The strength, such as it
was, of Saragossa consisted not in its outer shell, but in the closely packed
houses, convents, and churches, each of which might serve at need as a
small fortress. Many of them were solid enough to resist any form of attack
save that of being battered by artillery. When barricades had been thrown
across the lanes from side to side, each square of buildings would need to
be assaulted and captured piecemeal. But none of the French officers who
arrived in front of Saragossa on June 15, 1808, had any conception that the
problem about to be presented to them was that of street-fighting carried on
from house to house. There had been many sieges since the war of the
French Revolution began, but none carried on in this manner. In Italy or
Germany no one had ever heard of a city which tried, for want of bastions
and curtains, to defend itself by barricades: such places always saved
themselves by an obvious and blameless surrender.
But if a siege was coming, there was one position just outside the town
which was clearly destined to play a chief part in it. Just across the Huerba
lay a broad flat-topped hill, the Monte Torrero, which rose to the height of
180 feet, and overlooked all the south side of the place. It was such a
splendid vantage-ground for siege-batteries, that the defenders were bound
to hold it, lest it should fall into the power of the French. It should have
been crowned by a strong detached fort, or even by an entrenched camp.
But Palafox in the short time at his disposal had only been able to throw up
a couple of open batteries upon it, and to loophole the extensive magazines
and workshops of the Canal of Aragon, which were scattered over the
summit of the hill, while the canal itself flowed, as a sort of outer defence,
around its further foot.
Saragossa had two other outlying defences: the one was the Aljafferia,
an old square castle with four towers at its corners, which had been the
abode of Moorish emirs, and of Aragonese kings, but now served as the
prison of the Inquisition. It lay a couple of hundred yards outside the
western gate (Puerto del Portillo) of the city. It was a solid brick structure,
but quite unsuited to resist a serious artillery attack. The second outwork
was the suburb of San Lazaro beyond the Ebro: it was connected with
Saragossa by a new and handsome bridge, known as the ‘Puente de Piedra,’

or ‘Stone Bridge.’ Cannon were mounted at its southern end so as to sweep
its whole length.
On June 15, Lefebvre-Desnouettes appeared before the city, driving
before him some Spanish outposts which he had met upon the way. He
resolved at once to carry the place by storm, a task which, considering the
weakness of its walls, did not seem impossible, and all the more so because
the gates stood open, each defended only by an earthwork containing two or
three guns. The French general, neglecting the Monte Torrero and its
commanding slopes, attacked only the western front between the gate of
Portillo, near the Ebro, and the gate of Santa Engracia, close to the banks of
the Huerba. His French brigade assailed the northern and his Polish
regiment the southern half of this long line of walls and buildings. His two
field-batteries were run up into the fighting line, to batter the earthworks
and to reply to the Spanish guns. The only reserve which he kept in hand
consisted of his brigade of cavalry.
The resistance offered to Lefebvre was of the most irregular sort:
Palafox himself was not present, and his second-in-command, Bustamante,
seems to have done little in the way of issuing orders. The 6,000 half-
trained levies which had fought at Alagon had not recovered their
organization, and were hopelessly mixed in the line of defence with 4,000
or 5,000 armed citizens of all ages and classes who had gone to the walls,
each parish under the charge of two or three local leaders, who paid little
obedience to the commands of the regular officers.
The Captain-General himself had started out that morning at the head of
150 dragoons, and 200 infantry, all regulars, by the road beyond the Ebro.
He had told his subordinates that he was intending to raise in Upper Aragon
a force with which he would fall on Lefebvre’s line of communications, and
so compel him to abandon his attack on the city. But there is no doubt that
he had really conceived grave doubts as to the possibility of Saragossa
defending itself, and intended to avoid being captured within its walls. He
wished to have the power of continuing the struggle outside, in case the
French should penetrate into the city. On the morning after the fight at
Alagon, bruised and wounded, he was in a pessimistic frame of mind, as his
resolve shows. But there is no occasion to brand him, as does Napier, with
timidity: his previous and his subsequent conduct preclude such a charge. It
was merely an error of judgement: the Captain-General should have stayed

behind to defend his capital, and have sent his brother Lazan, or some other
officer whom he could trust, to raise the country-side in the rear of the
French[115]. His retirement might well have discouraged the Saragossans and
led to deplorable results; but as a matter of fact, Lefebvre’s attack began so
soon after he had ridden out over the bridge, that the news of his departure
had not yet got abroad, and the populace were still under the impression
that he was among them. It was not till the fighting was over that he was
missed.
Lefebvre-Desnouettes before Saragossa was in exactly the same position
as Moncey before Valencia, and acted in the same way, pushing forward a
rather reckless attack on the city in full confidence that the Spaniards would
not stand before an assault pressed home. He had, moreover, the advantages
of being able to attack a wider front, of having no ditches and inundations
to cramp his operations, and of dealing with walls even weaker than those
of Valencia, and defended by artillery of which very few were pieces of
heavy calibre.
The first attack was delivered in the most dashing, not to say foolhardy,
style. At the gate of Santa Engracia a squadron of Polish lancers, who led
the van, charged into and over the small battery which covered the ingress
into the city. Their wild rush carried them right into the place, in spite of a
dropping fire of musketry directed upon them from every house that they
passed. Turning into a broad lane to the left, these headstrong horsemen
rode forward, losing men at every step, till they were brought to a stand in
the Plaza del Portillo, where the majority were shot down; a very few
succeeded in escaping by the way along which they had come. The Polish
infantry, which should have followed closely on the heels of the lancers,
penetrated no further than the earthwork at the gate, where it got closely
engaged with the Spaniards who held the neighbouring convent of Santa
Engracia. Exposed in the open street to a heavy fire from behind walls and
windows, the leading battalion gave way, and retired into the olive groves
and buildings outside the gate.
Meanwhile the French brigade of Lefebvre’s division attacked the gates
of Portillo and the Carmen and the adjoining cavalry barracks. At the last-
named post they scaled the walls, which were particularly low and weak at
this point, and got into the city. But at the gates the batteries in the narrow
ingress held them back. After a sharp skirmish, a general rush of peasants,

soldiers, and citizens, swept out the invaders from the cavalry barracks, and
the front of defence was restored. Lefebvre would have done well to pause
before renewing his assault: but (like Moncey at Valencia) he was loth to
believe that the enemy would face a persistent attempt to break in. He
accordingly ordered both the columns to renew their attacks: for some time
it seemed likely that he might succeed, for the French forced both the
Carmen and the Portillo gates and reoccupied the cavalry barracks, while
the Poles burst in for a second time at Santa Engracia. But it proved
impossible to make any further advance into the city, where every house
was full of musketeers and the narrow lanes were blocked with artillery,
which swept them from end to end. When it became clear that the enemy
were making no further progress, the Spaniards rallied behind the Bull-Ring
on the Portillo front, and in the convent of Santa Engracia on the southern
front, and swept out the decimated battalions of Lefebvre by a determined
charge[116].
It is not surprising to find that the assailants had suffered very heavily in
such a desperate attack on walls and barricades teeming with defenders
worked up to a high pitch of patriotic frenzy. Lefebvre lost 700 men, and
left behind him at the Portillo gate several guns which had been brought up
too close to the place, and could not be dragged off under the dreadful
musketry fire from the walls, and the flanking discharges from the
neighbouring castle of Aljafferia. The Spaniards, fighting under cover
except at the moment of their final charges, had suffered comparatively
little: their loss is estimated at not much over 300 men. They might well be
proud of their success: they had certainly showed a heroic spirit in fighting
so obstinately after three crushing defeats in the open field. That a
practically unfortified town should defend itself by street-fighting was a
new idea: and that peasants and citizens (there were not 900 regulars in the
place) should not only hold out behind walls, but execute desperate charges
en masse, would till that day have been regarded as impossible by any
soldier of Napoleon. Every thinking man in the French army must have
looked with some dismay on the results of the fight, not because of the loss
suffered, for that was a mere trifle, but because of the prospect of the
desperate national resistance which had evidently to be faced.
Meanwhile, Lefebvre-Desnouettes retired for some thousands of yards
from the city, and pitched his camp facing its western front. He sent

pressing letters asking for reinforcements both to Madrid and to Bayonne,
and attempted no offensive action for ten days. If he sent a formal summons
of surrender to the Saragossans, it was to waste time and allow fresh troops
to arrive, rather than with any hope that he could intimidate the citizens. He
was himself more likely to be attacked during the next few days than to
make any forward movement. But he was already beginning to receive
reinforcements: on June 21 there arrived two battalions of the 2nd Regiment
of the Vistula, and more troops were behind.
Palafox, on the other hand, received much unexpected encouragement
from the combat of the sixteenth. On receiving the news of it at Belchite on
the following morning, he sent back his brother, the Marquis de Lazan,
giving him the command of the city, and bidding him tell the Saragossans
that he would endeavour to raise the siege in a very few days. There was
already a considerable body of insurgents in arms in South-western Aragon,
under the Baron de Versage, who had raised at Calatayud two battalions of
new levies[117], and gathered in some fugitives from the Spanish garrison of
Madrid. Palafox ordered the baron to join him with every man that he could
bring, and their two detachments met at Almunia on June 21, and from
thence marched towards Saragossa by the road which leads down the valley
of the Xalon by Epila. At the last-named place they were only fifteen miles
from Lefebvre-Desnouettes’ camp, and were already threatening the French
communications with Logroño and Vittoria. But their army was still very
small—no more than 550 regular infantry, 1,000 men of Versage’s new
regiments, 350 cavalry, and a couple of thousand levies of all kinds, among
whom were noted a company of eighty armed Capuchin friars and a body of
mounted smugglers.
The French general had now to make up his mind whether he would
raise the siege and fall upon Palafox with his whole army, or whether he
would dare to divide his scanty resources, and maintain the attack on the
city with one part, while he sent a containing force against the Captain-
General’s bands. He resolved to take the latter course—a most hazardous
one considering the fact that he had, even with his last reinforcements, not
much more than 6,000 sound men in his camp. He dispatched the Polish
Colonel Chlopiski with the first regiment of the Vistula, one French
battalion, a squadron of lancers and four guns to hold back Palafox, while
with the 3,000 men that remained he executed several demonstrations

against outlying parts of the defences of Saragossa, in order to distract the
attention of the citizens.
This very risky plan was carried out with complete success. While the
Saragossans were warding off imaginary attacks, Chlopiski made a forced
march and fell upon Palafox at Epila on the night of June 23-24. The
Aragonese army was completely surprised and routed in a confused
engagement fought in the dark. Several hundred were cut up, and the town
of Epila was sacked: Palafox fell back in disorder towards Calatayud and
the mountains, while Chlopiski returned to the siege.
The Captain-General, much disconcerted by this disaster, resolved that
he would fight no more battles in the open, but merely reinforce the city
with the best of his soldiers and resist behind its walls. So sending back
Versage and his levies to the hills, he made an enormous detour with his
handful of veteran troops and a few hundred irregulars, and re-entered
Saragossa by the northern side, which still remained open. He had great
difficulty in holding his followers together, for many (and especially his
untrustworthy cavalry) wished to retire on Valencia and to abandon the
struggle in Aragon. But by appealing to their patriotism—‘he would give
every man who insisted on it a passport for Valencia, but those who loved
him would follow him’—he finally carried off the whole force, and took
somewhat over 1,000 men back to the besieged city [July 1].
During his absence the condition of affairs in Saragossa had been
considerably altered. On the one hand the defences had been much
improved: the gates had been strongly stockaded, and the walls had been
thickened with earth and sandbags, and furnished with a continuous
banquette, which had hitherto been wanting. On the other hand the French
were beginning to receive reinforcements: on the twenty-sixth General
Verdier arrived with three battalions of his division (the second of
Bessières’ corps)[118] and two bataillons de marche, in all some 3,000 or
3,500 men. From this time forward small bodies of troops began to reach
the besiegers at short intervals, including two more Polish battalions[119], one
battalion of French regulars, two Portuguese battalions (the last of the
unfortunate division which was on its way across Spain towards the Baltic),
1,000 National Guards of the Hautes Pyrénées and Basses Pyrénées, hastily
sent across the frontier from Bayonne, and three squadrons of cavalry[120].
What was more important than the mere numbers was that they brought

with them siege-guns, in which Lefebvre had hitherto been entirely
deficient. These pieces came from the citadel of Pampeluna, and were part
of those resources of which the French had so treacherously taken
possession in the preceding February.
Verdier on his arrival superseded Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who was
considerably his junior, and took charge of the siege. His first act was to
develop an attack on the Monte Torrero, the hill in the suburbs, beyond the
Huerba, which dominates, at a distance of 1,800 yards, the southern front of
the city. The Spaniards had neither encircled it with continuous lines, nor
crowned it with any closed work. It was protected only by two small
batteries and some trenches covering the most obvious points of attack. The
garrison was composed of no more than 500 men, half peasants, half
regulars of the Regiment of Estremadura, of which three weak battalions
had arrived from Tarrega on the previous day (June 27)[121]. Verdier sent
three columns, each of one battalion, against the more accessible parts of
the position, and drove out the small defending force with ease. His task
was made lighter by a piece of casual luck: on the night before the assault
the main powder-magazine of the Saragossans, situated in the Seminary,
was ignited by the carelessness of a workman, and blew up, killing many
persons and wrecking the Seminary itself and many houses in its vicinity. A
few hours after this disaster had taken place, and while the whole city was
busy in extinguishing the conflagration, the French attack was delivered;
hence the original garrison got no help from within the walls. But its own
conduct was deplorably weak: the colonel in command[122] headed the rush
to the rear, a piece of cowardice for which he was imprisoned and (after the
siege had been raised) was sent before a court-martial and shot.
On the evening of the twenty-eighth Verdier began to construct heavy
breaching batteries on the slopes of the Monte Torrero, commanding all the
southern side of the city. Others were thrown up on the south-western front,
opposite the points which had been unsuccessfully assaulted twelve days
before. On the thirtieth of June the works were armed with thirty siege-
guns, four mortars, and twelve howitzers, which opened simultaneously on
Saragossa at midnight, and continued to play upon the place for twenty-four
hours, setting many houses on fire, and breaching the flimsy ramparts in
half a dozen places. The old castle of the Aljafferia was badly injured, and
the gates of Portillo and the Carmen knocked out of shape: there were also

large gaps in the convent of the Augustinians, and in the Misericordia,
whose back wall formed part of the enceinte. All the unarmed population
was forced to take refuge in the cellars, or the more solidly built parts of the
churches, while the fighting-men were trying to construct barricades behind
the worst breaches, and to block up with sandbags, beams, and barrels all
the lanes that opened upon them.
Palafox entered Saragossa on the morning of July 2, just in time to see
Verdier launch his whole available infantry force upon the shattered western
and southern fronts of the city. The assault was made under much more
favourable conditions than that of June 16, since the strength of the
storming columns was more than doubled, and the defences had been
terribly mishandled by the bombardment. On the other hand the garrison
was in no degree shaken in spirit: the fire of the last twenty-four hours had
been much more dangerous to buildings than to men, and the results of the
first assault had given the defenders a confidence which they had not felt on
the previous occasion. Hence it came to pass that of the six columns of
assault not one succeeded in making a permanent lodgement within the
walls. Even the isolated castle of Aljafferia and the convent of San José, just
outside the Porta Quemada, were finally left in the hands of the besieged,
though the latter was for some hours held by the French. The hardest
fighting was at the Portillo gate, where the assaulting battalions more than
once reached the dilapidated earthwork that covered the ingress to the
north-western part of the city. It was here that there occurred the well-
known incident of the ‘Maid of Saragossa.’ The gunners at the small battery
in the gate had been shot down one after another by the musketry of the
assailants, the final survivors falling even before they could discharge the
last gun that they had loaded. The infantry supports were flinching and the
French were closing in, when a young woman named Agostina Zaragoza,
whose lover (an artillery sergeant) had just fallen, rushed forward, snatched
the lighted match from his dying hand, and fired the undischarged twenty-
four-pounder into the head of the storming column[123]. The enemy was
shaken by a charge of grape delivered at ten paces, the citizens, shamed by
Agostina’s example, rushed back to reoccupy the battery, and the assault
was beaten off. Palafox states that the incident occurred before his own
eyes: he gave the girl a commission as sub-lieutenant of artillery, and a
warrant for a life-pension: she was seen a year later by several English
witnesses, serving with her battery in Andalusia[124].

The fruitless attack of July 2 cost the French 200 killed and 300
wounded. The Saragossan garrison lost somewhat less, in spite of the
bombardment, since they had been fighting under cover against enemies
who had to expose themselves whenever they got near the wall. Verdier
resolved for the future to shun attempts at escalade, and to begin a regular
siege. He commenced on the third of July to construct parallels, for a main
attack on the southern side of the place, and a secondary attack on the
north-western. He also threw a detachment across the Ebro [July 11], to
close the hitherto undisturbed access to the city through the suburb of San
Lazaro and the stone bridge. The force which could be spared for this object
from an army of no more than 12,000 or 13,000 men was not really
sufficient to hold the left bank of the Ebro, and merely made ingress and
egress difficult without entirely preventing it. On two or three occasions
when considerable bodies of Spaniards presented themselves, the French
could do no more than skirmish with them and try to cut off the convoys
which they were bringing to the city. They could not exclude them, and for
the whole remainder of the siege the communications of the Saragossans
with the open country were never entirely closed[125].
By July 15, Verdier’s trenches were commencing to work up close to the
walls, and the next ten days of the month were occupied in desperate
struggles for the convents of San José, of the Capuchins and Trinitarians,
which lie outside the city near the Carmen and Porta Quemada gates. By the
twenty-fourth the French had occupied them, connected them with their
approaches, and begun to establish in them breaching batteries. Another, but
less powerful, attack was directed against the Portillo gate. The mortars and
howitzers bombarded the city continuously from the first to the third. But it
was not till the dawn of August 4 that the heavy guns were ready to begin
their task of battering down the gates and walls of Saragossa. After five
hours of steady firing the Spanish batteries were silenced, and several
breaches had been made, mostly in or about the Convent of Santa Engracia,
at the southernmost point of the city. The streets behind it had been terribly
shattered by the previous bombardment, and many buildings destroyed,
notably the central hospital, from which the Spaniards had to remove, under
a terrible hail of shells, more than 500 sick and wounded, as well as a
number of lunatics and idiots: the institution had been used as an asylum
before the outbreak of the war. Many of these unfortunate creatures were

destroyed by the besiegers’ fire[126], as were also no small number of the
wounded and of their doctors and nurses.
Palafox and his brother the marquis remained near Santa Engracia,
trying to encourage their followers to repair the barricades behind the
breaches, and to loophole and strengthen those of the houses which still
stood firm. But amid the dreadful and unceasing storm of projectiles it was
hard to keep the men together, and most of the projected retrenchments
were battered down before they could be finished. At two o’clock in the
afternoon of the fourth, Verdier let loose his storming columns, composed
of four Polish and nine French battalions[127]. They were directed in three
bodies against three separate breaches, the easternmost in the Convent of
Santa Engracia, the second at the gate of the same name, the third more to
the left, in the wall near the gate of the Carmen. All three were successful in
forcing their way into the city: the defences had been completely shattered,
and at one point 300 continuous yards of the outer wall had fallen. The
Spaniards clung for some time to the cloisters and church of Santa
Engracia, but were at last expelled or exterminated, and 1,000 yards of the
enceinte with the adjoining buildings were in the hands of the French.
It was at this moment, apparently, that Verdier sent in a parlementaire
with the laconic note—‘Head Quarters, Santa Engracia. Capitulation?’ To
which Palafox returned the well-known reply—‘Head Quarters, Saragossa.
War to the knife[128].’
All through the afternoon of the fourth of August, the French slowly
pushed their way up the streets which lead northward towards the Coso, the
main thoroughfare of Saragossa. They could only get forward by storming
each house, and turning each barricade that offered resistance, so that their
progress was very slow. While inflicting terrible losses on the Spaniards,
they were also suffering very heavily themselves. But they drove a broad
wedge into the city, till finally they reached and crossed the Coso, halfway
between the southern wall and the river. In the streets beyond the Coso their
impetus seemed to have exhausted itself: many of the men were too tired to
press forward any longer; others turned aside to plunder the churches and
the better sort of houses[129]. Verdier tried to cut his way to the great bridge,
so as to divide the defenders into two separate bodies, and was so far
successful that many of the Spaniards began to troop off across the river

into the suburb of San Lazaro. But he himself was wounded, his main
column lost its way in the narrow side-streets, and the attack died down.
In the late afternoon there was almost a suspension of hostilities, and the
firing slackened for a space. But at last the Aragonese, encouraged by the
exhaustion of their enemies, began to resume the offensive. The fugitives
who had crossed to the northern side of the Ebro were hustled together and
driven back by their leaders, while a loaded gun was placed on the bridge to
prevent their return. The garrison of the eastern front, which had not been
seriously attacked, sent all the reinforcements that it could spare into the
centre of the town. At dusk masses of Spaniards debouched from the
neighbourhood of the two cathedrals, and began to assail the positions held
by the French beyond the line of the Coso. The first charge into the open
street is recorded to have been led by a monk[130] and sixteen peasants, every
one of whom were killed or wounded; but endless reinforcements poured
out of every lane, and the exhausted French began to lose ground. The
fighting was of that deadly sort in which the question has to be settled,
whether the defenders of the houses in a street can shoot down their
assailants, exposed in the roadway, before the latter can burst into each
separate dwelling and exterminate its garrison in detail. Often the French
held the upper stories long after the Spaniards had seized the ground floor,
and the staircases had to be stormed one after the other. It was natural that
in such struggles the defenders should receive no quarter. Though the fight
raged with many variations of fortune in all the central parts of the city,
there was after a time no doubt that the Aragonese were gaining ground.
The French detachments which had penetrated furthest into the place were
gradually cut off and exterminated; the main bodies of the columns drew
back and strengthened themselves in two large stone buildings, the convents
of San Francisco and San Diego. At nightfall they retained only a wedge-
like section of the city, whose apex near San Francisco just touched the
southern side of the Coso, while its base was formed by the line of wall
between the gates of Santa Engracia and the Carmen.
The French had lost nearly 2,000 men in the struggle: the engineer
Belmas gives the total as 462 killed and 1,505 wounded[131], more than a
fifth of the troops which had actually been engaged in the assault. Among
the Saragossans, who before the street-fighting began had been subjected to
a severe bombardment for many hours, the casualties must have been nearly

as great. But they could spare combatants more easily than their enemies:
indeed they had more men than muskets, and as each defender fell there
was a rush of the unarmed to get possession of his weapon.
During the night of August 4-5 both sides, fatigued though they were, set
to work to cover themselves with barricades and works constructed with the
débris of ruined houses. In the morning both French and Spaniards had
rough but continuous lines of defence, those of the latter circling round
those of the former, with nothing but the width of a narrow street between
them. Wherever there was anything approaching an open space cannon had
been brought up to sweep it. Where the houses still stood firm,
communications had been made between them by breaking holes through
the party walls. In the streets the corpses of both sides lay thick, for under
the deadly cross-fire no one dared venture out to remove them: in a day or
two the sanitary conditions would be horrible.
Meanwhile both besiegers and besieged were too exhausted to undertake
any more serious operations, and the fighting sank to little more than a
desultory fusillade between enemies equally well protected by their
defences. Such interest as there was in the operations of August 5-6 lay
outside the walls of Saragossa. On the afternoon of the day of the great
assault a column of Spanish troops from Catalonia—two line battalions and
2,000 or 3,000 new levies and armed peasants—arrived at Villamayor on
the north of the Ebro, only seven miles from the city. It escorted a much-
desired convoy of ammunition, for the supplies in the city were running
very low. While the fighting was still raging in the streets Palafox rode out
of the suburb of San Lazaro with 100 dragoons and joined this force. On the
next morning (August 5) he skirmished with the French troops which lay
beyond the Ebro, and passed into the city one veteran battalion and a few
wagons of munitions. He then proposed to attack the detached French
brigade (that of Piré) with his whole remaining force on the next day, in
order to clear the northern front, and to send the rest of his convoy—no less
than 200 wagons—into Saragossa. But on the same night he received news
of the battle of Baylen and the surrender of Dupont’s army. Moreover, he
was informed that a division of the army of Valencia, under Saint-March,
was on the way to reinforce him. This induced him to halt for two days, to
see whether the French would not raise the siege without further fighting.

Verdier had got the same intelligence at the same hour, with orders to be
ready to retreat at a moment’s notice, and to avoid entangling himself in
further engagements. He was preparing to withdraw, when on the seventh
he received supplementary dispatches from Madrid, with directions to hold
on for the present, and to keep the Saragossans occupied, without, however,
compromising himself too much. Accordingly he resumed the
bombardment, and began to throw into the city an immense number of
shells: for he saw that when his retreat was definitely ordered, he would not
be able to carry off with him the vast stores of munitions that he had
accumulated in his camp.

Saragossa.

Seeing that the French did not move, Palafox attacked the covering force
on the left bank of the Ebro on August 8. His enemies were very inferior in
numbers and had been told not to risk anything, considering the delicate
state of affairs. Accordingly the relieving force crossed the river Gallego,

pushed back Piré’s 2,000 men in a long skirmishing fight, and ultimately
established themselves on ground just outside the suburb of San Lazaro: the
convoy, under cover of the fighting, successfully entered the city over the
great bridge. That night Verdier withdrew Piré’s brigade across the river,
thus leaving the whole northern front of the place free from blockade.
Clearly this could only mean that he was about to raise the siege, but for
five days more he continued to ravage the central parts of the city with his
bombs, and to bicker at the barricades with the Saragossans. But on the
thirteenth the Spaniards noted that his camps seemed to be growing empty,
and on the fourteenth a series of explosions told them that he was
abandoning his siege works. Santa Engracia and the other points held inside
the city were all destroyed on that day, and the ammunition which could not
be carried off was blown up. The guns which had been pressed forward into
the ruined streets were spiked and left behind, as it would have been
impossible to extricate them under the Spanish fire. Of those in the outer
batteries some were thrown into the canal, others disabled by having their
trunnions knocked off, others merely spiked. Altogether no less than fifty-
four pieces, all more or less injured, but many susceptible of repair, were
left behind to serve as trophies for the Saragossans.
Finally Verdier withdrew by slow marches up the Ebro to Tudela, where
he took post on August 17. He had lost in all over 3,500 men in his long-
continued struggle with the heroic city. The Aragonese must have suffered
at least as much, but the figures are of course impossible to verify. They
said that their casualties amounted to no more than 2,000, but this must
surely be an understatement, for Palafox says that by August 1 there were of
his original 7,000 levies only 3,500 left under arms. Even allowing for
heavy diminution by desertion and dispersion, this implies very serious
losses in action, and these seven Aragonese battalions formed only a part of
the garrison, which counted 13,000 men on August 13. Probably the
unembodied citizens and peasants suffered in a still heavier proportion than
troops which had received even a small measure of organization. If the
whole losses came to 4,500 it would not be surprising—but nothing can be
stated with certainty. Yet whatever were their sufferings, the Saragossans
had turned over a new page in the history of the art of war. They had
defended for two months an unfortified place, by means of extemporized
barricades, retrenchments, and earthworks, and had proved their ability to
resist even a formidable train of siege artillery. If the news of Dupont’s

disaster had not arrived in time to save them, they would no doubt have
succumbed in the end, as must any besieged place which is not sooner or
later relieved from the outside. But meanwhile they had accomplished a
rare feat: almost unaided by regular troops, almost destitute of trained
artillerymen and engineers, they had held at bay a force which Napoleon at
the commencement of the siege would have supposed to be equal to the task
of conquering not only Aragon, but the whole eastern side of the Iberian
Peninsula.

SECTION III: CHAPTER III
OPERATIONS IN THE NORTH: BATTLE OF
MEDINA DE RIO SECO

While Lefebvre-Desnouettes and Verdier were making their long series
of attacks on Saragossa, matters were coming to a head in the north-west of
Spain. The army of Galicia had at last descended into the plains, and
commenced to threaten the right flank of Bessières and the communications
between Burgos and Madrid. This forward movement was due neither to the
Galician Junta, nor to the officer whom they had placed in command of
their army, but to the obstinate persistence of Cuesta, who had not in the
least learnt the lesson of caution from his defeat at Cabezon, and was eager
to fight a pitched battle with all the forces that could be collected in
Northern Spain.
The resources at hand were not inconsiderable: in Galicia, or on the way
thither from Portugal, were no less than thirty-nine battalions of regular
infantry—though most of them were very weak: there were also thirteen
battalions of embodied militia, some thirty guns, and a handful of cavalry
(not more than 150 sabres). The Junta had placed in command, after the
murder of the captain-general Filanghieri, a comparatively young general—
Joachim Blake, one of those many soldiers of fortune of Irish blood who
formed such a notable element in the Spanish army. When the insurrection
broke out he had been merely colonel of the regiment named ‘the
Volunteers of the Crown’: he had never had more than three battalions to
manage before he found himself placed at the head of the whole Galician
army. Though a most unlucky general—half a dozen times he seems to have
been the victim of ill fortune, for which he was hardly responsible—Blake
was in real merit far above the average of the Spanish commanders. He had
neither the slackness nor the arrogance which were the besetting sins of so
many of the Peninsular generals: and his dauntless courage was not
combined with recklessness or careless over-confidence. He showed from

the first very considerable organizing power: all his efforts were directed to
the task of inducing the Junta and the people of Galicia to allow him to draft
the crowds of recruits who flocked to his banner into the old regiments of
the line and the militia, instead of forming them into new corps. With some
trouble he carried his point, and was able to bring up to their full
complement most of the old battalions: of new units very few[132] were
created. When he took the field it was only the old cadres thus brought up
to strength that accompanied him, not raw and unsteady troops of new
organization.
After hastily concentrating and brigading his army at Lugo, Blake led
them to the edge of the mountains which divide Galicia from the plains of
Leon. It was his original intention to stand at bay on the hills, and force the
French to attack him. With this object he occupied the passes of Manzanal,
Fuencebadon, and Puebla de Sanabria, the only places where roads of
importance penetrate into the Galician uplands [June 23]. His whole field
force, distributed into four divisions and a ‘vanguard brigade’ of light
troops, amounted to some 25,000 men fit for the field: in addition, 8,000 or
10,000 new levies were being organized behind him, but he refused—with
great wisdom—to bring them to the front during his first movements.
On Blake’s left flank were other Spanish troops: the Junta of the Asturias
had raised some 15,000 men: but these—unlike the Galician army—were
utterly raw and untrained. Of old troops there was but one single militia
battalion among them. The Junta had dispersed them in small bodies all
along the eastern and southern side of the province, arraying them to cover
not only the high road from Madrid and Leon to Oviedo, but every
impracticable mule-path that crosses the Cantabrian Mountains. By this
unwise arrangement the Asturian army was weak at every point: it was
impossible to concentrate more than 5,000 men for the defence of any part
of the long and narrow province. The fact was that the Junta looked solely
to the defence of its own land, and had no conception that the protection of
the Asturias should be treated as only a section of the great problem of the
protection of the whole of Northern Spain.
While the Galicians and the Asturians were taking up this purely
defensive attitude, they had forgotten to reckon with one factor in their
neighbourhood. Right in front of them lay the old Captain-General of
Castile, with the wrecks of the army that had been so signally routed at

Cabezon. He had retired to Benavente on the Esla, and there had halted,
finding that he was not pursued by Lasalle. Here he reorganized his
scattered Castilian levies into three battalions, and raised three more in the
province of Leon. He had still 300 or 400 regular cavalry, but not a single
gun. Quite undismayed by his late defeat, he persisted in wishing to fight in
the plain, and began to send urgent messages both to Blake and to the
Juntas of Asturias and Galicia, begging them to send down their armies
from the hills, and aid him in making a dash at Valladolid, with the object of
cutting off Bessières’ communications with Madrid, and so disarranging the
whole system of Napoleon’s plan for the conquest of Spain.
The Asturians, partly from a well-justified disbelief in Cuesta’s ability,
partly from a selfish desire to retain all their troops for the defence of their
own province, refused to stir. They sent the Captain-General a modest
reinforcement, two battalions of the newly raised regiment of Covadonga,
but refused any more aid. Instead, they suggested that Cuesta should fall
back on Leon and the southern slope of the Asturian hills, so as to threaten
from thence any advance of the French into the plains of Leon.
But the Galician Junta showed themselves less unyielding. Despite of
the remonstrances of Blake, who was set on maintaining the defensive, and
holding the passes above Astorga, they consented to allow their army to
move down into the plain of Old Castile and to join Cuesta. After some
fruitless remonstrances Blake moved forward with the bulk of his host,
leaving behind him his second division to hold the passes, while with the
other three and his vanguard brigade he marched on Benavente [July 5].
On July 10 the armies of Galicia and Castile met at Villalpando, and a
brisk quarrel at once broke out between their commanders. Cuesta was for
attacking the French at once: Blake pointed out that for an army with no
more than thirty guns and 500 or 600 cavalry to offer battle in the plains
was sheer madness. The Irish general had the larger and more effective
army, but Cuesta was thirteen years his senior as lieutenant-general, and
insisted on assuming command of the combined host in accordance with the
normal rules of military precedence. After some fruitless resistance Blake
yielded, and the whole Spanish army moved forward on Valladolid: all that
Cuesta would grant on the side of caution was that the third Galician
division, 5,000 strong, should be left as a reserve at Benavente. Even this
was a mistake: if the two generals were to fight at all, they should have put

every available man in line, and have endeavoured at all costs to induce the
Asturians also to co-operate with them. They might have had in all for the
oncoming battle 40,000 men, instead of 22,000, if the outlying troops had
been collected.
A blow from the north-west was precisely what Napoleon at Bayonne
and Savary at Madrid had been expecting for some weeks. Both of them
were perfectly conscious that any check inflicted on Bessières in Old
Castile would wreck the whole plan of invasion. So much of the marshal’s
corps d’armée had been distracted towards Saragossa, that it was clearly
necessary to reinforce him. From Madrid Savary sent up half of the troops
of the Imperial Guard which had hitherto been in the capital—three
battalions of fusiliers (first regiment) and three squadrons of cavalry[133].
Napoleon afterwards blamed him severely for not having sent more, saying
that from the mass of troops in and about Madrid he might have spared
another complete division—that of Gobert, the second division of Moncey’s
corps. Without its aid the Emperor half-expected that Bessières might be
checked, if the Galicians came down in full force[134]. He himself sent up
from Bayonne nearly all the troops which were at that moment under his
hand, ten veteran battalions just arrived from Germany, forming the
division of General Mouton.
The reinforcements being hurried on to Bessières by forced marches,
that general found himself on July 9 at the head of a force with which he
thought that he might venture to attack Blake and Cuesta. If they had
brought with them all their troops, and had called in the Asturians, it is
probable that the marshal would have found himself too weak to face them:
fortunately for him he had only five-ninths of the army of Galicia and
Cuesta’s miserable levies in front of him. His own fighting force was
formed of odd fragments of all the divisions which formed his corps
d’armée: large sections of each of them were left behind to guard his
communications with France, and others were before Saragossa. Bessières
marched from Burgos with the brigade of the Imperial Guard: at Palencia he
picked up Lasalle’s cavalry with half Mouton’s newly arrived division of
veterans (the second brigade was left at Vittoria) and a small part of Merle’s
division, which had been hastily brought over the mountains from
Santander to join him. There was also present the larger half of Verdier’s
division, of which the rest was now in Aragon with its commander[135].

On the evening of July 13, Lasalle’s light cavalry got in touch with the
outposts of the Spaniards near Medina de Rio Seco, and reported that Blake
and Cuesta were present in force. On the next morning Bessières marched
before daybreak from Palencia, and just as the day was growing hot,
discovered the enemy drawn up on rising ground a little to the east of the
small town which has given its name to the battle. Blake had 15,000
infantry and 150 cavalry with twenty guns[136]; Cuesta 6,000 infantry and
550 cavalry, but not a single cannon. They outnumbered Bessières by nearly
two to one in foot soldiery, but had little more than half his number of
horse, and only two-thirds as many guns.
A more prudent general than Cuesta would have refused to fight at all
with an army containing in its ranks no less than 9,000 recruits, and almost
destitute of cavalry. But if fighting was to be done, a wise man would at any
rate have chosen a good position, where his flanks would be covered from
turning movements and inaccessible to the enemy’s very superior force of
horsemen. The old Captain-General cared nothing for such caution: he had
merely drawn up his army on a gentle hillside, somewhat cut up by low
stone walls, but practicable for cavalry at nearly every point. His flanks had
no protection of any kind from the lie of the ground: behind his back was
the town of Medina de Rio Seco, and the dry bed of the Sequillo river,
obstacles which would tend to make a retreat difficult to conduct in orderly
fashion. But a retreat was the last thing in Cuesta’s thoughts.

Battle of Medina de Rio Seco. July 14, 1808.

Bad as was the position selected, the way in which it was occupied was
still more strange. The Captain-General had divided his host into two
halves, the one consisting of the first division of the army of Galicia and of
the vanguard brigade, the other of the fourth Galician division and the raw
‘Army of Castile.’ Blake with the first-named force was drawn up in a
short, compact formation, three lines deep, at the south-eastern front of the
hill, the ‘Plateau of Valdecuevas,’ as it is called. His right looked down into
the plain, his left, in the centre of the plateau, stood quite ‘in the air.’ But
nearly a mile to his left rear, and quite out of sight, lay the other half of the
army, just too far off to protect Blake’s exposed flank if it should be
attacked, and in a very bad position for defending itself. Why Cuesta ranged
his left wing (or second line, if it may so be called) low down on the reverse
slope of the plateau, and in a place where it could not even see Blake’s
corps, it is impossible to conceive. Toreño hazards the guess that, in his
arrogant confidence, he placed Blake where he would have to bear the
stress of the battle, and might probably lose ground, intending to come up

himself with the left wing and restore the fight when his colleague should
be sufficiently humbled. Such a plan would not have been outside the scope
of the old man’s selfish pride.
Bessières, marching up from the east, came in sight of the Spaniards in
the early morning. He at once deployed his whole army, and advanced in
battle array over the plain. In front was a slight cavalry screen of Lasalle’s
chasseurs; next came Mouton’s division, deployed to the right, and Merle’s
division, with Sabathier’s brigade, to the left of the country-road which
leads, over the plateau, towards Medina de Rio Seco. The Imperial Guard,
horse and foot, and the bulk of Lasalle’s cavalry brigade were in reserve
behind the centre. On getting near the enemy’s position, Bessières soon
discovered the two halves of the Spanish army and the broad gap which lay
between them. His mind was at once made up: he proposed to contain
Cuesta with a small force, and to fall upon and envelop Blake with the rest
of his army before the Captain-General of Castile could come to his aid.
This excellent plan was carried out to the letter, thanks to the incapacity of
Cuesta.
Not far east of the plateau of Valdecuevas lay an isolated eminence, the
mound of Monclin: on it the marshal drew up the greater part of his artillery
(twenty guns) which began to batter Blake’s front line: the Galician
batteries replied, and held their own though outnumbered by two to one.
Then Sabathier’s eight weak battalions deployed and commenced a cautious
attack upon Blake’s front: this was not to be pressed home for a time.
Meanwhile Merle’s seven battalions pushed into the fight, continuing
Sabathier’s line to the south-west and trying to envelop Blake’s southern
flank. They forced the Galicians to throw back their right wing, and to keep
continually extending it, in order to avoid being turned. The Spaniards
fought not amiss, and for some hour or more the battle was almost
stationary.
Meanwhile, far to the French right, Mouton’s five battalions were
executing a cautious demonstration against Cuesta’s forces, across the
northern folds of the plateau. The old general allowed himself to be
completely occupied by this trifling show of attack, and made no movement
to aid Blake’s wing. The gap between him and his colleague was not filled
up. Then came the sudden development of Bessières’ plan: Sabathier and
Merle were told to attack in earnest, and while Blake was deeply engaged

with their fifteen battalions, Lasalle rode into the open space on the left of
the Galicians, formed up the 22nd chasseurs à cheval at right angles to the
Spanish line, and charged in furiously upon Blake’s flank. The unfortunate
troops on whom the blow fell were deployed in line, and utterly unprepared
for a cavalry shock from the side. The first battalion which received the
attack broke at once and ran in upon the second[137]: in a few minutes
Blake’s whole left wing fell down like a pack of cards, each corps as it fled
sweeping away that next to it. The French infantry, advancing at the same
moment, ran in with the bayonet, seized the Spanish guns, and hustled the
Galicians westward along the plateau in a mob. Blake’s troops were only
saved from complete destruction by the steadiness of a Navarrese battalion,
which formed square to cover the retreat, and at the cost of one-third of its
strength allowed the other corps to get a long start in their flight. They
retired due west, and crossed the Sequillo to the south of the town of Rio
Seco before they could be rallied.
It was now the turn of Cuesta to suffer. The moment that Blake was
disposed of, Bessières marched over the hill towards the other half of the
Spanish army: leaving some of Lasalle’s cavalry and Sabathier’s brigade to
pursue the routed corps, he formed the whole of his remaining troops in a
line, bringing up the reserve of the Imperial Guard to make its centre, while
Mouton formed the right wing and the two brigades of Merle the left.
Cuesta, outnumbered and attacked down hill, would have done wisely to
retreat and to seek for shelter in and behind the town of Rio Seco in his
immediate rear. But he had prepared a new surprise for the enemy; as they
descended upon him they were astonished to see his front line, the eight
battalions which formed the fourth Galician division, form itself into
columns of attack and slowly commence to climb the hill with the object of
attacking their right and centre. Meanwhile Cuesta’s handful of cavalry rode
out on the northern end of the line and fell upon the skirmishers of
Mouton’s division, whom it chased back till it was met and driven off by
the three squadrons of the Imperial Guard.
The uphill charge of the fourth Galician division was a fine but an utterly
useless display of courage. They were attacking nearly double their own
numbers of victorious troops, who outflanked them on both wings and tore
them to pieces with a concentric fire of artillery to which they could not
respond. The regiments at each end of the line were soon broken up, but in

the centre two battalions of picked grenadiers[138] actually closed with the
French, captured four guns of the Imperial Guard, and forced back the
supporting infantry of the same corps for a short space, till Bessières hurled
upon them the three squadrons of the Guard-Cavalry, which broke them and
swept them down hill again.
Seeing his attack fail, Cuesta bade his last reserve, the raw Castilian and
Leonese levies, retreat behind the river and the town of Medina de Rio
Seco, which they did without much loss, covered to a certain extent by the
two Asturian battalions, the only part of Cuesta’s own force which was
seriously engaged.
The ‘Army of Castile,’ therefore, had no more than 155 casualties, but
the two Galician divisions had suffered heavily. They left behind them on
the field nearly 400 dead, and over 500 wounded, with some 1,200
prisoners. The ten guns of Blake’s wing had all been captured, and with
them several pairs of colours. In addition more than a thousand of the
Galician recruits had dispersed, and could not be rallied. Altogether Blake’s
army had lost over 3,000 men. The French, as might have been expected,
had suffered comparatively little: they had 105 killed and 300 wounded,
according to Foy; other historians give even smaller figures.
A vigorous pursuit might have done much further harm to the defeated
Spaniards; but Bessières’ men had been marching since two in the morning,
and fighting all through the mid-day. They were much fatigued, and their
commander did not press the chase far beyond the river. But the town of
Rio Seco was sacked from cellar to garret, with much slaying of non-
combatants and outrages of all kinds[139], a fact very discreditable to the
marshal, who could have stopped the plunder had he chosen.
The defeated generals met, a little to the west of the battle-field, and
after a bitter altercation, in which Blake used the plainest words about
Cuesta’s generalship, parted in wrath. The Galicians retired by the way they
had come, and joined the division which had been left behind three days
before; they then went back to the passes above Astorga, abandoning a
considerable amount of stores at Benavente. Cuesta took the army of
Castile to Leon, retiring on the Asturias rather than on Galicia.
Bessières’ well-earned victory was creditable to himself and his troops,
but the way had been made easy for him by the astounding tactical errors of

the Captain-General of Castile. The rank and file of the Spanish army had
no reason to be ashamed of their conduct: it was their commander who
should have blushed at the reckless way in which he had sacrificed his
willing troops. Handled by Cuesta the best army in the world might have
been defeated by inferior numbers.
The strategical results of the battle of Rio Seco were great and far-
reaching. All danger of the cutting of the communications between Madrid
and Bayonne was averted, and Napoleon, his mind set at rest on this point,
could now assert that Dupont’s position in Andalusia was henceforth the
only hazardous point in his great scheme of invasion[140]. It would clearly be
a very long time before the army of Galicia would again dare to take the
offensive, and meanwhile Madrid was safe, and the attempt to conquer
Southern Spain could be resumed without any fear of interruption.
Bessières, after such a victory, was strong enough not to require any further
reinforcements from the central reserve in and about the capital.
The most obvious result of Rio Seco was that King Joseph was now able
to proceed on his way to Madrid, and to enter the city in triumph. After
receiving the homage of the Spanish notables at Bayonne, and nominating a
ministry, he had crossed the frontier on July 9. But he had been obliged to
stop short at Burgos, till Bessières should have beaten off the attack of
Blake and Cuesta: his presence there had been most inconvenient to the
marshal, who had been forced to leave behind for his protection Rey’s
veteran brigade of Mouton’s division, which he would gladly have taken
out to the approaching battle.
When the news of Medina de Rio Seco arrived at Burgos, the usurper
resumed his march on Madrid, still escorted by Rey’s troops. He travelled
by short stages, stopping at every town to be complimented by reluctant
magistrates and corporations, who dared not refuse their homage. The
populace everywhere shut itself up in its houses in silent protest. Joseph’s
state entry into Madrid on July 20 was the culminating point of the
melancholy farce. He passed through the streets with a brilliant staff,
between long lines of French bayonets, and amid the blare of military
music. But not a Spaniard was to be seen except the handful of courtiers
and officials who had accepted the new government. The attempts of the
French to produce a demonstration, or even to get the town decorated, had
met with passive disobedience. Like Charles of Austria when he entered

Madrid in 1710, Joseph Bonaparte might have exclaimed that he could see
‘a court, but no people’ about him. But he affected not to notice the dismal
side of the situation, assumed an exaggerated urbanity, and heaped
compliments and preferment on the small section of Afrancesados who
adhered to him.
The usurper had resolved to give himself as much as possible the air of a
Spanish national king. Of all his Neapolitan court he had brought with him
only one personage, his favourite Saligny, whom he had made Duke of San
Germano. The rest of his household was composed of nobles and officials
chosen from among the herd which had bowed before him at Bayonne.
There were among them several of the late partisans of King Ferdinand, of
whom some had frankly sold themselves to his supplanter, while others
(like the Duke of Infantado) were only looking for an opportunity to
abscond when it might present itself. The first list of ministers was also full
of names that were already well known in the Spanish bureaucracy. Of the
cabinet of Ferdinand VII, Cevallos the minister of Foreign Affairs, O’Farrill
at the War Office, Piñuela at the ministry of Justice, were base enough to
accept the continuation of their powers by the usurper. Urquijo, who took
the Secretaryship of State, was an old victim of Godoy’s, who had once
before held office under Charles IV. Mazarredo, who was placed at the
ministry of Marine, was perhaps the most distinguished officer in the
Spanish navy. But Joseph imagined that his greatest stroke of policy was the
appointment as minister of the Interior of Gaspar de Jovellanos, the most
prominent among the Spanish liberals, whose reputation for wisdom and
patriotism had cost him a long imprisonment during the days of the Prince
of the Peace. The idea was ingenious, but the plan for strengthening the
ministry failed, for Jovellanos utterly refused to take office along with a
clique of traitors and in the cabinet of a usurper. Yet even without him, the
body of courtiers and officials whom Joseph collected was far more
respectable, from their high station and old experience, than might have
been expected—a fact very disgraceful to the Spanish bureaucrats.
In less troublous times, and with a more legitimate title to the crown,
Joseph Bonaparte might have made a very tolerable king. He was certainly
a far more worthy occupant of the throne than any of the miserable Spanish
Bourbons: but he was not of the stuff of which successful usurpers are
made. He was a weak, well-intentioned man, not destitute of a heart or a

conscience: and as he gradually realized all the evils that he had brought on
Spain by his ill-regulated ambition, he grew less and less satisfied with his
position as his brother’s tool. He made long and untiring efforts to
conciliate the Spaniards, by an unwavering affability and mildness,
combined with a strict attention to public business. Unfortunately all his
efforts were counteracted by his brother’s harshness, and by the greed and
violence of the French generals, over whom he could never gain any
control. It is a great testimony in his favour that the Spanish people
despised rather than hated him: their more violent animosity was reserved
for Napoleon. His nominal subjects agreed to regard him as a humorous
character: they laughed at his long harangues, in which Neapolitan phrases
were too often mixed with the sonorous Castilian: they insisted that he was
blind of one eye—which did not happen to be the case. They spoke of him
as always occupied with the pleasures of the table and with miscellaneous
amours—accusations for which there was a very slight foundation of fact.
They insisted that he was a coward and a sluggard—titles which he was far
from meriting. He was, they said, perpetually hoodwinked, baffled, and
bullied, alike by his generals, his ministers, and his mistresses. But they
never really hated him—a fact which, considering the manner of his
accession, must be held to be very much to his credit.
But the first stay of the ‘Intrusive King,’ as the Spaniards called him, in
his capital, was to be very short. He had only arrived there on July 20: his
formal proclamation took place on the twenty-fourth. He had hardly settled
down in the royal palace, and commenced a dispute with the effete ‘Council
of Castile’—which with unexpected obstinacy refused to swear the oath to
him and to the constitution of Bayonne—when he was obliged to take to
flight. On the twenty-fourth rumours began to be current in Madrid that a
great disaster had taken place in Andalusia, and that Dupont’s army had
been annihilated. On the twenty-eighth the news was confirmed in every
particular. On August 1, the King, the court, and the 20,000 French troops
which still remained in and about the capital, marched out by the northern
road, and took their way towards the Ebro. This retreat was the result of a
great council of war, in which the energetic advice of Savary, who wished
to fight one more battle in front of the capital, with all the forces that could
be concentrated, was overruled by the King and the majority of the
generals. ‘A council of war never fights,’ as has been most truly observed.

SECTION III: CHAPTER IV
DUPONT IN ANDALUSIA: THE CAPITULATION
OF BAYLEN

We left General Dupont at Andujar, on the upper course of the
Guadalquivir, whither he had retired on June 19 after evacuating Cordova.
Deeply troubled by the interruption of his communications with Madrid,
and by the growing strength displayed by the Spanish army in his front, he
had resolved that it was necessary to draw back to the foot of the Sierra
Morena, and to recover at all costs his touch with the main French army in
the capital. He kept sending to Murat (or rather to Savary, who had now
superseded the Grand-Duke) persistent demands for new orders and for
large reinforcements. Most of his messengers were cut off on the way by
the insurgents, but his situation had become known at head quarters, and
was engrossing much of Savary’s attention—more of it indeed than
Napoleon approved. The Emperor wrote on July 13 that the decisive point
was for the moment in Castile, and not in Andalusia, and that the best way
to strengthen Dupont was to reinforce Bessières[141].
Such had not been Savary’s opinion: frightened at the isolation in which
Dupont now lay, he sent to his assistance the second division of his corps,
6,000 men under General Vedel, all recruits of the ‘legions of reserve,’ save
one single battalion of Swiss troops. The division was accompanied by
Boussard’s cavalry, the 6th Provisional Dragoons, some 600 strong. Vedel
made his way through La Mancha without difficulty, but on entering the
Despeña Perros defiles found his passage disputed by a body of insurgents
—2,000 peasants with four antique cannon—who had stockaded themselves
in the midst of the pass. A resolute attack scattered them in a few minutes,
and on reaching La Carolina on the southern slope of the mountains Vedel
got in touch with Dupont, who had hitherto no notice of his approach [June
27].

Instead of leaving the newly arrived division to guard the passes, Dupont
called it down to join him in the valley of the Guadalquivir. With the
assistance of Vedel’s troops he considered himself strong enough to make
head against the Spanish army under Castaños, which was commencing to
draw near to Andujar. Keeping his original force at that town—a great
centre of roads, but a malarious spot whose hospitals were already crowded
with 600 sick,—he placed Vedel at Baylen, a place sixteen miles further
east, but still in the plain, though the foot-hills of the Sierra Morena begin
to rise just behind it. To assert himself and strike terror into the insurgents,
Dupont ordered one of Vedel’s brigades to make a forced march to Jaen, the
capital of a province and a considerable focus of rebellion. This expedition
scattered the local levies, took and sacked Jaen, and then returned in safety
to Baylen [July 2-3].
Meanwhile Castaños was drawing near: he had now had a month in
which to organize his army. Like Blake in Galicia, he had used the recruits
of Andalusia to fill up the gaps in the depleted battalions of the regular
army. But less fortunate than his colleague in the north, he had not been
able to prevent the Juntas of Seville and Granada from creating a number of
new volunteer corps, and had been obliged to incorporate them in his field
army, where they were a source of weakness rather than of strength. His
total force was some 33,000 or 34,000 men, of whom 2,600 were cavalry,
for in this arm he was far better provided than was the army of the North.
The whole was organized in four divisions, under Generals Reding,
Coupigny, Felix Jones (an Irish officer, in spite of his Welsh name), and La
Peña. In addition there was a flying brigade of new levies under Colonel
Cruz-Murgeon, which was pushed forward along the roots of the
mountains, at a considerable distance in front of the main body: it was
ordered to harass Dupont’s northern flank and to cut his communications
with Baylen and La Carolina.
With 16,000 or 17,000 men, including nearly 3,500 cavalry, Dupont
ought to have been able to contain Castaños, if not to beat him. The
proportion of his forces to those of the enemy was not much less than that
which Bessières had possessed at Medina de Rio Seco. But, unfortunately
for himself and his master, Dupont was far from possessing the boldness
and the skill of the marshal. By assuming not a vigorous offensive but a
timid defensive along a protracted front, he threw away his chances. The

line which he had resolved to hold was that of the Upper Guadalquivir,
from Andujar to the next passage up the river, the ferry of Mengibar, eight
miles from Baylen. This gave a front of some fifteen miles to hold: but
unfortunately even when drawn out to this length the two divisions of
Barbou and Vedel did not cover all the possible lines of attack which
Castaños might adopt. He might still march past them and cut them off from
the defiles of the Morena, by going a little higher up the river and crossing
it near Baeza and Ubeda. Dupont was wrong to take this line of defence at
all: unless he was prepared to attack the army of Andalusia in the open, he
should have retired to Baylen or to La Carolina, where he would have been
able to cover the passes for as long as he might choose, since he could not
have had either of his flanks turned.
Meanwhile he was gratified to hear that further reinforcements were
being sent to him. Unreasonably disquieted about Andalusia, as Napoleon
thought, Savary proceeded to send a third division to aid Dupont. This was
Gobert’s, the second of Moncey’s corps: it started from Madrid not quite
complete, and left strong detachments at the more important towns along
the road through La Mancha. Though originally seventeen battalions strong,
it reached the northern slope of the Sierra Morena with only ten. Savary had
not intended it to go any further: he had told Dupont that it was to be used
to cover his retreat, if a retreat became necessary, but not for active
operations in Andalusia. But disregarding these directions Dupont
commanded Gobert to cross the Morena and come down to join Vedel: this
he did, bringing with him nine ‘provisional battalions[142]’ and the second
provisional regiment of cuirassiers, perhaps 5,000 men in all. There were
now over 20,000 French on the south side of the mountain, a force amply
sufficient to deal with Castaños and his 33,000 Andalusians [July 7]. But
they were still widely scattered. Dupont lay at Andujar with 9,000 or 10,000
sabres and bayonets: Vedel was sixteen miles away at Baylen, with 6,000
men, of whom 2,000 under General Liger-Belair were pushed forward to
the ferry of Mengibar. Gobert was at La Carolina, at the foot of the passes,
with five battalions about him, and a sixth encamped on the summit of the
defile. He had sent forward the remainder of his division (the four battalions
of the sixth provisional regiment, and half the second provisional
cuirassiers) to join Dupont at Andujar, so that he had not more than 2,800
bayonets and 350 cavalry with him.

Castaños, meanwhile, had brought up his whole army, with the
exception of the flying corps of Cruz-Murgeon, to a line close in front of
Andujar: the heads of his columns were at Arjona and Arjonilla, only five
miles from Dupont. On July 11 the Spanish generals held a council of war
at Porcuña, and drew out their plan of operations. Since the enemy seemed
to be still quiescent, they resolved to attack him in his chosen position
behind the river. Castaños, in person—with the divisions of Jones and La
Peña, 12,000 strong—undertook to keep Dupont employed, by delivering
an attack on Andujar, which he did not intend to press home unless he got
good news from his second and third columns. Meanwhile, six miles up the
river, Coupigny with the second division, nearly 8,000 strong, was to
attempt to cross the Guadalquivir by the ford of Villa Nueva. Lastly, Reding
with the first division, the best and most numerous of the whole army,
10,000 strong, was to seize the ferry of Mengibar and march on Baylen.
Here he was to be joined by Coupigny, and the two corps were then to fall
upon the rear of Dupont’s position at Andujar, while Castaños was besetting
it in front. It was their aim to surround and capture the whole of the French
division, if its general did not move away before the encircling movement
was complete. Meanwhile the flying column of Cruz-Murgeon, about 3,000
strong, was to cross the Guadalquivir below Andujar, throw itself into the
mountains in the north, and join hands with Reding and Coupigny behind
the back of Dupont.
This plan, though ultimately crowned with success, was perilous in the
highest degree. But Castaños had seriously underestimated the total force of
Dupont, as well as misconceived his exact position. He was under the
impression that the main body of the French, which he did not calculate at
more than 12,000 or 14,000 men, was concentrated at Andujar, and that
there were nothing more than weak detachments at Mengibar, Baylen, or La
Carolina. These, he imagined, could not stand before Reding, and when the
latter had once got to the northern bank of the river, he would easily clear
the way for Coupigny to cross. But as a matter of fact Vedel had 6,000 men
at Mengibar and Baylen, with 3,000 more under Gobert within a short
march of him. If the Spanish plan had been punctually carried out, Reding
should have suffered a severe check at the hands of these two divisions,
while Dupont could easily have dealt with Castaños at Andujar. Coupigny,
if he got across at Villa Nueva, while the divisions on each side of him were
beaten off, would have been in a very compromised position, and could not

have dared to push forward. But in this curious campaign the probable
never happened, and everything went in the most unforeseen fashion.
On July 13 the Spanish plan began to be carried out, Reding marching
for Mengibar and Coupigny for Villa Nueva. Castaños kept quiet at
Arjonilla, till his lieutenants should have reached the points which they
were to attack. On the same day Dupont received the news of Moncey’s
repulse before Valencia, and made up his mind that he must persevere in his
defensive attitude, without making any attempt to mass his troops and fall
upon the enemy in his front[143]. Just at the moment when his enemies were
putting the game into his hands, by dividing themselves into three columns
separated from each other by considerable gaps, he relinquished every
intention of taking advantage of their fault.
On July 14 Reding appeared in front of the ferry of Mengibar, and
pushed back beyond the river the outlying pickets of Liger-Belair’s
detachment. He made no further attempt to press the French, but Dupont,
disquieted about an attack on this point, ordered Gobert to bring down the
remains of his division to Baylen, to join Vedel. Next morning the
Spaniards began to develop their whole plan: Castaños appeared on a long
front opposite Andujar, and made a great demonstration against the position
of Dupont, using all his artillery and showing heads of columns at several
points. Coupigny came down to the river at Villa Nueva, and got engaged
with a detachment which was sent out from Andujar to hold the ford.
Reding, making a serious attempt to push forward, crossed the Guadalquivir
at Mengibar and attacked Liger-Belair. But Vedel came up to the support of
his lieutenant, and when the Swiss general found, quite contrary to his
expectation, a whole division deployed against him, he ceased to press his
advance, and retired once more beyond the river.
Nothing decisive had yet happened: but the next day was to be far more
important. The operations opened with two gross faults made by the French:
Dupont had been so much impressed with the demonstration made against
him by Castaños, that he judged himself hopelessly outnumbered at
Andujar, and sent to Vedel for reinforcements. He bade him send a battalion
or two, or even a whole brigade, if the force that he had fought at Mengibar
seemed weak and unenterprising[144]. This was an error, for Castaños only
outnumbered the French at Andujar by two or three thousand men, and was
not really to be feared. But Vedel made a worse slip: despising Reding

overmuch, he marched on Baylen, not with one brigade, but with his whole
division, save the original detachment of two battalions under Liger-Belair
which remained to watch Mengibar. Starting at midnight, he reached
Andujar at two on the afternoon of the sixteenth, to find that Castaños had
done no more than repeat his demonstration of the previous day, and had
been easily held back. Cruz-Murgeon’s levies, which the Spanish general
had pushed over the river below Andujar, had received a sharp repulse when
they tried to molest Dupont’s flank. Coupigny had made an even feebler
show than his chief at the ford of Villa Nueva, and had not passed the
Guadalquivir.
But Reding, on the morning of the sixteenth, had woken up to
unexpected vigour. He had forded the river near Mengibar, and fallen on
Liger-Belair’s detachment for the second time. Hard pressed, the French
brigadier had sent for succour to Baylen, whither Gobert had moved down
when Vedel marched for Andujar. The newly arrived general came quickly
to the aid of the compromised detachment, but he was very weak, for he
had left a battalion at La Carolina and sent another with a squadron of
cuirassiers to Liñares, to guard against a rumoured movement of the
Spaniards along the Upper Guadalquivir. He only brought with him three
battalions and 200 cavalry, and this was not enough to contain Reding. The
4,000 men of the two French detachments were outnumbered by more than
two to one; they suffered a thorough defeat, and Gobert was mortally
wounded. His brigadier, Dufour, who took over the command, fell back on
Baylen, eight miles to the rear. Next morning, though not pressed by
Reding, he retired towards La Carolina, to prevent himself being cut off
from the passes, for he credited a false rumour that the Spaniards were
detaching troops by way of Liñares to seize the Despeña Perros.
Dupont heard of Gobert’s defeat on the evening of the sixteenth. It
deranged all his plans, for it showed him that the enemy were not massed in
front of Andujar, as he supposed, but had a large force far up the river. Two
courses were open to him—either to march on Baylen with his whole army
in order to attack Reding, and to reopen the communications with La
Carolina and the passes, or to fall upon Castaños and the troops in his
immediate front. An enterprising officer would probably have taken the
latter alternative, and could not have failed of success, for the whole French
army in Andalusia save the troops of Belair and Dufour was now

concentrated at Andujar, and not less than 15,000 bayonets and 3,000 sabres
were available for an attack on Castaños’ 12,000 men[145]. Even if Coupigny
joined his chief, the French would have almost an equality in numbers and a
great superiority in cavalry and guns. There cannot be the slightest doubt
that the Spaniards would have suffered a defeat, and then it would have
been possible to expel Reding from Baylen without any danger of
interference from other quarters.
But, in a moment of evil inspiration, Dupont chose to deprive himself of
the advantage of having practically his whole army concentrated on one
spot, and determined to copy the error of the Spaniards by splitting his force
into two equal halves. He resolved to retain his defensive position in front
of Andujar, and to keep there his original force—Barbou’s infantry and
Frésia’s horse. But Vedel with his own men, the four battalions from
Gobert’s division which were at Andujar, and 600 cavalry, was sent off to
Baylen, where he was directed to rally the beaten troops of Dufour and
Liger-Belair, and then to fall upon Reding and chase him back beyond the
Guadalquivir[146].
On the morning, therefore, of July 17 Vedel set out with some 6,000 men
and marched to Baylen. Arriving there he found that Dufour had evacuated
the place, and had hurried on to La Carolina, on the false hypothesis that
Reding had pushed past him to seize the passes. As a matter of fact the
Spaniard had done nothing of the kind: after his success at Mengibar, he
had simply retired to his camp by the river, and given his men twenty-four
hours’ rest. It was a strange way to employ the day after a victory—but his
quiescence chanced to have the most fortunate effect. Vedel, on hearing that
Dufour had hastened away to defend La Carolina and the passes, resolved
to follow him. He was so inexcusably negligent that he did not even send a
cavalry reconnaissance towards Mengibar, to find out whether any Spanish
force remained there. Had he done so, he would have found Reding’s whole
division enjoying their well-earned siesta! In the direction of La Carolina
and the passes there was no enemy save a small flanking column of 1,800
raw levies under the Count of Valdecañas, which lay somewhere near
Liñares.

Battle of Baylen July 19, 1808, at the moment of Dupont’s third attack.

Part of Andalusia, between Andujar and the Passes. July 19, 1808.

On the night of the seventeenth, Vedel and his men, tired out by a long
march of over twenty miles, slept at Guarroman, halfway between Baylen
and La Carolina. Dufour and Liger-Belair had reached the last-named place
and Santa Elena, and had found no Spaniards near them. On the morning of
the eighteenth Vedel followed them, and united his troops to theirs. He had
then some 10,000 or 11,000 men concentrated in and about La Carolina,
with one single battalion left at Guarroman to keep up his touch with
Dupont. The latter had been entirely deceived by the false news which
Vedel had sent him from Baylen—to the effect that Reding and his corps
had marched for the passes, in order to cut the French communications with
Madrid. Believing the story, he forwarded to his subordinate an approval of
his disastrous movement[147], and bade him ‘instantly attack and crush the
Spanish force before him, and after disposing of it return as quickly as
possible to Andujar, to deal with the troops of the enemy in that direction.’
Unfortunately, as we have seen, there was no Spanish corps at all in front of

Vedel; but by the time that he discovered the fact it was too late for him to
rejoin Dupont without a battle[148]. His troops were tired out with two night
marches: there were no supplies of food to be got anywhere but at La
Carolina, and he decided that he must halt for at least twelve hours before
returning to join Dupont.
Meanwhile, on the morning of the eighteenth, Reding’s 9,500 men, of
whom 750 were cavalry, had been joined by Coupigny and the second
Andalusian division, which amounted to 7,300 foot and 500 horse.
Advancing from Mengibar to attack Baylen, they found to their surprise
that the place was unoccupied: Vedel’s rearguard had left it on the previous
afternoon. Reding intended to march on Andujar from the rear on the next
day, being under the full belief that Vedel was still with Dupont, and that the
troops which had retired on La Carolina were only the fragments of
Gobert’s force. For Castaños and his colleagues had drawn up their plan of
operations on the hypothesis that the enemy were still concentrated at
Andujar.
Reding therefore, with some 17,000 men, encamped in and about
Baylen, intending to start at daybreak on July 19, and to fall on Dupont
from behind, while his chief assailed him in front. But already before the
sun was up, musket-shots from his pickets to the west announced that the
French were approaching from that direction. It was with the head and not
with the rear of Dupont’s column that Castaños’ first and second divisions
were to be engaged, for the enemy had evacuated Andujar, and was in full
march for Baylen.
On the night of the seventeenth Dupont had received the news that Vedel
had evacuated Baylen and gone off to the north-east, so that a gap of thirty
miles or more now separated him from his lieutenant. He had at first been
pleased with the move, as we have seen: but presently he gathered, from the
fact that Castaños did not press him, but only assailed him with a distant
and ineffective cannonade, that the main stress of the campaign was not at
Andujar but elsewhere. The Spanish army was shifting itself eastward, and
he therefore resolved that he must do the same, though he would have to
abandon his cherished offensive position, his entrenchments, and such part
of his supplies as he could not carry with him. Having made up his mind to
depart, Dupont would have done wisely to start at once: if he had gone off
early on the morning of the eighteenth, he would have found Reding and

Coupigny not established in position at Baylen, but only just approaching
from the south. Probably he might have brushed by their front, or even have
given them a serious check, if he had fallen on them without hesitation.
But two considerations induced the French general to wait for the
darkness, and to waste fourteen invaluable hours at Andujar. The first was
that he hoped by moving at night to escape the notice of Castaños, who
might have attacked him if his retreat was open and undisguised. The
second was that he wished to carry off his heavy baggage train: not only
had he between 600 and 800 sick to load on his wagons, but there was an
enormous mass of other impedimenta, mainly consisting of the plunder of
Cordova. French and Spanish witnesses unite in stating that the
interminable file of 500 vehicles which clogged Dupont’s march was to a
very great extent laden with stolen goods[149]. And it was the officers rather
than the men who were responsible for this mass of slow-moving transport.
It was not therefore till nine in the evening of the eighteenth that the
French general thought fit to move. After barricading and blocking up the
bridge of Andujar—he dared not use gunpowder to destroy it for fear of
rousing Castaños—he started on his night march. He had with him thirteen
battalions of infantry and four and a half regiments of cavalry, with twenty-
four guns, in all about 8,500 foot soldiers and 2,500 horse, allowing for the
losses which he had sustained in sick and wounded during the earlier phases
of the campaign[150]. His march was arranged as follows:—Chabert’s
infantry brigade led the van: then came the great convoy: behind it were the
four Swiss battalions under Colonel Schramm, which had lately been
incorporated with the French army. These again were followed by
Pannetier’s infantry brigade and Dupré’s two regiments of chasseurs à
cheval. The rearguard followed at some distance: it was composed of two
and a half regiments of heavy cavalry, placed under the command of
General Privé, with the one veteran infantry battalion which the army
possessed, the 500 Marines of the Guard, as also six compagnies d’élite
picked from the ‘legions of reserve.’ From the fact that Dupont placed his
best troops in this quarter, it is evident that he expected to be fighting a
rearguard action, with Castaños in pursuit, rather than to come into contact
with Spanish troops drawn up across his line of march. He was ignorant that
Reding and Coupigny had occupied Baylen on the previous day—a fact
which speaks badly for his cavalry: with 2,500 horsemen about him, he

ought to have known all that was going on in his neighbourhood. Probably
the provisional regiments, which formed his whole mounted force, were
incapable of good work in the way of scouting and reconnaissances.
The little town of Baylen is situated in a slight depression of a saddle-
backed range of hills which runs southward out from the Sierra Morena.
The road which leads through it passes over the lowest point in the
watershed, as is but natural: to the north and south of the town the heights
are better marked: they project somewhat on each flank, so that the place is
situated in a sort of amphitheatre. The hill to the south of Baylen is called
the Cerrajon: those to the north the Cerro del Zumacar Chico, and the Cerro
del Zumacar Grande. All three are bare and bald, without a shrub or tree:
none of them are steep, their lower slopes are quite suitable for cavalry
work, and even their rounded summits are not inaccessible to a horseman.
The ground to the west of them, over which the French had to advance, is
open and level for a mile and a half: then it grows more irregular, and is
thickly covered with olive groves and other vegetation, so that a force
advancing over it is hidden from the view of a spectator on the hills above
Baylen till it comes out into the open. The wooded ground is about two and
a half miles broad: its western limit is the ravine of a mountain torrent, the
Rumblar (or Herrumblar, as the aspirate-loving Andalusians sometimes call
it). The road from Andujar to Baylen crosses this stream by a bridge, the
only place where artillery can pass the rocky but not very deep depression.
It is necessary to say a few words about the ground eastward from
Baylen, as this too was not unimportant in the later phases of the battle.
Here the road passes through a broad defile rather than a plain. It is entirely
commanded by the heights on its northern side, where lies the highest
ground of the neighbourhood, the Cerro de San Cristobal, crowned by a
ruined hermitage. The difference between the approach to Baylen from the
west and from the east, is that on the former side the traveller reaches the
town through a semicircular amphitheatre of upland, while by the latter he
comes up a V-shaped valley cut through the hills.
Reding and Coupigny were somewhat surprised by the bicker of
musketry which told them that the French had fallen upon their outposts.
But fortunately for them their troops were already getting under arms, and
were bivouacking over the lower slopes of the hills in a position which
made it possible to extemporize without much difficulty a line of battle,

covering the main road and the approaches to Baylen. They hastily
occupied the low amphitheatre of hills north and south of the town. Reding
deployed to the right of the road, on the heights of the Cerro del Zumacar
Chico, Coupigny to its left on the Cerrajon. Their force was of a very
composite sort—seventeen battalions of regulars, six of embodied militia,
five of new Andalusian levies. The units varied hopelessly in size, some
having as few as 350 men, others as many as 1,000. They could also
dispose of 1,200 cavalry and sixteen guns. The greater part of the latter
were placed in battery on the central and lowest part of the position, north
and south of the high road and not far in front of Baylen. The infantry
formed a semicircular double line: in front were deployed battalions near
the foot of the amphitheatre of hills; in rear, higher up the slope or
concealed behind the crest, was a second line in columns of battalions. The
cavalry were drawn up still further to the rear. Finally, as a necessary
precaution against the possible arrival of Vedel on the scene from La
Carolina, Reding placed seven battalions far away to the east, on the other
side of Baylen, with cavalry pickets out in front to give timely notice of any
signs of the enemy in this quarter. These 3,500 men were quite out of the
battle as long as Dupont was the only enemy in sight.
Before it was fully daylight General Chabert and his brigade had thrust
back the Spanish outposts. But the strength of the insurgent army was quite
unknown to him: the morning dusk still lay in the folds of the hills, and he
thought that he might possibly have in front of him nothing but some flying
column of insignificant strength. Accordingly, after allowing the whole of
his brigade to come up, Chabert formed a small line of attack, brought up
his battery along the high road to the middle of the amphitheatre, between
the horns of the Spanish position, and made a vigorous push forward. He
operated almost entirely to the south of the road, where, opposite
Coupigny’s division, the hill was lower and the slope gentler than further
north.
To dislodge 14,000 men and twenty guns in position with 3,000 men and
six guns was of course a military impossibility. But Chabert had the excuse
that he did not, and could not, know what he was doing. His attempt was of
course doomed to failure: his battery was blown to pieces by the Spanish
guns, acting from a concentric position, the moment that it opened. His four
battalions, after pushing back Coupigny’s skirmishing line for a few

hundred yards, were presently checked by the reserves which the Spaniard
sent forward. Having come to a stand they soon had to retire, and with
heavy loss. The brigade drew back to the cover of the olive groves behind
it, leaving two dismounted guns out in the open.
Behind Chabert the enormous convoy was blocking the way as far back
as the bridge of the Rumblar. Five hundred wagons with their two or four
oxen apiece, took up, when strung along the road, more than two and a half
miles. Dupont, who rode up at the sound of the cannon, and now clearly
saw the Spanish line drawn up on a front of two miles north and south of
the road, realized that this was no skirmish but a pitched battle. His action
was governed by the fact that he every moment expected to hear the guns of
Castaños thundering behind him, and to find that he was attacked in rear as
well as in front. He accordingly resolved to deliver a second assault as
quickly as possible, before this evil chance might come upon him. With
some difficulty the Swiss battalions, Dupré’s brigade of light cavalry, and
Privé’s dragoons pushed their way past the convoy and got into the open.
They were terribly tired, having marched all night and covered fifteen miles
of bad road, but their general threw them at once into the fight: Pannetier’s
brigade and the Marines of the Guard were still far to the rear, at or near the
bridge of the Rumblar.
Dupont’s second attack was a fearful mistake: he should at all costs have
concentrated his whole army for one desperate stroke, for there was no
more chance that 6,000 men could break the Spanish line than there had
been that Chabert’s 3,000 could do so. But without waiting for Pannetier to
come up, he delivered his second attack. The four Swiss battalions
advanced to the north of the road, Chabert’s rallied brigade to the south of
it: to the right of the latter were Privé’s heavy cavalry, two and a half
regiments strong, with whom Dupont intended to deliver his main blow.
They charged with admirable vigour and precision, cut up two Spanish
battalions which failed to form square in time, and cleared the summit of
the Cerrajon. But when, disordered with their first success, they rode up
against Coupigny’s reserves, they failed to break through. Their own
infantry was too far to the rear to help them, and after a gallant struggle to
hold their ground, the dragoons and cuirassiers fell back to their old
position. When they were already checked, Chabert and Schramm pushed
forward to try their fortune: beaten off by the central battery of the Spanish

line and its infantry supports, they recoiled to the edge of the olive wood,
and there reformed.
The French were now growing disheartened, and Dupont saw disaster
impending over him so closely that he seems to have lost his head, and to
have retained no other idea save that of hurling every man that he could
bring up in fruitless attacks on the Spanish centre. He hurried up from the
rear Pannetier’s brigade of infantry, leaving at the bridge of the Rumblar
only the single battalion of the Marines of the Guard. At eight o’clock the
reinforcements had come up, and the attack was renewed. This time the
main stress was at the northern end of the line, where Pannetier was thrown
forward, with orders to drive Reding’s right wing off the Cerro del Zumacar
Grande, while the other battalions renewed their assault against the Spanish
centre and left. But the exhausted troops on the right of the line, who had
been fighting since daybreak, made little impression on Coupigny’s front,
and Reding’s last reserves were brought forward to check and hold off the
one fresh brigade of which Dupont could dispose.
The fourth attack had failed. The French general had now but one intact
battalion, that of the Marines of the Guard, which had been left with the
baggage at the bridge over the Rumblar, to protect the rear against the
possible advent of Castaños. As there were still no signs of an attack from
that side, Dupont brought up this corps, ranged it across the road in the
centre of the line, and drew up behind it all that could be rallied of
Chabert’s and Pannetier’s men. The whole formed a sort of wedge, with
which he hoped to break through the Spanish centre by one last effort. The
cavalry advanced on the flanks, Privé’s brigade to the south, Dupré’s to the
north of the road. Dupont himself, with all his staff around him, placed
himself at the head of the marines, and rode in front of the line, waving his
sword and calling to the men that this time they must cut their way through
[12.30 P.M.].
All was in vain: the attack was pressed home, the marines pushed up to
the very muzzles of the Spanish cannon placed across the high road, and
Dupré’s chasseurs drove in two battalions in Reding’s right centre. But the
column could get no further forward: the marines were almost
exterminated: Dupré was shot dead: Dupont received a painful (but not
dangerous) wound in the hip, and rode to the rear. Then the whole attack
collapsed, and the French rolled back in utter disorder to the olive groves

which sheltered their rear. The majority of the rank and file of the two
Swiss regiments in the centre threw up the butts of their muskets in the air
and surrendered—or rather deserted—to the enemy[151].
At this moment, just as the firing died down at the front, a lively
fusillade was heard from another quarter. Cruz-Murgeon’s light column,
from the side of the mountains, had come down upon the Rumblar bridge,
and had begun to attack the small baggage-guard[152] which remained with
the convoy. All was up. Cruz-Murgeon was the forerunner of La Peña, and
Dupont had not a man left to send to protect his rear. The battalions were all
broken up, the wearied infantry had cast themselves down in the shade of
the olive groves, and could not be induced even to rise to their feet. Most of
them were gasping for water, which could not be got, for the stream-beds
which cross the field were all dried up, and only at the Rumblar could a
drink be obtained. Not 2,000 men out of the original 11,000 who had started
from Andujar could be got together to oppose a feeble front to Reding and
Coupigny. It was only by keeping up a slow artillery fire, from the few
pieces that had not been silenced or dismounted, that any show of resistance
could be made. When the attack from the rear, which was obviously
impending, should be delivered, the whole force must clearly be destroyed.
Wishing at least to get some sort of terms for the men whom he had led
into such a desperate position, Dupont at two o’clock sent his aide-de-camp,
Captain Villoutreys, one of the Emperor’s equerries, to ask for a suspension
of hostilities from Reding. He offered to evacuate Andalusia, not only with
his own troops but with those of Vedel and Dufour, in return for a free
passage to Madrid. This was asking too much, and if the Spanish general
had been aware of the desperate state of his adversary, he would not have
listened to the proposal for a minute. But he did not know that La Peña was
now close in Dupont’s rear, while he was fully aware that Vedel, returning
too late from the passes, was now drawing near to the field from the north.
His men were almost as exhausted as those of Dupont, many had died from
sunstroke in the ranks, and he did not refuse to negotiate. He merely replied
that he had no power to treat, and that all communications should be made
to his chief, who must be somewhere in the direction of Andujar. He would
grant a suspension of arms for a few hours, while a French and a Spanish
officer should ride off together to seek for Castaños.

Dupont accepted these terms gladly, all the more so because La Peña’s
division had at last reached the Rumblar bridge, and had announced its
approach by four cannon-shots, fired at regular intervals, as a signal to
catch Reding’s ear. It was with the greatest difficulty that the commander of
the fourth Andalusian division could be got to recognize the armistice
granted by his colleague; he saw the French at his mercy, and wanted to fall
upon them while they were still in disorder. But after some argument he
consented to halt. Captain Villoutreys, accompanied by the Spanish Colonel
Copons, rode through his lines to look for Castaños.
The Spanish commander-in-chief had displayed most blameworthy
torpidity on this day. He had let Dupont slip away from Andujar, and did
not discover that he was gone till dawn had arrived. Then, instead of
pursuing at full speed with all his forces, he had sent on La Peña’s division,
while he lingered behind with that of Felix Jones, surveying the enemy’s
empty lines. The fourth division must have marched late and moved slowly,
as it only reached the Rumblar bridge—twelve miles from Andujar—at
about 2 p.m. It could easily have been there by 8 or 9 a.m., and might have
fallen upon Dupont while he was delivering one of his earlier attacks on the
Baylen position.
At much the same moment that Villoutreys and Copons reached
Castaños at Andujar, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, the second half
of the French army at last appeared upon the scene. General Vedel had
discovered on the eighteenth that he had nothing to fear from the side of the
passes. He therefore called down all Dufour’s troops, save two battalions
left at Santa Elena, united the two divisions at La Carolina, and gave orders
for their return to Baylen on the following morning. Leaving the bivouac at
five o’clock Vedel, with some 9,000 or 9,500 men, marched down the defile
for ten miles as far as the village of Guarroman, which he reached about
9.30 or 10 a.m.[153] The day was hot, the men were tired, and though the
noise of a distant cannonade could be distinctly heard in the direction of
Baylen, the general told his officers to allow their battalions two hours to
cook, and to rest themselves. By some inexplicable carelessness the two
hours swelled to four, and it was not till 2 p.m. that the column started out
again, to drop down to Baylen. An hour before the French marched, the
cannonade, which had been growling in the distance all through the mid-
day rest, suddenly died down. Vedel was in nowise disturbed, and is said to

have remarked that his chief had probably made an end of the Spanish corps
which had been blocking the road between them.
After this astonishing display of sloth and slackness, Vedel proceeded
along the road for ten miles, till he came in sight of the rear of the Spanish
position at Baylen. His cavalry soon brought him the news that the troops
visible upon the hillsides were enemies: they consisted of the brigade which
Reding had told off at the beginning of the day to hold the height of San
Cristobal and the Cerro del Ahorcado against a possible attack from the
rear. It was at last clear to Vedel that things had not gone well at Baylen,
and that it was his duty to press in upon the Spaniards, and endeavour to cut
his way through to his chief. He had begun to deploy his troops across the
defile, with the object of attacking both the flanking hills, when two officers
with a white flag rode out towards him. They announced to him that Dupont
had been beaten, and had asked for a suspension of hostilities, which had
been granted. La Peña’s troops had stayed their advance, and he was asked
to do the same.
Either because he doubted the truth of these statements, or because he
thought that his appearance would improve Dupont’s position, Vedel
refused to halt, and sent back the Spanish officers to tell Reding that he
should attack him. This he did with small delay, falling on the brigade
opposed to him with great fury. Boussard’s dragoons charged the troops on
the lower slopes of the Cerro del Ahorcado, and rode into two battalions
who were so much relying on the armistice that they were surprised with
their arms still piled, cooking their evening meal. A thousand men were
taken prisoners almost without firing a shot[154]. Cassagnes’ infantry
attacked the steep height of San Cristobal with less good fortune: his first
assault was beaten off, and Vedel was preparing to succour him, when a
second white flag came out of Baylen. It was carried by a Spanish officer,
who brought with him De Barbarin, one of Dupont’s aides-de-camp. The
general had sent a written communication ordering Vedel to cease firing and
remain quiet, as an armistice had been concluded, and it was hoped that
Castaños would consent to a convention. The moment that his answer was
received it should be passed on; meanwhile the attack must be stopped and
the troops withdrawn.
Vedel obeyed: clearly he could do nothing else, for Dupont was his
hierarchical superior, and, as far as he could see, was still a free agent.

Moreover, De Barbarin told him of the very easy terms which the
commander-in-chief hoped to get from Castaños. If they could be secured it
would be unnecessary, as well as risky, to continue the attack. For La Peña
might very possibly have annihilated the beaten division before Vedel could
force his way to its aid, since horse and foot were both ‘fought out,’ and
there was neither strength nor spirit for resistance left among them. Vedel
therefore was justified in his obedience to his superior, and in his
withdrawal to a point two miles up the La Carolina road.
Meanwhile Villoutreys, the emissary of Dupont, had reached the camp
of Castaños at Andujar[155] late in the afternoon, and laid his chief’s
proposals before the Spaniard. As might have been expected, they were
declined—Dupont was in the trap, and it would have been absurd to let him
off so easily. No great objection was made to the retreat of Vedel, but
Castaños said that the corps caught between La Peña and Reding must lay
down its arms. Early next morning (July 20) Villoutreys returned with this
reply to the French camp.
Dupont meanwhile had spent a restless night. He had gone round the
miserable bivouac of his men, to see if they would be in a condition to fight
next morning, in the event of the negotiations failing. The result was most
discouraging: the soldiers were in dire straits for want of water, they had
little to eat, and were so worn out that they could not be roused even to
gather in the wounded. The brigadiers and colonels reported that they could
hold out no prospect of a rally on the morrow[156]. Only Privé, the
commander of the heavy-cavalry brigade, spoke in favour of fighting: the
others doubted whether even 2,000 men could be got together for a rush at
the Spanish lines. When an aide-de-camp, whom Vedel had been allowed to
send to his chief, asked whether it would not be possible to make a
concerted attack on Reding next morning, with the object of disengaging
the surrounded division, Dupont told him that it was no use to dream of any
such thing. Vedel must prepare for a prompt retreat, in order to save
himself; no more could be done.
At dawn, nothing having been yet settled, La Peña wrote to Dupont
threatening that if the 1,000 men who had been captured by Vedel on the
previous day were not at once released, he should consider the armistice at
an end, and order his division to advance. The request was reasonable, as
they had been surprised and taken while relying on the suspension of arms.

Dupont ordered his subordinate to send them back to Reding’s camp.
Castaños meanwhile was pressing for a reply to his demand for surrender:
he had brought up Felix Jones’s division to join La Peña’s in the early
morning, so that he had over 14,000 men massed on the right bank of the
Rumblar and ready to attack[157]. Dupont was well aware of this, and had
made up his mind to surrender when he realized the hopeless
demoralization of his troops. Early in the morning he called a council of
war; the officers present, after a short discussion, drew up and signed a
document in which they declared that ‘the honour of the French arms had
been sufficiently vindicated by the battle of the previous day: that in
accepting the enemy’s terms the commander-in-chief was yielding to
evident military necessity: that, surrounded by 40,000 enemies, he was
justified in averting by an honourable treaty the destruction of his corps.’
Only the cavalry brigadier Privé, refused to put his name to the paper, on
which appear the signatures of three generals of division, of the officers
commanding the artillery and engineers, of two brigadiers, and of three
commanders of regiments.
After this formality was ended Generals Chabert and Marescot rode out
from the French camp and met Castaños. They had orders to make the best
terms they could: in a general way it was recognized that the compromised
division could not escape surrender, and that Vedel and Dufour would
probably have to evacuate Andalusia and stipulate for a free passage to
Madrid. The Spaniards were not, as it seems, intending to ask for much
more. But while they were haggling on such petty points as the forms of
surrender, and the exemption of officers’ baggage from search, a new factor
was introduced into the discussion. Some irregulars from the Sierra Morena
came to Castaños, bringing with them as a prisoner an aide-de-camp of
Savary[158]. They had secured his dispatch, which was a peremptory order to
Dupont to evacuate Andalusia with all his three divisions, and fall back
towards Madrid. This put a new face on affairs, for Castaños saw that if he
conceded a free retreat to Vedel and Dufour, he would be enabling them to
carry out exactly the movement which Savary intended. To do so would
clearly be undesirable: he therefore interposed in the negotiations, and
declared that the troops of these two generals should not be allowed to quit
Andalusia by the road which had been hitherto proposed. They must be sent
round by sea to some port of France not immediately contiguous with the
Spanish frontier.

Chabert and Marescot, as was natural, declaimed vehemently against
this projected change in the capitulation, and declared that it was
inadmissible. But they were answered in even more violent terms by the
turbulent Conde de Tilly, who attended as representative of the Junta of
Seville. He taunted them with their atrocities at the sack of Cordova, and
threatened that if the negotiations fell through no quarter should be given to
the French army. At last Castaños suggested a compromise: he offered to let
Dupont’s troops, no less than those of Vedel, return to France by sea, if the
claim that the latter should be allowed to retreat on Madrid were withdrawn.
This was conceding much, and the French generals accepted the proposal.
Accordingly Castaños and Tilly, representing the Spaniards, and Chabert
and Marescot, on behalf of Dupont, signed preliminaries, by which it was
agreed that the surrounded divisions should formally lay down their arms
and become prisoners of war, while Vedel’s men should not be considered
to have capitulated, nor make any act of surrender. Both bodies of men
should leave Andalusia by sea, and be taken to Rochefort on Spanish
vessels. ‘The Spanish army,’ so ran the curiously worded seventh article of
the capitulation, ‘guarantees them against all hostile aggression during their
passage.’ The other clauses contain nothing striking, save some rather
liberal permissions to the French officers to take away their baggage—each
general was to be allowed two wheeled vehicles, each field officer or staff
officer one—without its being examined. This article caught the eye of
Napoleon, and has been noted by many subsequent critics, who have
maintained that Dupont and his colleagues, gorged with the plunder of
Cordova, surrendered before they needed, in order to preserve their booty
intact. That they yielded before it was inevitable we do not believe: but far
more anxiety than was becoming seems to have been shown regarding the
baggage. This anxiety finds easy explanation if the Spanish official
statement, that more than £40,000 in hard cash, and a great quantity of
jewellery and silver plate was afterwards found in the fourgons of the staff
and the superior officers, be accepted as correct[159].
The fifteenth clause of the capitulation had contents of still more
doubtful propriety: it was to the effect that as many pieces of church plate
had been stolen at the sack of Cordova, Dupont undertook to make a search
for them and restore them to the sanctuaries to which they belonged, if they
could be found in existence. The confession was so scandalous, that we

share Napoleon’s wonder that such a clause could ever have been passed by
the two French negotiators; if they were aware that the charge of theft was
true (as it no doubt was), shame should have prevented them from putting it
on paper: if they thought it false, they were permitting a gratuitous insult to
the French army to be inserted in the capitulation.
While the negotiations were going on, Dupont sent secret orders to Vedel
to abscond during the night, and to retreat on Madrid as fast as he was able.
Chabert and Marescot had of course no knowledge of this, or they would
hardly have consented to include that general’s troops in the convention. In
accordance with his superior’s orders, and with the obvious necessities of
the case, Vedel made off on the night of July 20-21, leaving only a screen of
pickets in front of his position, to conceal his departure from the Spaniards
as long as was possible. On the return of his plenipotentiaries to his camp
on the morning of the twenty-first, Dupont learnt, to his surprise and
discontent, that they had included Vedel’s division in their bargain with
Castaños. But as that officer was now far away—he had reached La
Carolina at daybreak and Santa Elena by noon—the commander-in-chief
hoped that his troops were saved.
The anger of the Spaniards at discovering the evasion of the second
French division may easily be imagined. Reding, who was the first to
become aware of it, sent down an officer into Dupont’s camp, with the
message that if Vedel did not instantly return, he should regard the
convention as broken, and fall upon the surrounded troops: he should give
no quarter, as he considered that treachery had been shown, and that the
armistice had been abused. Dupont could not hope to make a stand, and was
at the enemy’s mercy. He directed his chief of the staff to write an order
bidding Vedel to halt, and sent it to him by one of his aides-de-camp,
accompanied by a Spanish officer. This did not satisfy Reding, who insisted
that Dupont should write an autograph letter of his own in stronger terms.
His demand could not be refused, and the two dispatches reached Vedel
almost at the same hour, as he was resting his troops at Santa Elena before
plunging into the passes.
Vedel, as all his previous conduct had shown, was weak and wanting in
initiative. Some of his officers tried to persuade him to push on, and to
leave Dupont to make the best terms for himself that he could. Much was to
be said in favour of this resolve: he might have argued that since he had

never been without the power of retreating, it was wrong of his superior to
include him in the capitulation. His duty to the Emperor would be to save
his men, whatever might be the consequences to Dupont. The latter,
surrounded as he was, could hardly be considered a free agent, and his
orders might be disregarded. But such views were far from Vedel’s mind: he
automatically obeyed his chief’s dispatch and halted. Next day he marched
his troops back to Baylen, in consequence of a third communication from
Dupont.
On July 23 Dupont’s troops laid down their arms with full formalities,
defiling to the sound of military music before the divisions of La Peña and
Jones, who were drawn up by the Rumblar bridge. On the twenty-fourth
Vedel’s and Dufour’s troops, without any such humiliating ceremony,
stacked their muskets and cannon on the hillsides east of Baylen and
marched for the coast. When the two corps were numbered it was found that
8,242 unwounded men had surrendered with Dupont: nearly 2,000 more,
dead or wounded, were left on the battle-field; seven or eight hundred of the
Swiss battalions had deserted and disappeared. With Vedel 9,393 men laid
down their arms[160]. Not only did he deliver up his own column, but he
called down the battalion guarding the Despeña Perros pass. Even the
troops left beyond the defiles in La Mancha were summoned to surrender
by the Spaniards, and some of them did so, though they were not really
included in the capitulation, which was by its wording confined to French
troops in Andalusia. But the commanders of three battalions allowed
themselves to be intimidated by Colonel Cruz-Murgeon, who went to seek
them at the head of a few cavalry, and tamely laid down their arms[161].
The Spaniards had won their success at very small cost. Reding’s
division returned a casualty list of 117 dead and 403 wounded, in which
were included the losses of the skirmish of July 16 as well as those of the
battle of the nineteenth. Coupigny lost 100 dead and 894 wounded. La
Peña’s and Cruz-Murgeon’s columns, which had barely got into touch with
the French when the armistice was granted, cannot have lost more than a
score or two of men. The total is no more than 954. There were in addition
998 prisoners captured by Vedel when he attacked from the rear, but these
were, of course, restored on the twentieth, in consequence of the orders sent
by Dupont, along with two guns and two regimental standards.

Castaños, a man of untarnished honour, had every intention of carrying
out the capitulation. The French troops, divided into small columns, were
sent down to the coast, or to the small towns of the Lower Guadalquivir
under Spanish escorts, which had some difficulty in preserving them from
the fury of the peasantry. It was necessary to avoid the large towns like
Cordova and Seville, where the passage of the unarmed prisoners would
certainly have led to riots and massacres. At Ecija the mob actually
succeeded in murdering sixty unfortunate Frenchmen. But when the troops
had been conducted to their temporary destinations, it was found that
difficulties had arisen. The amount of Spanish shipping available would not
have carried 20,000 men. This was a comparatively small hindrance, as the
troops could have been sent off in detachments. But it was more serious that
Lord Collingwood, the commander of the British squadron off Cadiz,
refused his permission for the embarkation of the French. He observed that
Castaños had promised to send Dupont’s army home by water, without
considering whether he had the power to do so. The British fleet
commanded the sea, and was blockading Rochefort, the port which the
capitulation assigned for the landing of the captive army. No representative
of Great Britain had signed the convention[162], and she was not bound by it.
He must find out, by consulting his government, whether the transference of
the troops of Dupont to France was to be allowed.
On hearing of the difficulties raised by Collingwood, Castaños got into
communication with Dupont, and drew up six supplementary articles to the
convention, in which it was stipulated that if the British Government
objected to Rochefort as the port at which the French troops were to be
landed, some other place should be selected. If all passage by sea was
denied, a way by land should be granted by the Spaniards. This agreement
was signed at Seville on August 6, but meanwhile the Junta was being
incited to break the convention. Several of its more reckless and fanatical
members openly broached the idea that no faith need be kept with those
who had invaded Spain under such treacherous pretences. The newspapers
were full of tales of French outrages, and protests against the liberation of
the spoilers of Cordova and Jaen.
Matters came to a head when Dupont wrote to Morla, the Captain-
General of Andalusia, to protest against further delays, and to require that
the first division of his army should be allowed to sail at once [August 8].

He received in reply a most shameless and cynical letter[163]. The Captain-
General began by declaring that there were no ships available. But he then
went on to state that no more had been promised than that the Junta would
request the British to allow the French troops to sail. He supposed that it
was probable that a blank refusal would be sent to this demand. Why should
Britain allow the passage by sea of troops who were destined to be used
against her on some other point of the theatre of war? Morla next insinuated
that Dupont himself must have been well aware that the capitulation could
not be carried out. ‘Your Excellency’s object in inserting these conditions
was merely to obtain terms which, impossible as they were to execute,
might yet give a show of honour to the inevitable surrender.... What right
have you to require the performance of these impossible conditions on
behalf of an army which entered Spain under a pretence of alliance, and
then imprisoned our King and princes, sacked his palaces, slew and robbed
his subjects, wasted his provinces, and tore away his crown?’
After a delay of some weeks Lord Collingwood sent in to the Junta the
reply of his government. It was far from being of the kind that Morla and
his friends had hoped. Canning had answered that no stipulations made at
Baylen could bind Great Britain, but that to oblige her allies, and to avoid
compromising their honour, she consented to allow the French army to be
sent back to France, and to be landed in successive detachments of 4,000
men at some port between Brest and Rochefort (i.e. at Nantes or L’Orient).
It is painful to have to add that neither the Junta of Seville nor the Supreme
Central Junta, which superseded that body, took any steps to carry out this
project. Dupont himself, his generals, and his staff, were sent home to
France, but their unfortunate troops were kept for a time in cantonments in
Andalusia, then sent on board pontoons in the Bay of Cadiz, where they
were subjected to all manner of ill usage and half-starved, and finally
dispatched to the desolate rock of Cabrera, in the Balearic Islands, where
more than half of them perished of cold, disease, and insufficient
nourishment[164]. Vedel’s men were imprisoned no less than Dupont’s, and
the survivors were only released at the conclusion of the general peace of
1814.
So ended the strange and ill-fought campaign of Baylen. It is clear that
Dupont’s misfortunes were of his own creation. He ought never to have
lingered at Andujar till July was far spent, but should either have massed his

three divisions and fallen upon Castaños, or have retired to a safe defensive
position at Baylen or La Carolina and have waited to be attacked. He might
have united something over 20,000 men, and could have defied every effort
of the 35,000 Spaniards to drive him back over the Sierra Morena. By
dividing his army into fractions and persisting in holding Andujar, he
brought ruin upon himself. But the precise form in which the ruin came
about was due less to Dupont than to Vedel. That officer’s blind and
irrational march on La Carolina and abandonment of Baylen on July 17-18
gave the Spaniards the chance of interposing between the two halves of the
French army. If Vedel had made a proper reconnaissance on the
seventeenth, he would have found that Reding had not marched for the
passes, but was still lingering at Mengibar. Instead, however, of sweeping
the country-side for traces of the enemy, he credited a wild rumour, and
hurried off to La Carolina, leaving the fatal gap behind him. All that
followed was his fault: not only did he compromise the campaign by his
march back to the passes, but when he had discovered his mistake he
returned with a slowness that was inexcusable. If he had used ordinary
diligence he might yet have saved Dupont on the nineteenth: it was his halt
at Guarroman, while the cannon of Baylen were thundering in his ears, that
gave the last finishing touch to the disaster. If he had come upon the battle-
field at ten in the morning, instead of at five in the afternoon, he could have
aided his chief to cut his way through, and even have inflicted a heavy blow
on Reding and Coupigny. A careful study of Vedel’s actions, from his first
passage of the Sierra Morena to his surrender, shows that on every possible
occasion he took the wrong course.
But even if we grant that Vedel made every possible mistake, it is
nevertheless true that Dupont fought his battle most unskilfully. If he had
marched on the morning instead of the night of July 18, he probably might
have brushed past the front of Reding and Coupigny without suffering any
greater disaster than the loss of his baggage. Even as things actually fell out,
it is not certain that he need have been forced to surrender. He had 10,000
men, the two Spanish generals had 17,000, but had been forced to detach
some 3,500 bayonets to guard against the possible reappearance of Vedel. If
Dupont had refused to waste his men in partial and successive attacks, and
had massed them for a vigorous assault on the left wing of the Spaniards,
where Coupigny’s position on the slopes of the Cerrajon was neither very
strong nor very well defined, he might yet have cut his way through, though

probably his immense baggage-train would have been lost. It is fair,
however, to remember that this chance was only granted him because
Castaños, in front of Andujar, was slow to discover his retreat and still
slower to pursue him. If that officer had shown real energy, ten thousand
men might have been pressing Dupont from the rear before eight o’clock in
the morning.
As it was Dupont mismanaged all the details of his attack. He made four
assaults with fractions of his army, and on a long front. The leading
brigades were completely worn out and demoralized before the reserves
were sent into action. The fifth assault, in which every man was at last
brought forward, failed because the majority of the troops were already
convinced that the day was lost, and were no longer capable of any great
exertions. It is absurd to accuse Dupont of cowardice—he exposed his
person freely and was wounded—and still more absurd to charge him (as
did the Emperor) with treason. He did not surrender till he saw that there
was no possible hope of salvation remaining. But there can be no doubt that
he showed great incapacity to grasp the situation, lost his head, and threw
away all his chances.
As to the Spaniards, it can truly be said that they were extremely
fortunate, and that even their mistakes helped them. Castaños framed his
plan for surrounding Dupont on the hypothesis that the main French army
was concentrated at Andujar. If this had indeed been the case, and Dupont
had retained at that place some 15,000 or 17,000 men, the turning
movement of Reding and Coupigny would have been hazardous in the
extreme. But the French general was obliging enough to divide his force
into two equal parts, and his subordinate led away one of the halves on a
wild march back to the passes. Again Reding acted in the most strange and
unskilful way on July 17; after defeating Liger-Belair and Dufour he ought
to have seized Baylen. Instead, he remained torpid in his camp for a day
and a half: this mistake led to the far more inexcusable error of Vedel, who
failed to see his adversary, and marched off to La Carolina. But Vedel’s
blindness does not excuse Reding’s sloth. On the actual day of battle, on the
other hand, Reding behaved very well: he showed considerable tenacity,
and his troops deserve great credit. It was no mean achievement for 13,000
or 14,000[165] Spaniards, their ranks full of raw recruits and interspersed
with battalions levied only five weeks before, to withstand the attack of

10,000 French, even if the latter were badly handled by their general. The
Andalusians had good reason to be proud of their victory, though they
might have refrained from calling Dupont’s Legions of Reserve and
provisional regiments the ‘invincible troops of Austerlitz and Friedland,’ as
they were too prone to do. They had at least succeeded in beating in the
open field and capturing a whole French army, a thing which no continental
nation had accomplished since the wars of the Revolution began.

NOTE
Sir Charles Vaughan, always in search of first-hand information, called on Castaños and had a
long conversation with him concerning the Convention. I find among his papers the following notes:
—
‘Among other particulars of the surrender, General Castaños stated that the French General
Marescot had the greatest influence in bringing it about. The great difficulty was to persuade them
[Marescot and Chabert] to capitulate for Vedel’s army as well as Dupont’s. A letter had been
intercepted ordering Vedel back to Madrid, and another ordering Dupont to retire. This letter had
considerable effect with the French: but the offer of carrying away their baggage and the plunder of
the country was no sooner made, than the two generals desired to be permitted to retire and deliberate
alone. After a few minutes they accepted the proposal. But General Castaños, to make the article of
as little value as possible, got them to insert the clause that the French officers should be allowed to
embark all their baggage, &c., according to the laws of Spain. He well knew that those laws forbid
the exportation of gold and silver. The consequence was that the French lost all their more valuable
plunder when embarking at Puerto Santa Maria.’

SECTION IV
THE ENGLISH IN PORTUGAL

CHAPTER I
THE OUTBREAK OF THE PORTUGUESE
INSURRECTION

Down to the moment of the general outbreak of the Spanish insurrection
Junot’s task in Portugal had not been a difficult one. As long as Spain and
France were still ostensibly allies, he had at his disposition a very large
army. He had entered Portugal in 1807 with 25,000 French troops, and
during the spring of 1808 he had received 4,000 men in drafts from
Bayonne, which more than filled up the gaps made in his battalions by the
dreary march from Ciudad Rodrigo to Abrantes[166]. Of the three Spanish
divisions which had been lent to him, Solano’s had gone home to
Andalusia, but he had still the two others, Caraffa’s (7,000 strong) in the
valley of the Tagus, and Taranco’s at Oporto. The last-named general died
during the winter, but his successor, Belesta, still commanded 6,000 men
cantoned on the banks of the Douro. The discontent of the Portuguese
during the early months of 1808 showed itself by nothing save a few
isolated deeds of violence, provoked by particular acts of oppression on the
part of Junot’s subordinates. How promptly and severely they were
chastised has been told in an earlier chapter. There were no signs whatever
of a general rising: the means indeed were almost entirely wanting. The
regular army had been disbanded or sent off to France. The organization of
the militia had been dissolved. The greater part of the leading men of the
country had fled to Brazil with the Prince-Regent: the bureaucracy and

many of the clergy had shown a discreditable willingness to conciliate Junot
by a tame subservience to his orders.
The Duke of Abrantes himself thoroughly enjoyed his Viceroyalty, and
still deluded himself into believing that he might yet prove a popular ruler
in Portugal: perhaps he even dreamed of becoming some day one of
Bonaparte’s vassal-kings. He persisted in the farce of issuing benevolent
proclamations, and expressing his affection for the noble Portuguese
people, till his master at last grew angry. ‘Why,’ he wrote by the hand of his
minister Clarke, ‘do you go on making promises which you have no
authority to carry out? Of course, there is no end more laudable than that of
winning the affection and confidence of the inhabitants of Portugal. But do
not forget that the safety of the French army is the first thing. Disarm the
Portuguese: keep an eye on the disbanded soldiers, lest reckless leaders
should get hold of them and make them into the nucleus of rebel bands....
Lisbon is an inconveniently large place: it is too populous, and its people
cannot help being hostile to you. Keep your troops outside it, in
cantonments along the sea-front’: and so forth[167]. Meanwhile financial
exactions were heaped on the unfortunate kingdom to contribute to the huge
fine which the Emperor had laid upon it: but there was evidently no chance
that such a large sum could be raised, however tightly the screw of taxation
might be twisted. Junot accepted, as contributions towards the £2,000,000
that he was told to raise, much confiscated English merchandise, church
plate, and private property of the royal house, but his extortions did little
more than pay for his army and the expenses of government. Portugal
indeed was in a dismal state: her ports were blocked and her wines could
not be sold to her old customers in England, nor her manufactures to her
Brazilian colonists. The working classes in Lisbon were thrown out of
employment, and starved, or migrated in bands into the interior. Foy and
other good witnesses from the French side speak of the capital as ‘looking
like a desert, with no vehicles, and hardly a foot-passenger in the streets,
save 20,000 persons reduced to beggary and trying vainly to live on
alms[168].’ The only activity visible was in the arsenal and dockyards, where
Junot had 10,000 men at work restoring the neglected material of the
artillery, and fitting out that portion of the fleet which had been in too bad
order to sail for Brazil in the previous November.

The sudden outbreak of the Spanish insurrection in the last days of May,
1808, made an enormous change in the situation of the French army in
Portugal. Before Junot had well realized what was happening in the
neighbouring kingdom, his communications with Madrid were suddenly
cut, and for the future information only reached him with the greatest
difficulty, and orders not at all. The last dispatch that came through to him
was one from the Emperor which spoke of the beginnings of the rising, and
bade him send 4,000 men to Ciudad Rodrigo to hold out a hand to
Bessières, and 8,000 to the Guadiana to co-operate in Dupont’s projected
invasion of Andalusia[169]. These orders were dispatched in the last days of
May; before they could be carried out the situation had been profoundly
modified.
On June 6 there arrived at Oporto the news of the insurrection of Galicia
and the establishment of the Provincial Junta at Corunna. The first thought
of the new government in Galicia had been to call home for its own defence
the division in northern Portugal. When its summons reached General
Belesta, he obeyed without a moment’s hesitation. The only French near
him were General Quesnel, the Governor of Oporto, his staff, and a troop of
thirty dragoons which served as his personal escort. Belesta seized and
disarmed both the general and his guard, and forthwith marched for Spain,
by Braga and Valenza, with his prisoners. Before leaving he called together
the notables of Oporto, bade them hoist the national flag, and incited them
to nominate a junta to organize resistance against Junot. But he left not a
man behind to aid them, and took off his whole force to join General Blake.
On receiving, on June 9, the news of this untoward event, Junot
determined to prevent Caraffa’s troops on the Tagus from following the
example of their countrymen. Before they had fully realized the situation, or
had time to concert measures for a general evasion, he succeeded in
disarming them. Caraffa himself was summoned to the quarters of the
commander-in-chief, and placed under arrest before he knew that he was
suspected. Of his regiments some were ordered to attend a review, others to
change garrisons; while unsuspectingly on their way, they found themselves
surrounded by French troops and were told to lay down their arms. All were
successfully trapped except the second cavalry regiment, the ‘Queen’s
Own,’ whose colonel rode off to Oporto with his two squadrons instead of
obeying the orders sent him, and fractions of the infantry regiments of

Murcia and Valencia who escaped to Badajoz after an ineffectual pursuit by
the French dragoons. But 6,000 out of Caraffa’s 7,000 men were caught,
disarmed, and placed on pontoons moored under the guns of the Lisbon
forts, whose commanders had orders to sink them if they gave any trouble.
Here they were destined to remain prisoners for the next ten weeks, till the
English arrived to release them after the battle of Vimiero.
The imminent danger that Caraffa’s force might openly revolt, and serve
as the nucleus for a general rising of the Portuguese, was thus disposed of.
But Junot’s position was still unpleasant: he had only some 26,500 men
with whom to hold down the kingdom: if once the inhabitants took arms,
such a force could not supply garrisons for every corner of a country 300
miles long and a hundred broad. Moreover, there was considerable
probability that the situation might be complicated by the appearance of an
English expeditionary army: Napoleon had warned his lieutenant to keep a
careful watch on the side of the sea, even before the Spanish insurrection
broke out. All through the spring a British force drawn from Sicily was
already hovering about the southern coast of the Peninsula, though hitherto
it had only been heard of in the direction of Gibraltar and Cadiz. Another
cause of disquietude was the presence in the Tagus of the Russian fleet of
Admiral Siniavin: the strange attitude adopted by that officer much
perplexed Junot. He acknowledged that his master the Czar was at war with
Great Britain, and stated that he was prepared to fight if the British fleet
tried to force the entrance of the Tagus. But on the other hand he alleged
that Russia had not declared war on Portugal or acknowledged its
annexation by the Emperor, and he therefore refused to land his marines and
seamen to help in the garrisoning of Lisbon, or to allow them to be used in
any way on shore. Meanwhile his crews consumed an inordinate amount of
the provisions which were none too plentiful in the Portuguese capital.
Junot’s main advantage lay in the extreme military impotence of
Portugal. That realm found its one sole centre in Lisbon, where a tenth of
the population of the whole kingdom and half of its wealth were
concentrated. At Lisbon alone was there an arsenal of any size, or a
considerable store of muskets and powder. Without the resources of the
capital the nation was absolutely unable to equip anything fit to be called an
army. Oporto was a small place in comparison, and no other town in the
kingdom had over 20,000 souls. Almeida and Elvas, the two chief fortresses

of the realm, were safe in the hands of French garrisons. The provinces
might rise, but without lavish help from Spain or England they could not
put in the field an army of even 10,000 men, for assemblies of peasants
armed with pikes and fowling-pieces are not armies, and of field-artillery
there was hardly a piece outside Lisbon, Elvas, and Almeida. Nor was there
left any nucleus of trained soldiers around which the nation might rally: the
old army was dissolved and its small remnant was on the way to the Baltic.
The case of Spain and of Portugal was entirely different when they rose
against Napoleon. The former country was in possession of the greater part
of its own fortresses, had not been systematically disarmed, and could
dispose—in Galicia and Andalusia—of large bodies of veteran troops.
Portugal was without an army, an arsenal, a defensible fortress, or a legal
organization—civil or military—of any kind.
It is necessary to remember this in order to excuse the utter feebleness of
the Portuguese rising in June, 1808. Otherwise it would have seemed
strange that a nation of over 2,000,000 souls could not anywhere produce
forces sufficient to resist for a single day a column of 3,000 or 4,000 French
soldiers.
The insurrection—such as it was—started in the north, where the
departure of Belesta and his division had left the two provinces of Tras-os-
Montes and Entre-Douro-e-Minho free from any garrison, French or
Spanish. Oporto had been bidden to work out its own salvation by Belesta,
and on the day of his departure (June 6), a junta of insurrection had been
acclaimed. But there followed a curious interval of apathy, lasting for ten
days: the natural leaders of the people refused to come forward: here, just as
in Spain, the bureaucracy showed itself very timid and unpatriotic. The
magistrates sent secret offers of submission to Junot: the military
commandant, Oliveira da Costa, hauled down the national flag from the
citadel of San João da Foz. The members of the insurrectionary junta
absconded from the city or kept quiet[170]. It was only on the news that the
neighbouring districts and towns had risen, that the people of Oporto threw
themselves frankly into the rebellion. The rough mountain districts which
lay to the east of them showed a much more whole-hearted patriotism:
between the ninth and the twelfth of June the whole of the Tras-os-Montes
took arms: one junta at Braganza nominated as commander the aged
General Sepulveda, who had been governor of the district in the days of the

Prince-Regent: another, at Villa Real on the Douro, also put in its claim and
chose as its leader Colonel Silveira, an officer who was destined to see
much service during the war of independence. Though the French were no
further off than Almeida, the rival governors nearly came to blows, but the
final insurrection of Oporto created a new power to which both consented
to bow.
On June 18 the false report that a French column was drawing near
Oporto so roused the multitude in that city that they broke loose from the
control of the authorities, rehoisted the Portuguese flag, threw into prison
Da Costa and many other persons suspected, rightly or wrongly, of a wish
to submit to the enemy, and called for the establishment of a provisional
government. Accordingly a ‘Supreme Junta of the Kingdom’ was hastily
elected with the Bishop of Oporto at its head. This was a strange choice, for
the aged prelate, Dom Antonio de Castro, though popular and patriotic, was
neither a statesman nor an administrator, and had no notion whatever as to
the military necessities of the situation. However, the other local juntas of
Northern Portugal united in recognizing his authority. His colleagues started
on the organization of an army with more zeal than discretion; they called
out the militia which Junot had disbanded, and tried to reconstruct some of
the old regular battalions, by getting together the half-pay officers, and the
men who had been dismissed from the colours in December, 1807. But they
also encouraged the assembly of thousands of peasants armed with pikes
and scythes, who consumed provisions, but were of no military use
whatever. In the seven weeks which elapsed before the coming of the
English, the Supreme Junta had only got together 5,000 men properly
equipped and told off into regular corps[171]. The fact was that they could
provide arms for no more, Northern Portugal having always looked to
Lisbon for its supplies. Field artillery was almost wholly wanting—perhaps
a dozen guns in all had been found: of cavalry three skeleton regiments
were beginning to be organized. But of half-armed peasantry, disguised
under the name of militia, they had from 12,000 to 15,000 in the field.
The Supreme Junta also concluded a treaty of offensive and defensive
alliance with the Galician Spaniards, from whom they hoped to get arms,
and perhaps a loan of troops. Moreover they sent two envoys to England to
ask for aid, and eagerly welcomed at Oporto Colonel Brown, a British agent
with a roving commission, who did his best to assist in organizing the new

levies. The command of the whole armed force was given to General
Bernardino Freire, a pretentious and incapable person, who turned his very
moderate resources to no profitable account whatever.
A few days later than the outbreak of the insurrection in the regions
north of the Douro, there was a corresponding movement, but of a weaker
kind, in the extreme south. On June 16 the small fishing-town of Olhão in
Algarve gave the signal for revolt: on the eighteenth Faro, the capital of the
province, followed the example. General Maurin, the Governor of Algarve,
was lying ill in his bed; he was made prisoner along with seventy other
French officers and men, and handed over to the captain of an English ship
which was hovering off the coast. The whole shore between the Sierra de
Caldeirão and the sea took arms, whereupon Colonel Maransin, Maurin’s
second-in-command, resolved to evacuate the province. He had only 1,200
men, a battalion each of the 26th of the line and the Légion du Midi, and
had lost his communications with Lisbon, wherefore he drew together his
small force and fell back first on Mertola and then on Beja, in the Alemtejo.
The insurgents whom he left behind him could do little till they had
obtained muskets from Seville and Gibraltar, and made no attempt to follow
the retreating column northwards.
Meanwhile Junot, even after he had succeeded in disarming Caraffa’s
Spanish division, was passing through a most anxious time. In obedience to
the Emperor’s orders he had sent a brigade under General Avril towards
Andalusia, to help Dupont, and another under Loison to Almeida to open
communications with Bessières. But these detachments had been made
under two false ideas, the one that the troubles in Spain were purely local,
the other that Portugal would keep quiet. Avril marched southward with
3,000 men, but, when his vanguard reached San Lucar on the Spanish
border, he found Andalusian militia provided with artillery watching him
across the Guadiana. He also learnt that a large force was assembling at
Badajoz, and that Dupont had got no further than Cordova—more than 150
miles away. After some hesitation he retraced his steps till he halted at
Estremoz, facing Badajoz. Loison had much the same experience: starting
from Almeida he crossed the border and scared away the small Spanish
garrison of Fort Concepcion: but when he drew near Ciudad Rodrigo and
learnt that the place was strongly held, that all the kingdom of Leon was in
revolt, and that Bessières was still far distant in Old Castile, he drew back

to Almeida [June 12-15]. Returning thither he heard of the troubles in
Northern Portugal, and resolved to march on Oporto, which was still
holding back from open insurrection when the news reached him. He
determined to hasten to that important city and to garrison it. Taking two
battalions and a few guns, while he left the rest of his brigade at Almeida,
he marched on Oporto, crossed the Douro at the ferry of Pezo-de-Ragoa,
and began to move on Amarante [June 21]. But the moment that he was
over the river, he found himself in the middle of the insurrection: among the
mountains the peasantry began to fire from above on his long column, to
roll rocks down the slopes at him, and to harass his baggage and rearguard.
Seeing that he had only 2,000 men in hand, and that the whole country-side
was up, Loison wisely returned to Almeida, which he regained by a circular
march through Lamego and Celorico, dispersing several bands of insurgents
on the way, for the rebellion had already begun to spread across the Douro
into the hills of Northern Beira [July 1].
Lisbon in the meanwhile was on the verge of revolt, but was still
contained by the fact that Junot held concentrated in and about it the main
body of his army, some 15,000 men. On the Feast of Corpus Christi (June
16) the annual religious procession through the streets nearly led to
bloodshed. This was the greatest festival of Lisbon, and had always led to
the assembly of enormous crowds: Junot allowed it to be once more
celebrated, but lined the streets with soldiers, and placed artillery ready for
action in the main squares and avenues. While the function was in progress
a senseless panic broke out among the crowd, some shouting that they felt a
shock of earthquake (always a terror in Lisbon since the catastrophe of
1755), others that the English were landing, others that the soldiers were
about to fire on the people. The frantic mob burst through the military
cordon, the procession was broken up, the prelate who bore the Sacrament
took refuge in a church, and the tumult grew so wild that the artillery were
about to open with grape, thinking that they had to deal with a carefully
prepared insurrection. A great and miscellaneous slaughter was only
prevented by the coolness of Junot, who threw himself into the throng,
prevented the troops from firing, cleared the street, prevailed on the clergy
to finish the procession, and dispersed the multitudes with no loss of life
save that of a few persons crushed or trampled to death in the panic.

But though this tumult passed off without a disaster, Junot’s position was
uncomfortable. He had just begun to realize the real proportions of the
insurrection in Spain, which had now completely cut him off from
communication with his colleagues. He had only the vaguest knowledge of
how Dupont and Bessières were faring: and the fact that large Spanish
forces were gathering both at Ciudad Rodrigo and at Badajoz inclined him
to think that affairs must be going ill in Castile and Andalusia. The long-
feared English invasion seemed at last to be growing imminent: General
Spencer’s division from Sicily and Gibraltar was at sea, and had showed
itself first off Ayamonte and the coast of Algarve, then off the Tagus-mouth.
Ignorant that Spencer had only 5,000 men, and that he had been brought
near Lisbon merely by a false report that the garrison had been cut down to
a handful, Junot expected a disembarkation. But Spencer went back to
Cadiz when he learnt that there were 15,000 instead of 4,000 men ready to
defend the capital.
Meanwhile the populace of Lisbon was stirred up by all manner of wild
rumours: it was said that Loison had been surrounded and forced to
surrender by the northern insurgents, that the Spanish army of Galicia was
marching south, that an English corps had landed at Oporto. All sorts of
portents and signs were reported for the benefit of the superstitious. The
most preposterous was one which we should refuse to credit if it were not
vouched for by Foy, and other respectable French authorities. A hen’s egg
was found on the high-altar of the patriarchal church, with the inscription
Morran os Franceses (‘Death to the French’) indented in its shell. This
caused such excitement that Junot thought it worth while to show that a
similar phenomenon could be produced on any egg by a skilful application
of acids. When his chemists exhibited several branded in an equally
convincing way with the words, Vive l’Empereur! the enthusiasm of the
credulous was somewhat damped[172].
Recognizing that he could expect no further help from the French armies
in Spain, and that the insurrection would certainly spread over every parish
of Portugal that did not contain a garrison, Junot wisely resolved to
concentrate the outlying fractions of his army, which lay exposed and
isolated at points far from Lisbon. At a council of war, held on June 25, he
laid before his chief officers the alternatives of evacuating Portugal and
retiring on Madrid by the way of Badajoz, or of uniting the army in the

neighbourhood of Lisbon and making an attempt to hold Central Portugal,
while abandoning the extreme north and south. The latter plan was
unanimously adopted: in the state of ignorance in which the generals lay as
to what was going on at Madrid and elsewhere in Spain, the retreat by
Badajoz seemed too hazardous. Moreover, it was certain to provoke
Napoleon’s wrath if it turned out to have been unnecessary. Accordingly it
was resolved to place garrisons in the fortresses of Elvas, Almeida and
Peniche, to fortify Setuval on the peninsula opposite Lisbon, and to draw in
all the rest of the troops to the vicinity of the capital. Dispatches to this
effect were sent to Loison at Almeida, to Avril at Estremoz, to Maransin at
Mertola, and to Kellermann, who was watching Badajoz from Elvas[173].
Many of the aides-de-camp who bore these orders were cut off by the
insurgents[174], but in the end copies of each dispatch were transmitted to
their destinations. In several instances the detached corps had begun to fall
back on the Tagus, even before they received the command to do so.
This was the case with Maransin at Mertola, who, finding himself
hopelessly isolated with 1,200 men in the centre of the insurrection, had
marched on Lisbon via Beja. On June 26 he reached the latter place and
found its ancient walls manned by a disorderly mass of citizens, who fired
upon him as he drew near. But he stormed the town without much difficulty,
cruelly sacked it, and resumed his march on Lisbon unharmed. This was not
the first fighting that had occurred in the Alemtejo; four days before Avril
had had to march from Estremoz to chastise the inhabitants of Villa Viciosa,
who had taken arms and besieged the company of the 86th regiment which
garrisoned their town. He scattered them with much slaughter, and, after the
usual French fashion, plundered the little place from cellar to garret.
On receiving Junot’s orders, General Kellermann, who bore the chief
command in the Alemtejo, left a battalion and a half[175]—1,400 men—in
Elvas and its outlying fort of La Lippe. With the rest he retired on Lisbon,
picking up first the corps of Avril and then that of Maransin, which met him
at Evora. He then entered the capital, leaving only one brigade, that of
Graindorge, at Setuval to the south of the Tagus [July 3].
Loison in the north did not receive his orders for a full week after they
were sent out, owing to the disorderly state of the intervening country. But
on July 4 he left Almeida, after making for it a garrison of 1,200 men, by
drafting into a provisional battalion all his soldiers who did not seem fit for

forced marching. He then moved for seven days through the mountains of
Beira to Abrantes, skirmishing with small bands of insurgents all the way.
At two or three places they tried to block his path, and the town of Guarda
made a serious attempt to defend itself, and was in consequence sacked and
partly burnt. Leaving a trail of ruined villages behind him, Loison at last
reached Abrantes and got into communication with his chief. He had lost on
the way 200 men, mostly stragglers whom the peasantry murdered: but he
had inflicted such a cruel lesson on the country-side that his popular
nickname (Maneta, ‘One-Hand’) was held accursed for many years in
Portugal.
The withdrawal of the French troops from the outlying provinces gave
the insurrection full scope for development. It followed close in the track of
the retiring columns, and as each valley was evacuated its inhabitants
hoisted the national flag, sent in their vows of allegiance to the Junta at
Oporto, and began to organize armed bands. But there was such a dearth of
military stores that very few men could be properly equipped with musket
and bayonet. Junot had long before called in the arms of the disbanded
militia, and destroyed them or forwarded them to Lisbon. In the southern
provinces the lack of weapons was even worse than in the valley of the
Douro: there was practically no armament except a few hundred muskets
hastily borrowed from the Spaniards of Badajoz and Seville, and a small
dépôt of cavalry equipment at Estremoz which Avril had forgotten to carry
off. An insurrectionary junta for the Alemtejo was formed at Evora, but its
general, Francisco Leite, could only succeed in equipping the mere shadow
of an army. In the north things were a little better: the rising spread to
Coimbra in the last week of June, and one of its first leaders, the student
Bernardo Zagalo, succeeded in capturing the small coast-fortress of
Figueira by starving out the scanty French garrison, which had been caught
wholly destitute of provisions [June 27]. Bernardino Freire then brought up
the 5,000 regular troops, which the Junta of Oporto had succeeded in
getting together, as far as the line of the Mondego. But the insurrectionary
area spread much further southward, even up to Leyria and Thomar, which
lie no more than sixty-five miles from the capital. From these two places,
however, the rebels were easily cleared out by a small expedition of 3,000
men under General Margaron [July 5]. Junot’s army in the second week of
July held nothing outside the narrow quadrangle of which Setuval, Peniche,
Abrantes, and Lisbon form the four points. But within that limited space

there were now 24,000 good troops, concentrated and ready to strike a blow
at the first insurrectionary force that might press in upon them.
But for a fortnight the Portuguese made no further move, and Junot now
resolved to attack the insurgents who lay beyond the Tagus in the plains of
the Alemtejo. His chief motive seems to have been the wish to reopen his
communications with Elvas, and to keep the way clear towards Badajoz, the
direction in which he would have to retreat, if ever he made up his mind to
evacuate Lisbon and retire on Spain. Accordingly, on July 25, he sent out
the energetic Loison at the head of a strong flying column—seven and a
half battalions, two regiments of dragoons, and eight guns—over 7,000 men
in all[176]. This force was directed to march on Elvas by way of Evora, the
capital of the Alemtejo, and the seat of its new Junta. On July 29 Loison
appeared before the walls of that city. To his surprise the enemy offered him
battle in the open; General Leite had brought up such of his newly
organized troops as he could collect—they amounted to no more than a
battalion and a half of infantry and 120 horse; but to help him there had
come up from Badajoz the Spanish Colonel Moretti with about the same
number of foot, a regiment of regular cavalry (the ‘Hussars of Maria
Luisa’), and seven guns[177]. In all the allies had under 3,000 men, but they
were presumptuous enough to form a line of battle outside Evora, and wait
for Loison’s attack. A mixed multitude of peasants and citizens, more of
them armed with pikes than with fowling-pieces, manned the walls of the
town behind them. Leite and his colleague should have drawn back their
regulars to the same position: they might have been able to do something
behind walls, but to expose them in the open to the assault of more than
double of their own numbers of French troops was absurd.
Loison’s first charge broke the weak line of the allied army; the Spanish
cavalry fled without crossing swords with the French, and General Leite left
the field with equal precipitation. But the bulk of the infantry fell back on
Evora and aided the peasantry to defend its ruined mediaeval walls. They
could not hold out, however, for many minutes; the French forced their way
in at four or five points, made a great slaughter in the streets, and ended the
day by sacking the city with every detail of sacrilege and brutality. Foy says
that 2,000 Spaniards and Portuguese fell; his colleague Thiébault gives the
incredible figure of 8,000. Even the smaller number must include a good

many unarmed inhabitants of Evora massacred during the sack. The French
lost ninety killed and 200 wounded [July 29].
On the third day after the fight Loison marched for Elvas, and drove
away the hordes which were blockading it. He was then preparing to push a
reconnaissance in force against Badajoz, when he received from his
commander-in-chief orders to return at once to Lisbon. The long-expected
English invasion of Portugal had at last begun, for on August 1 Sir Arthur
Wellesley was already disembarking his troops in Mondego Bay. Junot was
therefore set on concentrating in order to fight, and Loison’s expeditionary
force was too important a part of his army to be left out of the battle.
Dropping the battalion of the Hanoverian Legion as a garrison at Santarem,
Loison brought the rest of his 7,000 men to his commander’s aid.

SECTION IV: CHAPTER II
LANDING OF THE BRITISH: COMBAT OF
ROLIÇA

From the first moment when the Asturian deputies arrived in London,
with the news of the insurrection in Northern Spain [June 4], the English
Government had been eager to intervene in the Peninsula. The history of the
last fifteen years was full of the records of unfortunate expeditions sent out
to aid national risings, real or imaginary, against France. They had mostly
turned out disastrous failures: it is only necessary to mention the Duke of
York’s miserable campaign of 1799 in Holland, Stewart’s invasion of
Calabria in 1806, and Whitelock’s disgraceful fiasco at Buenos Ayres in
1807. As a rule the causes of their ill success had been partly incapable
leading, partly an exaggerated parsimony in the means employed.
Considering the vast power of France, it was futile to throw ashore bodies
of five thousand, ten thousand, or even twenty thousand men on the
Continent, and to expect them to maintain themselves by the aid of small
local insurrections, such as those of the Orange party in Holland or the
Calabrian mountaineers. The invasion of Spanish South America, on the
hypothesis that its inhabitants were all prepared to revolt against the
mother-country—a fiction of General Miranda—had been even more
unwise.
The ‘policy of filching sugar islands,’ as Sheridan wittily called it—of
sending out expeditions of moderate size, which only inflicted pin-pricks on
non-vital portions of the enemy’s dominions—was still in full favour when
the Spanish War began. There was hardly a British statesman who rose
above such ideas; Pitt and Addington, Fox and Grenville, and the existing
Tory government of the Duke of Portland, had all persisted in the same
futile plans. At the best such warfare resulted in the picking up of stray
colonies, such as Ceylon and Trinidad, the Cape, St. Thomas, or Curaçao:
but in 1808 the more important oversea possessions of France and her allies

were still unsubdued. At the worst the policy led to checks and disasters
small or great, like Duckworth’s failure at Constantinople, the abortive
Egyptian expedition of 1807, or the catastrophe of Buenos Ayres.
Castlereagh seems to have been the only leading man who dared to
contemplate an interference on a large scale in Continental campaigns. His
bold scheme for the landing of 60,000 men in Hanover, during the winter of
1805-6, had been foiled partly by the hesitation of his colleagues, partly by
the precipitation with which Francis II made peace after Austerlitz[178].
But the policy of sending small auxiliary forces to the Iberian Peninsula
was quite a familiar one. We had maintained a few thousand men under
Generals Burgoyne and Townsend for the defence of Portugal against Spain
in 1762. And again in 1801 there had been a small British division
employed in the farcical war which had ended in the Treaty of Badajoz. In
the year after Austerlitz, when it seemed likely that Bonaparte might take
active measures against Portugal, the Fox-Grenville ministry had offered
the Regent military aid, but had seen it politely refused, for the timid prince
was still set on conciliating the Emperor.
With so many precedents before them, it was natural that the Portland
cabinet should assent to the demands of the Spanish deputies who appeared
in London in June, 1808. The insurrection in the Iberian Peninsula was so
unexpected[179] and so fortunate a chance, that it was obviously necessary to
turn it to account. Moreover, its attendant circumstances were well
calculated to rouse enthusiasm even in the breasts of professional
politicians. Here was the first serious sign of that national rising against
Bonaparte which had been so often prophesied, but which had been so long
in coming. Even the Whigs, who had systematically denounced the sending
of aid to the ‘effete despotisms of the Continent,’ and had long maintained
that Napoleon was not so black as he was painted, were disarmed in their
criticisms by the character of the Spanish rising. What excuse could be
made for the treachery at Bayonne? And how could sympathy be refused to
a people which, deprived of its sovereign and betrayed by its bureaucracy,
had so gallantly taken arms to defend its national existence? The debates in
the British Parliament during the middle days of June show clearly that both
the Government and the Opposition had grasped the situation, and that for
once they were united as to the policy which should be pursued. It is only

needful to quote a few sentences from the speeches of Canning as Foreign
Secretary, and Sheridan as Leader of the Opposition [June 15].
‘Whenever any nation in Europe,’ said Canning, ‘starts up with a
determination to oppose that power which (whether professing insidious
peace or declaring open war) is alike the common enemy of all other
peoples, that nation, whatever its former relations with us may have been,
becomes ipso facto the ally of Great Britain. In furnishing the aid which
may be required, the Government will be guided by three principles—to
direct the united efforts of both countries against the common foe, to direct
them in such a way as shall be most beneficial to our common ally, and to
direct them to such objects as may be most conducive to British interests.
But of these objects the last shall never be allowed to come into competition
with the other two. I mention British interests chiefly for the purpose of
disclaiming them as any material part of the considerations which influence
the British Government. No interest can be so purely British as Spanish
success: no conquest so advantageous to England as conquering from
France the complete integrity of the Spanish dominions in every quarter of
the globe.’
Sheridan repeats the same theme in a slightly different key:—‘Hitherto
Buonaparte has run a victorious race, because he has contended with
princes without dignity, ministers without wisdom, and peoples without
patriotism. He has yet to learn what it is to combat a nation who are
animated with one spirit against him. Now is the time to stand up boldly
and fairly for the deliverance of Europe, and if the ministry will co-operate
effectually with the Spanish patriots they shall receive from us cordial
support.... Never was anything so brave, so noble, so generous as the
conduct of the Spaniards: never was there a more important crisis than that
which their patriotism has occasioned to the state of Europe. Instead of
striking at the core of the evil, the Administrations of this country have
hitherto gone on nibbling merely at the rind: filching sugar islands, but
neglecting all that was dignified and consonant to the real interests of the
country. Now is the moment to let the world know that we are resolved to
stand up for the salvation of Europe. Let us then co-operate with the
Spaniards, but co-operate in an effectual and energetic way. And if we find
that they are really heart and soul in the enterprise, let us advance with
them, magnanimous and undaunted, for the liberation of mankind.... Above

all, let us mix no little interests of our own in this mighty combat. Let us
discard or forget British objects, and conduct the war on the principle of
generous support and active co-operation.’
It may perhaps be hypercritical to point out the weak spot in each of
these stirring harangues. But Canning protested a little too much—within a
few weeks of his speech the British Government was applying to the Junta
of Seville to allow them to garrison Cadiz, which was refused (and rightly),
for in the proposal British interests peeped out a little too clearly. And
Sheridan, speaking from vague and overcoloured reports of the state of
affairs in the Peninsula, went too far when he extolled the unmixed
generosity and nobility of the conduct of the Spaniards: mingled with their
undoubted patriotism there was enough of bigotry and cruelty, of self-
seeking and ignorance, to make his harangue ring somewhat false in the
ears of future generations. Yet both Canning and Sheridan spoke from the
heart, and their declarations mark a very real turning-point in the history of
the great struggle with Bonaparte.
Fortunately for Great Britain, and for the nations of the Iberian
Peninsula, we were far better prepared for striking a heavy blow on the
Continent in 1808 than we had been at any earlier period of the war. There
was no longer any need to keep masses of men ready in the south-eastern
counties for the defence of England against a French invasion. There were
no longer any French forces of appreciable strength garrisoned along the
English Channel: indeed Castlereagh had just been planning a raid to burn
the almost unprotected French flotilla which still mouldered in the harbour
of Boulogne. Our standing army had recently been strengthened and
reorganized by a not inconsiderable military reform. The system had just
been introduced by which Wellington’s host was destined to be recruited
during the next six years. Every year two-fifths of the 120,000 embodied
militia of the United Kingdom were to be allowed to volunteer into the
regular army, while the places of the volunteers were filled up by men
raised by ballot from the counties. This sort of limited conscription worked
well: in the year 1808 it gave 41,786 men to the line, and these not raw
recruits, but already more or less trained to arms by their service in the
militia. All through the war this system continued: the Peninsular army, it
must always be remembered, drew more than half its reinforcing drafts
from the ‘old constitutional force.’ Hence came the ease with which it

assimilated its recruits. Meanwhile the embodied militia never fell short in
establishment, as it was automatically replenished by the ballot. The result
of these changes, for which Castlereagh deserves the chief credit, was a
permanent addition of 25,000 men to the regular force available for service
at home or in Europe.
In June, 1808, there chanced to be several considerable bodies of troops
which could be promptly utilized for an expedition to Spain. The most
important was a corps of some 9,000 men which was being collected in the
south of Ireland, to renew the attack on South America which had failed so
disastrously in 1807. The news of the Spanish insurrection had, of course,
led to the abandonment of the design, and General Miranda, its originator,
had been informed that he must look for no further support from England.
In addition to this force in Ireland there were a couple of brigades in the
south-eastern counties of England, which had been intended to form the
nucleus of Castlereagh’s projected raid on Boulogne. They had been
concentrated at Harwich and Ramsgate respectively, and the transports for
them were ready. A still more important contingent, but one that lay further
off, and was not so immediately available, was the corps of 10,000 men
which Sir John Moore had taken to the Baltic. In June it became known that
it was impossible to co-operate with the hairbrained King of Sweden, who
was bent on invading Russian Finland, a scheme to which the British
Ministry refused its assent. Moore, therefore, after many stormy interviews
with Gustavus IV, was preparing to bring his division home. With the aid of
Spencer’s troops, which had so long been hovering about Cadiz and
Gibraltar, and of certain regiments picked out of the English garrisons, it
was easily possible to provide 40,000 men for service in Spain and
Portugal.
But a number of isolated brigades and battalions suddenly thrown
together do not form an army, and though Castlereagh had provided a large
force for the projected expedition to the Peninsula, it was destitute of any
proper organization. With the expedition that sailed from Cork there was
only half a regiment of cavalry, and the brigades from Harwich, Ramsgate,
and Gibraltar had not a single horseman with them, so that there were
actually 18,000 foot to 390 horse among the contingents that first
disembarked to contend with Junot’s army. Transport was almost equally
neglected: only the troops from Cork had any military train with them, and

that they were provided with horses and vehicles was only due to the
prescience of their commander, who had at the last moment procured leave
from London to enlist for foreign service and take with him two troops of
the ‘Royal Irish Corps of Wagoners.’ ‘I declare,’ wrote Wellesley, ‘that I do
not understand the principles on which our military establishments are
formed, if, when large corps are sent out to perform important and difficult
services, they are not to have with them those means of equipment which
they require, such as horses to draw artillery, and drivers attached to the
commissariat[180].’ Without this wise inspiration, he would have found
himself unable to move when he arrived in the Peninsula: as it was, he had
to leave behind, when he landed, some of his guns and half his small force
of cavalry, because the authorities had chosen to believe that both draft and
saddle horses could readily be procured in Portugal. Such little contretemps
were common in the days when Frederick Duke of York, with the
occasional assistance of Mrs. Mary Ann Clark, managed the British army.
But the arrangements as to the command of the expedition were the most
ill-managed part of the business. The force at Cork was, as we have already
explained, under the orders of Sir Arthur Wellesley, the younger brother of
the great viceroy who had so much extended our Indian Empire between
1799 and 1805. He was the junior lieutenant-general in the British army, but
had already to his credit a more brilliant series of victories than any other
officer then living, including the all-important triumph of Assaye, which
had so effectually broken the power of the Mahrattas. In 1808 he was a
Member of Parliament and Under-Secretary for Ireland, but Castlereagh
(who had the most unbounded belief in his abilities, and had long been
using his advice on military questions) had picked him out to command the
expedition mustering at Cork. When its destination was changed from
America to Spain, the Secretary for War still hoped to keep him in
command, but the Duke of York and the War Office were against
Wellesley[181]. There were many respectable lieutenant-generals of
enormous seniority and powerful connexions who were eager for foreign
service. None of them had Wellesley’s experience of war on a large scale, or
had ever moved 40,000 men on the field: but this counted for little at head
quarters. The command in Portugal was made over to two of his seniors.
The first was Sir Hew Dalrymple, a man of fifty-eight, whose only
campaigning had been with the Duke of York in Flanders thirteen years
back. He had been Governor of Gibraltar since 1806, knew something of