SECTION VIII THE CAMPAIGN OF SIR JOHN MOORE CHAPTER I

NAPOLEON AT MADRID

From December 4 to December 22 the Emperor remained fixed in the neighbourhood of Madrid. He did not settle down in the royal palace, and it would seem that he made no more than one or two hurried visits of inspection to the city[526]. He established himself outside the gates, at Chamartin, a desolate and uncomfortable country house of the Duke of Infantado, and devoted himself to incessant desk-work[527]. It was here that he drew up his projects for the reorganization of the kingdom of Spain, and at the same time set himself to the task of constructing his plans of campaign against those parts of the Peninsula which still remained unsubdued. In seventeen days, uninterrupted by the cares of travel, Bonaparte could get through an enormous amount of business. His words and deeds at this period are well worth studying, for the light that they throw alike on his own character and on his conceptions of the state and the needs of Spain.

His first act was to annul the capitulation which he had granted to the inhabitants of Madrid. Having served its purpose in inducing the Junta to yield, it was promptly violated. ‘The Spaniards have failed to carry it out,’ he wrote, ‘and I consider[p. 474] the whole thing void[528].’ Looking at the preposterous clauses which he had allowed to be inserted in the document, there can be no doubt that this was his intention at the very moment when he ratified it. It was a small thing that he should break engagements, such as those in which he had promised not to quarter troops in the monasteries (Article 7), or to maintain all existing officials in their places (Article 2). But having guaranteed security for their life and property, freedom from arrest, and free exit at their pleasure, to such persons as chose to remain behind in the city, it was shameless to commence his proceedings with a proscription and a long series of arrests. The list of persons declared traitors and condemned to loss of life and goods was not very long: only ten persons were named, and seven of these were absent from Madrid. But the three others, the Prince of Castelfranco, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, and the Count of Altamira, were seized and dispatched into France, sentenced to imprisonment for life.

The arrests were a much more serious matter. In flagrant contravention of the terms of surrender, Bonaparte put under lock and key all the members of the Council of the Inquisition on whom he could lay hands, irrespective of what their conduct had been during the reign of the Supreme Junta. He also declared all the superior officers of the army resident in Madrid, even retired veterans, to be prisoners of war, and liable to answer with their necks for the safety of the captives of Dupont’s corps. Among them was discovered an old French émigré, the Marquis de Saint-Simon, who had entered the service of Charles IV as far back as 1793, and had taken part in the last campaign. The Emperor refused to consider him as a Spaniard, declared that he was one of his own subjects, had him tried by court-martial, and condemned him to death. All this was to lead up to one of those odious comedies of magnanimity which Bonaparte sometimes practised for the benefit of the editor of the Moniteur. Saint-Simon’s daughter was admitted to the imperial presence to beg for her father’s life, and the master of the world deigned to com[p. 475]mute the punishment of the ‘traitor’ to imprisonment for life in the mountain-fortress of Joux[529]. This was a repetition of the Hatzfeldt affairs at Berlin, and Saint-Simon was treated even worse than the unfortunate Prussian nobleman of 1806. Truly the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel!

Among other persons who were arrested were Don Arias Mon, president of the Council of Castile, the Duke of Sotomayor, and about thirty other notables: some were ultimately sent away to France, others allowed to go free after swearing allegiance to Joseph Bonaparte.

All these measures were designed to strike terror into the hearts of the Spaniards. But at the same time the Emperor issued a series of decrees—in his own name and not in that of his brother, the titular king—which were intended to conciliate them by bestowing upon them certain tangible benefits. He knew that there existed the nucleus of a Liberal party in Spain, and hoped to draw it over to his side by introducing certain much-needed reforms in the administration of the country. With this object he removed the tiresome inter-provincial octroi duties, abolished all feudal dues and all rights of private jurisdiction, declared that all monopolies should be annulled, and forbade all assignments of public revenues to individuals. Such measures would have seemed excellent to many good Spaniards, if they had been introduced by a legitimate ruler: but coming from the hand of a foreign conqueror they were without effect. Moreover there was hardly a square mile of Spanish territory, outside Madrid and the other towns held by the French, where Napoleon’s writs could run. Every village which was unoccupied was passively or actively disobedient. The reforms, therefore, were but on paper. Another series of decrees, which appeared at the same time, were in themselves quite as justifiable as those which were concerned with administrative changes, but were certain to offend nine-tenths of the Spanish nation. They dealt with the Church and its ministers. The most important was one which declared (with perfect truth) that there were far too many monasteries and nunneries in Spain, and that it was necessary to cut them down to one-third of their existing number. The names of those which were destined to survive were published: to them the inmates of the remaining institutions were[p. 476] to be transferred, as vacancies arose. The suppressed convents were to become the property of the state. Part of their revenues was to be devoted to raising the salaries of the secular clergy, so that every parish priest should have an income of 2,400 reals (about ￡25). Monks or nuns who might choose to leave the monastic life were to be granted a small pension[530]. At the same time the Inquisition was abolished ‘as dangerous to the crown and to civil authority,’ and all its property confiscated. In Madrid there was seized 2,453,972 reals in hard cash—about ￡25,000; the smallness of the amount much surprised the French, who had vague ideas concerning the fabulous wealth of the institution[531].

The only results of these measures were that every Spaniard was confirmed in his belief that Napoleon was a concealed atheist and an irreconcilable enemy of all religion. Could anything else be expected of one who (in spite of his Concordats and Te Deums) was after all a child of the Revolution? The man who had persecuted the Pope in January, 1808, would naturally persecute the monks of Spain in December. As to the Inquisition, its fate inspired no rejoicing: it had been effete for many years: there was not a prisoner in any of its dungeons. Indeed it had enjoyed a feeble popularity of late, for having refused to lend itself as a tool to Godoy. The only result of Napoleon’s decree for its abolition was that it acquired (grotesque as the idea may seem) considerable credit in the eyes of the majority of the Spanish people, as one of the usurper’s victims. Never was work more wasted than that which the Emperor spent on his reforms of December, 1808. They actually tended to make old abuses popular with the masses, merely because he had attempted to remove them. As to the possibility of conciliating the comparatively small body of Liberals, he was equally in error: they agreed with the views of Jovellanos: reforms were necessary, but they must come from within, and not be imposed by force from without. They were Spaniards first and reformers afterwards. The only recruits whom Bonaparte succeeded in enrolling for his brother’s court were the purely selfish bureaucrats who would accept any government—who would serve Godoy, Ferdinand, Joseph, a red republic, or the Sultan of Turkey[p. 477] with equal equanimity, so long as they could keep their places or gain better ones.

The Emperor had a curious belief in the power of oaths and phrases over other men, though he was entirely free himself from any feebleness of the kind. He took considerable pains to get up a semblance of national acceptance of his brother’s authority, now that his second reign was about to begin. Joseph had appeared at Chamartin on December 2[532]: but he was not allowed to re-enter Madrid for many days. The Emperor told him to stay outside, at the royal palace of the Pardo, till things were ready for his reception. This was not at all to the mind of the King, who took his position seriously, and was deeply wounded at being ordered about in such an arbitrary fashion. He sent in a formal protest against the publication of the decrees of December 4: his own name, he complained, not that of his brother, ought to have appeared at the bottom of all these projects of reform. He had never coveted any crown, and least of all that of Spain: but having once accepted the position he could not consent to be relegated into a corner, while all the acts of sovereignty were being exercised by his brother. He was ready to resign his crown into the hands from which he had received it: but if he was not allowed to abdicate, he must be allowed to reign in the true sense of the word. It made him blush with shame before his subjects[533] when he saw them invited to obey laws which he had never seen, much less sanctioned. Napoleon refused to accept this abdication: he looked at matters from an entirely different point of view. He was master of Spain, as he considered, not merely by the cession made at Bayonne, but by the new title of conquest. He intended to restore Joseph to the throne, but till he had done so he saw no reason why he should not exercise all the rights of sovereignty at Madrid. If, in a moment of pique, he said that his brother might exchange the crown of Spain for that of Italy, or for the position of lieutenant of the Emperor in France during his own numerous absences, there is clear evidence that these were empty words. His dispatches show not the least sign of any project for[p. 478] the future of Spain other than the restoration of Joseph; and while the latter was at the Pardo he was continually receiving notes concerning the reorganization of the Spanish army and finances, which presuppose his confirmation on the throne within the next few days[534].

It would seem that Napoleon’s real object in keeping his brother off the scene, and acting as if he intended to annex Spain to France as a vassal province, was merely to frighten the inhabitants of Madrid into a proper frame of mind. If they remained recalcitrant, and refused to come before him with petitions for pardon, they were to be threatened with a purely French military government. If they bowed the knee, they should have back King Joseph and the mockery of liberal and constitutional monarchy which he represented. So much we gather from the Emperor’s celebrated proclamation of December 7, and his allocution to the Corregidor and magistrates of Madrid two days later. Both of these addresses are in the true Napoleonesque vein. In the first we read that if the people of Spain prefer ‘the poisons which the English have ministered to them’ to the wholesome régime introduced from France, they shall be treated as a conquered province, and Joseph shall be removed to another throne. ‘I will place the crown of Spain on my own brow, and I will make it respected by evil-doers, for God has given me the strength and the force of will necessary to surmount all obstacles.’ In the second, which is written in a mood of less rigour, the inhabitants of Madrid are told that nothing could be easier than to cut up Spain into provinces, each governed by a separate viceroy. But if the clergy, nobles, merchants, and magistrates of the capital will swear a solemn oath upon the Blessed Sacrament to be true and loyal for the future to King Joseph, he shall be restored to them and the Emperor will make over to him all his rights of conquest. We[p. 479] cannot stop to linger over the other details of these addresses: one of the most astounding statements in them is that the quarrel between King Charles and King Ferdinand had been hatched by the English ministry[535], and that the Duke of Infantado, acting as their tool, was plotting to make Spain England’s vassal, ‘an insensate project which would have made blood run in torrents’! But this mattered little, as within a few weeks every English soldier would have been cast out of the Peninsula, and Lisbon no less than Saragossa, Valencia, and Seville would be flying the French flag[536].

In accordance with the Emperor’s command, the notables of Madrid, civil and ecclesiastical, were compelled to go through the ceremony of swearing allegiance to King Joseph on the Holy Sacrament, which was exposed for several days in every church for this purpose. Apparently a very large number of persons were induced, by terror or despair, to give in their formal submission to the intrusive King. Three pages of the Madrid Gazette for December 15 are filled with the names of the deputies of the ten quarters and sixty-four barrios of the city, who joined in the formal petition for the restoration to them of ‘that sovereign who unites so much kindness of heart with such an interest in the welfare of his subjects, and whose presence will be their joy.’

Satisfied with this declaration, and pretending to take it as the expression of the wishes of every Spaniard who was not the paid agent of England or the slave of the Inquisition, the Emperor was graciously pleased to restore Joseph to all his rights. Great preparations were made for his solemn entry, which was celebrated with considerable state in the month of January.

But his plans for the reorganization of Spain only formed a part of the Emperor’s work at Chamartin. He was also busied in the reconcentration of his armies, for the purpose of overrunning those parts of the Peninsula which still remained unconquered. On the very morrow of the fall of Madrid he had pushed out detachments[p. 480] in all directions, to cover all the approaches to the capital, and to hunt down any remnants of the Spanish armies which might still be within reach[537]. He was particularly hopeful that he might catch the army of the Centre, which, with Ney and Maurice Mathieu at its heels, was coming in from the direction of Siguenza and Calatayud. To intercept it the fusiliers of the Guard marched for Alcala, one of Victor’s divisions for Guadalajara, and another for Aranjuez; while Bessières with the Guard cavalry, and one of Latour-Maubourg’s brigades of dragoons, swept all the country around the Tajuna and the Tagus. But, as we have already seen, La Pe?a’s famishing men ultimately got away in the direction of Cuenca. When it was certain that they had escaped from the net, Napoleon rearranged his forces on the eastern side of Madrid. Bessières, with Latour-Maubourg’s whole division of dragoons[538], occupied cantonments facing at once towards Cuenca and towards La Mancha: the Marshal’s head quarters, on December 11, were at Tarancon. Of Victor’s infantry, one division (Ruffin) marched on Toledo, which opened its gates without resistance; another, that of Villatte, remained at Aranjuez with an advanced guard at Oca?a, a few miles further south. The third division of the 1st Corps, that of Lapisse, remained at Madrid. Ney’s troops were also at hand in this quarter: when La Pe?a had finally escaped from him, he was told to leave the division of Dessolles at Guadalajara and Siguenza. These forces were destined to keep open the communications between Madrid and Aragon, where the siege of Saragossa was just about to begin. With his other two divisions, those of Marchand and Maurice Mathieu[539], Ney was directed to march into Madrid: he was to form part of the mass of troops which the Emperor was collecting, in and about the capital, for new offensive operations. For this same purpose the 4th Corps, that of Lefebvre, was brought up from Old Castile: the Marshal with his two leading divisions, those of Sebastiani and Leval, arrived in Madrid on December 9: his third division, that of Valence, composed of Poles, was some way to the rear, having only reached Burgos on December 1. But[p. 481] by the thirteenth the whole corps was concentrated at Madrid. A few days later the divisions of Sebastiani and Valence were pushed on to Talavera, as if to form the advanced guard of an expedition against Estremadura, while that of Leval remained in Madrid[540]. Talavera had been occupied, before the Duke of Dantzig’s arrival, by the cavalry of Lasalle and Milhaud, who drove out of it without difficulty the demoralized troops that had murdered San Juan. This mob, now under the orders of Galluzzo, the Captain-General of Estremadura, fled behind the Tagus and barricaded the bridges of Arzobispo and Almaraz, to cover its front.

It will thus be seen that the troops of Victor, Lefebvre, and Dessolles, with the cavalry of Latour-Maubourg, Lasalle, and Milhaud thrown out in front of them, formed a semicircle protecting Madrid to the east, the south, and the south-west. On the north-west, in the direction of the Guadarrama and the roads towards the kingdom of Leon, the circle was completed by a brigade of Lahoussaye’s division of dragoons, who lay in and about Avila[541]. In the centre, available for a blow in any direction, were the whole of the Imperial Guard (horse and foot), Ney’s corps, Lapisse’s division of Victor’s corps, and Leval’s division of Lefebvre’s corps, besides King Joseph’s Guards—a total of at least 40,000 men. It only needed the word to be given, and these troops (after deducting a garrison for Madrid) could march forward, either to join Lefebvre for a blow at Lisbon, or Victor for a blow at Seville.

Meanwhile there were still reinforcements coming up from the rear: the belated corps of Mortier, the last great instalment of the army of Germany, had at last reached Vittoria, accompanied by the division of dragoons of Lorges. The Marshal was directed to take his corps to Saragossa, in order to assist Lannes and Moncey in the siege of that city; but the dragoons were sent to Burgos on the road to Madrid. Moreover Junot’s corps, after having been refitted and reorganized since its return from Portugal, was also available. Its leading division, that of Delaborde, had crossed the Bidassoa on December 4, and had now reached Burgos. The other two divisions, those of Loison and Heudelet (who had replaced Travot at the head of the 3rd Division) were not far behind. They[p. 482] could all be brought up to Madrid by the first day of January. The last division of reserve cavalry, Millet’s four regiments of dragoons, was due a little later, and had not yet crossed the frontier.

That the Emperor believed that there was no serious danger to be apprehended from the side of Leon and Old Castile, is shown by the fact that he allotted to these regions only the single corps of Soult. Nor had the Duke of Dalmatia even the whole of his troops in hand, for the division of Bonnet was immobilized in Santander, and only those of Merle and Mermet were near his head quarters at Carrion. The cavalry that properly belonged to his corps were detached, under Lasalle, in New Castile. Instead of them he had been assigned the four regiments forming the division of Franceschi[542]. He was promised the aid of Millet’s dragoons when they should arrive, but this would not be for some three weeks at the least. Nevertheless, with the 15,000 foot and 1,800 or 2,000 light cavalry at his disposal, Soult was told that he commanded everything from the Douro to the Bay of Biscay, and that he might advance at once into Leon, as there was nothing in his way that could withstand him[543]. As far as the Emperor knew, the only hostile force in this direction was the miserable wreck of Blake’s army, which had been rallied by La Romana on the Esla. In making this supposition he was gravely mistaken, and if Soult had obeyed his orders without delay, and advanced westward from Carrion, he would have found himself in serious trouble; for, as we shall presently see, the English from Salamanca were in full march against him at the moment when the Emperor dispatched these instructions. It was in the valley of the Douro, and not (as Bonaparte intended) in that of the Tagus that the next developments of the winter campaign of 1808 were to take place.

It remains only to speak of the north-east. The Emperor was determined that Saragossa should pay dearly for the renown that[p. 483] it had won during its first siege. He directed against it not only Moncey’s force, the troops which had won Tudela, but the whole of Mortier’s 5th Corps. One of its divisions was to take post at Calatayud, relieving Musnier’s eight battalions at that point, and to keep open (with the aid of Dessolles) the road from Saragossa to Madrid: but the rest would be available to aid in the siege. More than 40,000 men were to be turned against Palafox and the stubborn Aragonese. With Catalonia we need not deal in this place: the operations in the principality had little or no connexion with those in the rest of Spain. St. Cyr and Duhesme, with the 7th Corps, had to work out their own salvation. They were not to expect help from the Emperor, nor on the other hand were they expected to assist him for the present, though it was hoped that some day they might invade Aragon from the side of Lerida.

Looking at the disposition of the French troops on December 15-20, we can see that the Emperor had it in his power to push the central mass at Madrid, supported by the oncoming reserves under Junot and Lorges, either to support Lefebvre on the road to Lisbon, or Victor on the road to Seville. As a matter of fact there can be no doubt that the former was his intention. He was fully under the impression that the English army was at this moment executing a hasty retreat upon Portugal, and he had announced that his next move was to hurl them into the sea. ‘Tout porte à penser que les Anglais sont en pleine marche rétrograde,’ he wrote to Soult on December 10. On December 12 he issued in his Bulletin the statement that the ‘English are in full flight towards Lisbon, and if they do not make good speed the French army may enter that capital before them[544].’ If anything was wanted to confirm the Emperor in his idea that the English were not likely to be heard of in the north, it was the capture by Lasalle’s cavalry of eight stragglers belonging to the King’s German Legion near Talavera. ‘When we catch Hanoverians the English cannot be far off,’ he observed[545], and made all his arrangements on the hypothesis that[p. 484] Moore would be met in the valley of the Tagus, and not in that of the Douro. In so doing he was breaking one of his own precepts, that censuring generals ‘qui se font des tableaux’ concerning their enemy’s position and intentions, before they have sufficient data upon which to form a sound conclusion. All that he really knew about Moore and his army was that they had reached Salamanca in the middle of November, and had been joined towards the end of the month by Hope’s column that marched—as we shall presently relate—via Badajoz and the Escurial. Of the existence of this last division we have clear proof that Bonaparte was aware, for he inserted a silly taunt in the Bulletin of December 5 to the effect that ‘the conduct of the British had been dishonourable. Six thousand of them were at the Escurial on November 20: the Spaniards hoped that they would aid in the defence of the capital of their allies. But they did not know the English: as soon as the latter heard that the Emperor was at the Somosierra they beat a retreat, joined the division at Salamanca, and retired towards the sea-coast.’ There is also no doubt that the Emperor had received intelligence of a more or less definite sort concerning the landing of Baird’s division at Corunna. It is vaguely alluded to in the 10th Bulletin, and clearly spoken of in the Madrid Gazette of December 17[546]. But though aware of the existence of all the three fractions of the British army, Bonaparte could draw no other deduction from the facts at his disposal than that the whole of them would promptly retreat to Portugal, when the passage of the Somosierra and the fall of Madrid became known to their commander-in-chief. Lisbon, he thought, must be their base of operations, and on it they must retire: he had forgotten that one of the advantages of sea-power is that the combatant who possesses it can transfer his base to any port that he may choose. So far from being tied to Lisbon was Moore, that he at one moment contemplated making Cadiz his base, and finally moved it to Corunna.

[p. 485]

With pre-conceived ideas of this sort in his head, the Emperor was preparing to push on his main body in support of the advanced troops under Lefebvre and Lasalle on the road to Estremadura and Portugal. Victor meanwhile was to guard against the unlikely chance of any move being made on Madrid by the shattered ‘Army of the Centre’ from Cuenca, or by new Andalusian levies. Already Lasalle’s horsemen were pushing on to Truxillo and Plasencia, almost to the gates of Badajoz and to the Portuguese frontier, when unexpected news arrived, and the whole plan of campaign was upset.

Instead of retiring on Lisbon, Sir John Moore had pushed forward into the plains of Old Castile, and was advancing by forced marches to attack the isolated corps of Marshal Soult. Bonaparte was keenly alive, now as always, to the danger of a defeat in the valley of the Douro. Moreover the sight of a British army in the field, and within striking distance, acted on him as the red rag acts upon the bull. No toil or trouble would be too great that ended in its destruction, and looking at his maps the Emperor thought that he saw the way to surround and annihilate Moore’s host. Throwing up without a moment’s delay the whole plan for the invasion of Portugal, he marched for the passes of the Guadarrama with every man that was disposable at Madrid. His spirits were high, and the event seemed to him certain. He sent back to his brother Joseph the command to put in the Madrid newspapers and circulate everywhere the news that 36,000 English troops were surrounded and doomed to destruction[547]. Meanwhile, with 50,000 men at his back, he was marching hard for Arevalo and Benavente.