SECTION IX: CHAPTER II

NAPOLEON’S DEPARTURE FROM SPAIN: HIS PLANS FOR THE TERMINATION OF THE WAR: THE COUNTER-PLANS OF THE JUNTA

Four days after the battle of Ucles Napoleon quitted Spain. He had rested at Valladolid from January 6 to January 17, after his return from the pursuit of Sir John Moore. Though he had failed to entrap the British Army he was not discontented with his achievements. He was fully convinced that he had broken the back of the Spanish insurrection, and that he could safely return to France, leaving the completion of the work to his brother and his marshals. He was anxious to hear that Saragossa had fallen, and that the English had been driven out of the Peninsula. When these two events should have come to pass, his armies might resume, under the guidance of his subordinates, the original advance against Portugal and Andalusia which had been so effectually frustrated by Moore’s daring move.

Meanwhile he spent full eleven days at Valladolid, busy with all manner of desk-work, connected not merely with Spain, but with the affairs of the whole continent. He was evidently anxious to leave an impression of terror behind him: he hectored and bullied the unfortunate Spanish deputations that were compelled to come before him in the most insulting fashion. His harangues generally wound up with the declaration that if he was ever forced to come back to Spain in arms, he would remove his brother Joseph, and divide the realm into subject provinces, which should be governed by martial law. Some French soldiers (probably marauders) having been assassinated, he arrested and threatened to hang the whole municipality of Valladolid, finally releasing them only when three persons accused (rightly or wrongly) of the murders were delated to him[p. 16] and executed. He sent advice to King Joseph to deal in the same way with Madrid: nothing would keep the capital quiet, he wrote, but a good string of executions[26]. It was to be many years before he realized that hanging did no good in Spain, and was only repaid by additional assassinations. In return for this good advice to his brother, he extorted from him fifty of the choicest pictures of the royal gallery at Madrid; but in compensation Joseph was invited to annex all that he might choose from the private collections of the exiled Spanish nobility and the monasteries of the capital[27].

Suggestions have sometimes been made that Napoleon hastened his departure from Spain, because he saw that the suppression of the insurrection would take a much longer time than he had originally supposed, and because he wished to transfer to other hands the lengthy and inglorious task of hunting down the last armies of the Junta. This view is certainly erroneous: his three months’ stay in Spain had not opened the Emperor’s eyes to the difficulties of the business that he had taken in hand. Though many of his couriers and aides-de-camp had already been ambuscaded and shot by the peasantry, though he was already beginning to see that a blockhouse and a garrison would have to be placed at every stage on the high-roads, he believed that these sinister signs were temporary, and that the country-side, after a few sanguinary lessons had been given, would sink down into the quiet of despair.

His final legacy to his brother, on departing, was a long dispatch giving a complete plan of operations for the next campaign. Soult, after forcing the English to embark, was to march on Oporto. Napoleon calculated that he ought to capture it on February 1, and that on February 10 he would be[p. 17] in front of Lisbon. The Portuguese levies he practically disregarded as a fighting force, and he was ignorant that there still remained 8,000 or 10,000 British troops on the Tagus, who would serve to stiffen their resistance.

When Soult should have captured Oporto, and be well on the way to Lisbon, Victor was to go forward with his own 1st Corps, the division of Leval from the 4th Corps, and the cavalry of Milhaud, Latour-Maubourg, and Lasalle. He was to strike at Estremadura, occupy Merida and Badajoz, and join hands with Soult along the Tagus. Lisbon being reduced, Victor was to borrow a division from Soult and march on Seville with 40,000 men. With such a force, as the Emperor calculated, he would subdue the whole of Andalusia with ease.

Meanwhile Saragossa must (as Napoleon rightly thought) fall some time in February. When it was disposed of, the 3rd and 5th Corps would provide a garrison for Aragon, and then march on Valencia, which would be attacked and subdued much about the same time that Victor would arrive at Seville. St. Cyr would have made an end of the Catalans long before. Thus the whole Peninsula would be subdued ere the summer was over. There was nowhere a Spanish army that could make head against even 10,000 French troops. The only possible complication would be that Moore’s army might conceivably take ship, not for England, but for Lisbon or Cadiz. If the English, ‘the only enemy who could create difficulties,’ took this course, the Emperor might have to give further orders. But it does not seem that he regarded this as a likely contingency, since he had conceived an even exaggerated idea of the losses and demoralization which the British had suffered in the retreat to Corunna. To Joseph he wrote, ‘reserve yourself for the expedition to Andalusia, which may start three weeks hence. With 40,000 men, marching by an unexpected route [i.e. by Badajoz, not by La Carolina], you will surprise the enemy and force him to submit. This is an operation which will make an end of the war: I leave the glory of it to you[28].’ To Jerome Napoleon he wrote in the most laconic style, ‘the Spanish affair is done with[29],’ and then proceeded to discuss the general politics of the[p. 18] Continent, as if his whole attention could now be given to the doings of Austria and Russia. On January 18 he rode out of Valladolid, and after six days of incessant travel reached Paris on the 24th. His first care after his arrival was to scare the intriguers of the capital into good behaviour. His second was to endeavour to treat Austria after the same fashion. He had not yet made up his mind whether the ministers of Francis II meant mischief, or whether they had merely been presuming on his long absence in Spain: on the whole he thought that they could be reduced to order by bold language, and by the ostentatious movement of troops on the Rhine and upper Danube. But he was not sure of his conclusion: in his correspondence letters stating that Austria has been brought to reason, alternate with others in which she is accused of incorrigible perversity, and a design to make war in the spring[30]. The Emperor’s suspicions are most clearly shown by the fact that in February he ordered the whole of the Imperial Guard, except two battalions and three squadrons, to be brought up from Spain and directed on Paris[31]. In the same month he sent secret orders to the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, to bid them be ready to mobilize their contingents at short notice.

It is clear that as regards the affairs of Spain the Emperor was in January and February, 1809, as much deluded as he had been seven months before, in June, 1808. The whole plan of campaign which he dictated at Valladolid, and sent as his parting gift to Joseph and Jourdan, was absolutely impracticable, and indicated a fundamental ignorance of the character of the Spanish war. It would have been a perfectly sensible document if the struggle had been raging in Italy or Germany, though even there the calculations of distance and time would have been rather hazardous. Twenty-three days were given to Soult to expel the English, to pacify Galicia, to take Oporto,[p. 19] and to march on Lisbon! Even granting that all had gone as the Emperor desired, the estimate was too short by half. It was midwinter; Galicia and northern Portugal form one of the most mountainous regions in Europe: their roads are vile; their food supplies are scanty; their climate at that season of the year detestable. Clearly the task given to Soult could not be executed in the prescribed time[32].

But this is a minor point: it was not so much in his ‘logistics’ that the Emperor went wrong as in his general conception of the character of the war. He imagined that in dealing with Spain he might act as if he were dealing with Austria or Prussia—indeed that he had an enormous extra advantage in the fact that the armies of Ferdinand VII were infinitely inferior in mere fighting power to those of Francis II or Frederick William III. By all the ordinary rules of modern warfare, a nation whose capital had been occupied, and whose regular armies had been routed and half-destroyed, ought to have submitted without further trouble. The Emperor was a little surprised that the effect of Espinosa and Gamonal, of Tudela and Ucles, had not been greater. He had almost expected to receive overtures from the Junta, asking for terms of submission. But somewhat disappointed though he might be, he had not yet realized that Spain was not as other countries. The occupation of Madrid counted for little or nothing. The insurrectionary armies, when driven into a corner, did not capitulate, but dispersed, and fled in small parties over the hills, to reunite on the first opportunity. Prussian or Austrian troops under similar circumstances would have quietly laid down their arms. But to endeavour to grasp a Spanish corps was like clutching at a ball of quicksilver: the mass dispersed in driblets between the fingers of the manipulator, and the small rolling pellets ultimately united to form a new force. Large captures of Spaniards only took place on the actual battle-field (as at Ucles or Oca?a), or when an army had shut itself up in a fortress and could not get away, as happened at Saragossa and Badajoz. Unless actually penned in between bayonets, the insurgents abandoned cannon and[p. 20] baggage, broke their ranks and disappeared, to gather again on some more propitious day, either as fresh armies or as guerrilla bands operating upon the victor’s lines of communication.

Nor was this all: in Italy, Germany, and Austria Bonaparte had dealt with regions where the population remained quiescent when once the regular army had been beaten. Risings like that of Verona in 1797, or of the Tyrol in 1805, were exceptional. The French army was wont to go forward without being forced to leave large garrisons behind it, to hold down the conquered country-side. A battalion or two placed in the chief towns sufficed to secure the communication of the army with France. Small parties, or even single officers bearing dispatches, could ride safely for many miles through an Italian or Austrian district without being molested. It was not thus in Spain: the Emperor was to find that every village where there was not a French garrison would be a focus of active resistance, and that no amount of shooting or hanging would cow the spirits of the peasantry. It was only after scores of aides-de-camp had been murdered or captured, and after countless small detachments had been destroyed, that he came to realize that every foot of Spanish soil must not only be conquered but also held down. If there was a square of ten miles unoccupied, a guerrilla band arose in it. If a district thirty miles long lacked a brigade to garrison it, a local junta with a ragged apology for an army promptly appeared. Three hundred thousand men look a large force on paper, but when they have to hold down a country five hundred miles broad they are frittered away to nothing. This Great Britain knows well enough from her recent South African experience: but it was not a common matter of knowledge in 1809. If the Emperor had been told, on the day of his entry into Madrid, that even three years later his communication with Bayonne would only be preserved by the maintenance of a fortified post at every tenth milestone, he would have laughed the idea to scorn. Still more ridiculous would it have appeared to him if he had been told that it would take a body of 300 horse to carry a dispatch from Salamanca to Saragossa, or that the normal garrison of Old Castile would have to be kept at 15,000 men, even when there was no regular Spanish army nearer to it than Oviedo or Astorga. In short he, and all[p. 21] Europe, had much to learn as to the conditions of warfare in the Peninsula. If he had realized them in March, 1808, there would have been no treachery at Bayonne, and the ‘running sore,’ as he afterwards called the Spanish war, would never have broken forth.

Meanwhile the conquest of Spain was hung up for a month and more after the victory of Ucles. The Emperor had bidden Joseph and Jourdan to wait till the February rains were over, before sending out the great expedition against Andalusia; the siege of Saragossa was prolonged far beyond expectation, and Soult in Galicia (as we shall presently see) found the time-allowance which his master had set him inadequate to the verge of absurdity. The French made no further move of importance till March.

The Central Junta, therefore, were granted three full months from the date of their flight from Aranjuez to Seville, in which to reorganize their armies for the oncoming campaign of 1809—a respite which they gained (as we have already shown) purely and solely through Moore’s splendid inspiration of the march to Sahagun.

The members of the Junta trailed into Seville at various dates between December 14 and December 17. Their rapid journey at midwinter through the Sierra de Guadalupe and the still wilder Sierra Morena had been toilsome and exhausting[33]. It proved fatal to their old president, Florida Blanca, who died of bronchitis only eleven days after he had arrived at Seville. In his stead a Castilian Grandee of unimpeachable patriotism but very moderate abilities, the Marquis of Astorga, was elected to the presidential chair. The Junta had no enviable task before it: the news of the disasters on the Ebro and the fall of Madrid had thrown the nation into a paroxysm of unreasoning fury. Ridiculous charges of treason were being raised against all those who had been in charge of the war. Blake and Casta?os (of all people!) were being openly accused of having sold themselves to Napoleon. There were a number of political assassinations in the regions to which the French had not yet penetrated: most of the victims were old friends of Godoy. It looked at first as if[p. 22] the central government would be unable to restore any sort of order, or to organize any further resistance. Some of the local juntas, whose importance had disappeared with the meeting of the Supreme Junta, showed signs of wishing to resume their ancient independence. Those of Seville and Jaen were especially disobliging. But the evils of disunion were so obvious that even the most narrow-minded particularists settled down after a time into at least a formal obedience to the central government.

The enforced halt made by the French after Napoleon’s departure for Madrid was the salvation of Spain. By the month of January things were beginning to assume a more regular aspect, and some attempt was made to face the situation. The most favourable part of that situation was that money at least was not wanting for the moment. The four or five millions of dollars which the British Government had distributed to the provincial Juntas and to the ‘Central’ had long been spent, and in 1809 no more than ￡387,000 in specie was advanced to Spain. Spent also was the enormous amount of money accruing from patriotic gifts and local assessments. But there had just arrived at Cadiz a large consignment of specie from America. The Spanish colonies in the New World had all adhered without hesitation to the cause of Ferdinand VII, and their first and most copious contribution had just come to hand. Not only had the Governors of Mexico and Peru and the other provinces strained every nerve to raise money, but a vast patriotic fund had been collected by individuals. There were rich merchants and land-holders in America who made voluntary offerings of sums as large as 100,000 or 200,000 dollars apiece. The money which came to hand early in 1809 amounted to more than ￡2,800,000, and much more was received ere the close of the year. It was with this sum, far more than with British money, that the Spanish armies were paid and fed: but their equipment mainly came from England. The stores of arms, clothing, and munition which had existed in the arsenals of the Peninsula when the war broke out, had all been exhausted in the autumn, and had not even sufficed to equip fully the unfortunate armies which were beaten on the Ebro. The government and the local juntas had set up new manufactories at Seville, Valencia, and elsewhere,[p. 23] which were already turning out a large quantity of weapons, accoutrements, and uniforms: it was now that the armies began to appear in the rough brown cloth of the country and in leather shakos, abandoning the old white uniform and plumed hat which had been the garb of the Spanish line. But the reclothing and rearmament of the troops could never have been completed without the enormous consignments of cloth, powder, muskets, lead, and leather work which came from England. It is true that much was lost by the fortune of war before it could be utilized—notably the considerable amount of muskets, ammunition, and cloth which had been landed in Galicia for La Romana’s army. This, as we have seen, was either destroyed by Sir John Moore’s army or captured by Soult, because the Galician Junta had kept it waiting too long at the base. But all that went to Andalusia, Valencia, and Catalonia came safely to hand. Palafox’s army was re-equipped, just before the second siege of Saragossa began, with British stores sent up by Colonel Doyle from Tarragona. The armies of the south and east also received enormous consignments of necessaries.

It remains to speak of the purely military aspect of the Junta’s position. When January began, the wrecks of the Spanish armies were distributed in a wide semicircle reaching from Oviedo to Gerona, while the French lay in their midst. In the Asturias there were still 14,000 or 15,000 men under arms: the relics of Acevedo’s division of Blake’s army had fallen back, and joined the other levies which the local Junta had assembled. The whole force was watching the two lines on which the French could conceivably move during the winter—the coast route from Santander to Gijon, and the pass of Pajares which leads from Leon to Oviedo.

In Galicia, La Romana’s army, now engaged in the miserable retreat from Astorga to Orense, had fallen into the most wretched condition. Of the 22,000 men who had been assembled at Leon in December only 6,000 or 7,000 were now to be found: the Galician battalions had melted home when the army fell back among their native mountains. They cannot be much blamed, for they were suffering acute starvation: in the spring they came back to join the colours readily enough. The regulars, who still hung together, were famished, naked, typhus-ridden,[p. 24] and incapable of any great exertion. Their general’s only care was to keep them as far as possible from Soult and Ney, till the winter should have passed by, and food and clothing be procured.

Between La Romana’s men at Orense and the army of Estremadura on the Tagus there was no Spanish force in the field. When Lapisse and D’Avenay had occupied Zamora and Salamanca, the only centre of resistance in Leon was the fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, which was held by a handful of local militia. Portuguese troops were beginning to collect in its rear at Almeida, but with them the Junta had nothing to do.

The Estremaduran army had now passed from the hands of Galluzzo to those of Cuesta. The Junta, in spite of the memories of Cabezon and Rio Seco, had once more given the obstinate and incapable old soldier an important command. Apparently they had been moved by the widespread but idiotic cry imputing treachery to the generals who had been beaten on the Ebro, and gave Cuesta an army because (with all his faults) no one ever dreamed of accusing him of treachery or sympathy with the French. His forces consisted (1) of the wrecks of Belvedere’s army from Gamonal, (2) of the débris of San Juan’s army from Madrid, (3) of new Estremaduran levies, which had not gone forward to Burgos in October, but had remained behind to complete their organization, (4) of the four dismounted cavalry regiments from Denmark, which had been sent to the south when La Romana landed at Santander, in order to procure equipment and horses. In all, the army of Cuesta had no more than 10,500 foot and 2,000 or 2,500 horse. The spirit of the old troops of San Juan and Belvedere was still very bad, and they were hardly recovered from their December mutinies and murders. After Lefebvre had driven them back from the Tagus, and occupied the bridges of Almaraz and Arzobispo, the Estremadurans had retired to Merida and Truxillo: on January 11 their most advanced position was at the last-named place.

To the east of Estremadura lay the weakest point of the Spanish line: Andalusia and its mountain barrier of the Sierra Morena were almost undefended in January, 1809. It will be remembered that all through the autumn of the preceding year the local juntas, intoxicated with the fumes of Baylen, had let the months slip by without doing much to organize the ‘Army[p. 25] of Reserve,’ of which they had spoken so much in August and September. It resulted that, when Reding had marched for Catalonia, and the last belated fractions of Casta?os’ army had been forwarded to Madrid, Andalusia was almost destitute of troops. When the Junta fled to Seville, it looked around for an army with which to defend the passes of the Sierra Morena. Nothing of the kind existed: the only force available consisted of nine or ten battalions, mainly new levies, which were dispersed through the ‘Four Kingdoms’ completing their armament and organization. They were hastily mobilized and pushed forward to the Sierra Morena, but not more than 6,000 bayonets and 500 sabres could be collected. This was the sole force that lay between the French at Madrid and the Junta at Seville. The charge of the division, whose head quarters were placed at La Carolina, was given to the Marquis del Palacio, who in the general shifting of commanders had just been recalled from Catalonia.

The British Government’s knowledge of the danger to which Andalusia was exposed, from the absolute want of troops to defend it, led to an untoward incident, which did much to endanger its friendly relations with the Junta. On hearing of the fall of Madrid, and of Moore’s retreat towards Galicia, Canning harked back to one of his old ideas of the previous summer, the notion that British troops might be sent to the south of Spain, if a safe basis for their operations were secured. This, as the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs believed, would best be provided by the establishment of a garrison in Cadiz. It was all-important that this great centre of commerce should not fall into the hands of the French, and early in January it was known in London that there was no adequate Spanish force ready to defend the passes of Andalusia. If Napoleon had an army large enough to provide, not only for the pursuit of Moore, but for the dispatch of a strong corps for an attack on Seville, it seemed probable that the French might overrun Southern Spain as far as the sea, without meeting with serious opposition. Accordingly, Canning wrote to Frere, on the fourteenth day of the new year, 1809, to offer the assistance of a considerable British force for the defence of Andalusia, if Cadiz were placed in their hands.

‘The question of the employment of a British army in the[p. 26] south of Spain,’ he wrote, ‘depends essentially upon the disposition of the Spanish Government to receive a corps of that army into Cadiz. Without the security to be afforded by that fortress, it is impossible to hazard the army in the interior, after the example of the little co-operation which Sir John Moore represents himself to have received from the Spaniards in the north.... In consequence of the imminent danger, and of the pressing necessity for immediate decision arising from Sir John Moore’s retreat, and from the defenceless state in which you represent Andalusia to be, His Majesty’s Government have deemed it right (without waiting for the result of your communication with the Central Junta) to send a force direct to Cadiz, to be admitted into that fortress. Four thousand men under Major-General Sherbrooke are directed to sail immediately, and he is informed that he is to expect instructions from you on his arrival, containing the determination of the Spanish Government respecting his admission into Cadiz.... In the event of a refusal of the Junta to afford this proof of confidence, Major-General Sherbrooke is directed to proceed to Gibraltar[34].’

The last paragraph of this dispatch shows that Canning’s intentions were perfectly honourable, and that he did not intend to bring any pressure to bear upon the Junta in the event of their refusing to admit a British garrison into Cadiz. His views were founded upon the information available in London when he wrote, and he was under the impression that a French army might probably be marching upon Seville at the moment when his letter would reach Frere’s hands. But—as we have seen—the diversion of the main force of Napoleon’s army of invasion against Moore, had rendered any such expedition impossible, and no immediate danger was really to be apprehended.

The same idea, however, had entered into Frere’s mind, and long before he received Canning’s dispatch he had been sounding members of the Central Junta as to the way in which they would look on a proposal to send British troops to Cadiz. The answer which he received from their secretary, Martin de Garay, was not reassuring: Don Martin ‘energetically repudiated’ the project: there would be no objection, he said, to admit a garrison, if Cadiz became ‘the ultimate point of retreat’ of the armies and[p. 27] government of Spain. But the danger that had appeared so pressing some weeks before had passed by, the French had stopped their advance, and the Junta were now hoping to defend Estremadura and the course of the Tagus. The invaders, as they trusted, would be met and checked on the line of Alcantara and Almaraz. They deprecated any sending of British troops to Cadiz, and hoped that Lisbon would be the point to which reinforcements would be dispatched, as its evacuation would have deplorable results. De Garay, in a second letter, spoke of rumours to the effect that Cradock was proposing to evacuate Portugal, and trusted that they were not true. As a matter of fact they were, and that timid commander was already making secret preparations to embark.

Frere gave up for the present any idea of pressing the project further, unless the French should recommence their advance on Andalusia. He had not yet received Canning’s dispatch from London, and did not know that the home government had taken to heart the plan for occupying Cadiz and sending a large expedition to Andalusia. But on February 2, before any hint of the kind had reached him, he was informed by a dispatch from Lisbon that troops had been already sent off to Cadiz[35]. This step was the work of Sir George Smith, one of the numerous British military agents in the Peninsula, who had taken upon himself to force events to an issue, without first taking the precaution of communicating either with the home government or the British ambassador at Seville. Smith was a hasty and presumptuous man, full of zeal without discretion. The defencelessness of Andalusia had impressed him, just as it had impressed Canning and Frere. But instead of opening communications with the Junta, as they had both done, he had merely written in very urgent terms to Cradock, and adjured him to detach troops from the scanty garrison of Portugal in order to secure Cadiz. The general, when thus pressed, consented to fall in with the scheme, and set aside a brigade under Mackenzie, which he shipped off from Lisbon at twenty-four hours’ notice (February 2). He also ordered the 40th regiment, then in garrison at Elvas, to march on Seville. Both Cradock and Smith were gravely to blame, for they had no authorization[p. 28] to attempt to occupy Cadiz, without obtaining the consent of the Spanish Government[36]. They should have consulted both Frere and the Junta before moving a man: but it was only when the troops had actually embarked that they thought fit to notify their action to the ambassador at Seville.

On receiving their letters Frere was placed in an unenviable position. Having just seen his own proposals negatived by the Junta in polite but decisive terms, he now learnt that a British force had been sent off to carry out precisely the plan which the Spaniards had refused to take into consideration. Four days later he was informed that Mackenzie’s brigade, which had chanced upon a favourable wind, was actually lying in Cadiz harbour, and that Sir George Smith was endeavouring to induce the local authorities of the place to permit them to land. The Junta, as was inevitable, suspected Frere of having been in the plot, and imagined that he was trying to force their hand by the display of armed force. Cadiz was at Smith’s mercy, for it was only garrisoned by its urban guards; and the populace were by no means unwilling to see the British land, for the fear of the French was upon them, and they welcomed the approach of reinforcements of any kind.

The supreme authority in Cadiz at this moment was the Marquis of Villel, a special commissioner sent down by the Central Junta, of which he was a member. He refused to be cajoled by Smith, and very properly referred his demand for permission to disembark to the government at Seville. The latter, not unnaturally incensed, turned for explanations to Frere. The ambassador’s conduct when placed in this dilemma was by no means wise or straightforward. Instead of frankly disavowing Smith’s action, he adopted the tortuous course[37] of[p. 29] pretending that the expedition from Lisbon had been sent with his knowledge and consent, but that he would not allow it to land without the leave of the Junta. The Spaniards replied in terms of some indignation, and returned a frank negative to the demand. Their secretary, de Garay, wrote that the unexpected appearance of General Mackenzie’s force was ‘painful and disagreeable intelligence, Cadiz being no longer in danger from the French, and two Spanish regiments being already on their way to reinforce the garrison. The measure which had been taken would admit of a thousand interpretations, and a consent to hand over the fortress to the British would compromise the Central Junta with the whole nation.’ The fact was that Spanish public opinion was strongly opposed to allowing the British to obtain a foothold in Cadiz; there was a deeply-rooted notion abroad that, if once occupied, the place might be kept permanently in our hands, and be turned into a second Gibraltar.

Unfortunately for the credit of Great Britain with her allies, tumults broke out at Cadiz within a few days of the arrival of Mackenzie’s army, which supplied an excuse to malevolent Spaniards for attributing the worst motives to their allies. As a matter of fact they were not stirred up by Sir George Smith or any other emissary of the British Government, but were the results of the eccentric behaviour of the Marquis de Villel[38]. This personage was a very strange character, a sort of nineteenth-century Spanish Puritan, with a taste for playing the benevolent despot. He attributed the misfortunes of his country (and not without much reason) to her moral decadence. His idea of the way to commence her regeneration was peculiar, considering the[p. 30] circumstances of the time. He issued an edict commanding all married pairs living apart, to reunite, issued laws repressing theatre-going, late hours, and gambling, legislated concerning the length of ladies’ skirts, and organized a grand battue against women of light reputation, of whom he imprisoned some scores. When he proceeded to engage in a sort of moral inquisition into the private life of all classes, he naturally became very unpopular, and on the first opportunity the populace rose against him. He had ordered into the city a newly-embodied ‘Swiss’ battalion, raised from the prisoners of Dupont’s army and other deserters of all nationalities. The cry was raised by his enemies that he was admitting Frenchmen in disguise into the sacred fortress, with the purpose of betraying it to the enemy. Other rumours were put about to the effect that he was deliberately neglecting the fortifications, and supplying the batteries with powder adulterated with sand[39].

When the foreign battalion drew near to Cadiz on February 22, and began to march up the long spit which connects the city with the Isla de Leon, the storm burst. A mixed multitude of rioters shut the gates against the troops, and then swept the streets, maltreating Villel’s subordinates, and slaying Don José Heredia the commander of the coast-guard, a person very unpopular with the smugglers, who formed an appreciable element in the crowd. The High Commissioner himself was besieged in his house, hunted from it, and nearly murdered: he only escaped by the kind offices of the head of a Capuchin convent, who took him within his gates, and made himself responsible to the rioters for keeping the refugee in safe custody. The mob next tried to break open the state prison, for the purpose of slaying General Caraffa and other political captives. Fortunately Felix Jones, the military Governor, succeeded in saving these unhappy persons, by the not over-willing aid of the urban guards, many of whom had joined in the outbreak.

The rioters expressed great friendliness for the British, and many of them kept inviting the troops in the offing to come ashore. It was very lucky that no attention was paid to these solicitations[40], for if they had landed the worst suspicions of[p. 31] the Junta would have appeared justified, and the insurrection would have been attributed to the machinations of Frere or Smith. Fortunately the latter had died, only a few days before the troubles broke out, the victim of a fever which carried him off after no more than twenty-four hours of illness. If he had survived till the twenty-second, he would have been quite capable of taking the fatal step of listening to the appeals of the rioters, and ordering the troops ashore.

As it turned out the whole expedition ended in an absurd fiasco. When the riots had died down, the Junta recalled the eccentric de Villel, but they would not listen to any proposals from Frere for admitting British troops into Cadiz, even when he suggested that only two battalions should remain there, while the rest, including Sherbrooke’s division, which was expected to arrive in a few days, should come up and join the 40th regiment at Seville, with the ultimate purpose of marching into Estremadura. The Junta replied that ‘the loyalty of the British Ministry and the generosity of its efforts to assist Spain were beyond suspicion: but the National Government must respect national prejudices, and avoid exposing itself to censure. If there were any urgent danger, they would have no hesitation in admitting the troops of their allies into Cadiz. But the French were still far away, and there was no immediate prospect of their approach. The British expedition would be more usefully employed in Catalonia, or in some other theatre of war, than in Cadiz[41].’ By March 4, when this final answer was sent to Frere, the state of affairs had so much changed, that the representations made by the Junta were more or less correct. The imminent danger which had existed in January had passed away.

Accordingly, after lying idly for four weeks in their transports, and gazing with much unsatisfied curiosity on the white[p. 32] houses, the green shutters, and the flat roofs of Cadiz, across the beautiful bay, Mackenzie’s regiments set sail again for Lisbon on March 6. As they ran out of the harbour, they met Sherbrooke’s belated convoy, whose arrival had been delayed by fearful tempests in the Bay of Biscay. The whole force, 6,000 bayonets strong, was brought back to Portugal. It might have been of infinite service to Cradock if it had remained at Lisbon and had never been sent to Cadiz, and its presence might have induced him to adopt measures less timid and futile than those which (as we shall see) he had pursued during January and February[42].

But this unfortunate incident has detained us too long; we must return to the state of the Spanish armies at the end of the month of January. Beyond the levies of the Marquis Del Palacio at La Carolina, there was a long gap in the Spanish line of defence. The next force under arms was the army of Infantado, now engaged in its exhausting winter march from Cuenca to the Murcian border. After the rout of Ucles it was still 12,000 strong, though destitute of all supplies and not fit for immediate service. The Junta ordered it to march from Chinchilla to join Del Palacio’s force at the mouth of the Despe?a Perros, and so to strengthen the defences of Andalusia.[p. 33] This was done, and the two forces were safely united, so that when a few more new battalions had been brought up from Granada, 20,000 men were placed between Victor and Andalusia. The Junta removed Infantado from command, rightly judging that he had sacrificed Venegas at Ucles by his neglect to send orders and his sloth in coming up to join his subordinate. The charge of the force at La Carolina (still called ‘the Army of the Centre’) was made over to General Cartaojal.

Beyond Infantado’s depleted corps lay the army of Valencia. Its nucleus was the remains of the old division of Llamas and Roca, which had served with Casta?os at Tudela. The local Junta rapidly recruited this skeleton force from 1,500 up to 5,000 men[43]. They added to it several new regiments raised during the winter in Valencia and Murcia, and by February had 10,000 men available for succouring Aragon and Catalonia, though their quality left much to be desired.

A little further north Palafox was still holding out with splendid desperation in Saragossa, where he had shut himself up with the whole army of Aragon. His original 32,000 men were already much thinned by pestilence and the sword, but in January their spirit was yet unbroken, and though it was clear that they were doomed to final destruction, if they were not relieved from the outside, yet they were still doing excellent work in detaining in front of them the whole of the 3rd and 5th French Army Corps.

There yet remains to be described the strongest of all the Spanish armies, that of Catalonia. In addition to the original garrison of the province, and to its gallant miqueletes and somatenes, there had been gradually drafted into the principality (1) the greater part of the garrison of the Balearic Isles, some 9,000 men; (2) Reding’s Granadan division which started from its home over 10,000 strong; (3) 2,500 men of Caraffa’s old division from Portugal; (4) the Marquis of Lazan’s Aragonese division from the side of Lerida, about 4,000 bayonets. Thus in all some 32,000 men in organized corps had been massed in Catalonia, and the somatenes added some 20,000 irregulars. Of course the Spanish strength in January did not reach these figures. Many men had been lost at the siege of Rosas and in[p. 34] the battles of Cardadeu and Molins de Rey: yet there were still 40,000 troops of one sort or another available; the spirit of the country was irritated rather than lowered by the late defeats; the French only occupied the ground that was within the actual circle of fire of their garrisons. If the Catalans had been content to avoid general engagements, and to maintain an incessant guerrilla warfare, they might have held their own. Though the enemy had a very capable commander in General St. Cyr, they had as yet accomplished nothing more than the capture of the antiquated fortress of Rosas, the relief of Barcelona, and the winning of two fruitless battles. Catalonia remained unsubdued till the very end of the struggle.

Reckoning up all their armies, the Junta had in the end of January some 135,000 men in arms,—a force insufficient to face the French in the open, for the latter (even after the departure of the Imperial Guard) had still nearly 300,000[44] sabres and bayonets south of the Pyrenees, but one quite capable of keeping up the national resistance if it were only conducted upon the proper lines. For, as Napoleon and his marshals had yet to learn, no Spanish district could be considered conquered unless a garrison was left in each of its towns, and flying columns kept in continual motion through the open country. Of the 288,000 French who now lay in Spain more than half were really wanted for garrison duty. A district like Galicia was capable of keeping 40,000 men employed: even the plains of Old Castile and Leon swallowed up whole divisions.

But, unfortunately for Spain, the mania for fighting pitched battles was still obsessing the minds of her generals. Within a few weeks three wholly unnecessary and disastrous engagements were to be risked, at Valls, Ciudad Real, and Medellin. Instead of playing a cautious defensive game, and harassing the French, the Spaniards persisted in futile attempts to face the enemy in general actions, for which their troops were wholly unsuited. The results were so deplorable that but for a second British intervention—Wellesley’s march to Talavera—Andalusia would have been in as great peril in July, 1809, as it had been in January.

[p. 35]

The Central Junta must take its share of the responsibility for this fact no less than the Spanish generals. It still persisted in its old error of refusing to appoint a single commander-in-chief, so that each army fought for its own hand, without any attempt to co-ordinate its actions with those of the others. Indeed several of the generals were at notorious enmity with their colleagues—notably Cuesta and Venegas. It was to no purpose that the Central Government displayed great energy in organizing men and collecting material, if, when the armies had been equipped and sent to the front, they were used piecemeal, without any general strategical scheme, and led ere long to some miserable disaster, such as Ucles, or Medellin, or Oca?a. The Junta, the generals, and the nation were all alike possessed by the delusion that with energy and sufficient numbers they might on some happy morning achieve a second Baylen. But for such a consummation Duponts and Vedels are required, and when no such convenient adversaries were to be found, the attempt to encompass and beat a French army was certain to end in a catastrophe.

The only Spanish fighters who were playing the proper game in 1809 were the Catalonian somatenes, and even they gave battle far too often, and did not adhere with a sufficient pertinacity to the harassing tactics of guerrilla warfare. General Arteche has collected in his fourth volume something like a dozen schemes for the expulsion of the French from Spain, which were laid before the Junta, or ventilated in print, during this year. It is interesting to see that only one of them advocates the true line of resistance—the avoiding of battles, the harassing of the enemy’s flanks and communications, and the employment of numerous flying bands instead of great masses[45]. Some of the other plans are the wild imaginings of ignorant fools—one wiseacre wished to run down the French columns with pikemen in a sort of Macedonian phalanx, another to arm one-sixth of the troops with hand-grenades! But the majority of the Junta’s self-constituted advisers thought that numbers were the only necessary thing, and proposed to save Spain by crushing the invaders with levies en masse of all persons between sixteen[p. 36] and fifty—one enthusiast makes the age-limit fourteen to seventy!

These were the views of the nation, and the generals and the Junta were but infected with the common delusion of all their compatriots. They would not see that courage and raw multitudes are almost helpless when opposed by equal courage combined with skill, long experience of war, superior tactics, and intelligent leading.