William Francis Patrick Napier
History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France

THE hostility of aristocratic Europe forced the republican enthusiasm of France into a course of military policy, outrageous in appearance, in reality one of necessity;  for up to the treaty of Tilsit, her wars were essentially defensive.  Her long and bloody continental struggle was not for pre-eminence amongst ambitious powers, not a dispute for some accession of territory or momentary political ascendancy, but a deadly conflict to determine whether aristocracy or democracy should predominate, equality or privilege be the principle of European civilization.  The French revolution was however pushed into existence before the hour of its natural birth.  The aristocratic principle was still too vigorous, too much identified with the monarchic, to be successfully resisted by virtuous democracy, much less could it be overthrown by a democracy, rioting in innocent blood, and menacing destruction to political and religious establishments, the growth of centuries, somewhat decayed indeed, yet scarcely showing their grey hairs.  The first military events of the Revolution, the disaffection of Toulon and Lyons, the civil war of La Vendée, the slight though successful resistance made to the duke of Brunswick’s invasion, the frequent and violent change of rulers whose fall none regretted, were proofs that the French revolution, intrinsically too feeble to sustain the physical and moral force pressing it down, was fast sinking, when the wonderful genius of Napoleon, baffling all reasonable calculation, raised and fixed it on the basis of victory, the only one capable of supporting the crude production.

That great man, perceiving the revolution was not sufficiently in unison with the feelings of the age, endeavoured to disarm or neutralize monarchical and sacerdotal enmity, by restoring a church establishment and becoming a monarch himself.  His vigorous character, and the critical nature of the times, rendered him imperious;  but while he sacrificed political liberty, which to the great bulk of mankind has never been more than a pleasing sound, he cherished with the utmost care equality, a sensible good producing increased satisfaction as it descends in the scale of society.  This, the real principle of his government the secret of his popularity, made him the people’s monarch, not the sovereign of the aristocracy;  and hence Mr. Pitt justly called him ‘the child and the champion of democracy;’ Mr. Pitt himself being the child and champion of aristocracy.  Hence also the privileged classes of Europe, consistently transferred their implacable hatred of the French revolution to his person;  for in him they saw innovation find a protector, and felt that he only was able to consolidate the hateful system, and was really what he called himself, ‘the State.’

The treaty of Tilsit gave Napoleon a commanding position over the potentates of Europe, but it unmasked the war of principles, bringing England and himself, the champions of equality and privileges, into direct contact.  Peace could not be while both were strong, the French emperor had only gained the choice of his future battle field;  and as the fight of Trafalgar forbade the invasion of England, he with fertile genius purposed to sap her naval and commercial strength by barring the continent against her manufactures.  This continental system was however inoperative where not enforced by French troops.  It failed in Portugal, British influence being there paramount, notwithstanding the terror inspired by the emperor, because self-interest is lasting, fear momentary, wherefore Portugal was virtually an unguarded province of England, from whence and from Gibraltar English goods passed into Spain.  To check this traffic by force was not easy, and otherwise impossible.

Spain was to France nearly what Portugal was to Great Britain.  Friendship for England’s enemy naturally followed the well-known seizure of the Spanish frigates in time of peace.  The French cause was therefore popular in Spain, and the weak court subservient;  yet nothing could keep the people from a profitable contraband trade—they would not yield to a foreign power what they refused to their own government.  Neither was aristocratic enmity to Napoleon asleep in Spain;  a proclamation, issued before the battle of Jena, and hastily withdrawn after that action, indicated the true feelings of the Spanish court.

This state of affairs turned the emperor’s thoughts towards the Peninsula, and a chain of strange events soon induced him to remove the Bourbons, and place his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne.  He thought the people, sick of an effete government, would be quiescent, and his uninterrupted good fortune, matchless genius, and vast power, made him disregard ulterior consequences.  Hence the cravings of his military and political system, the dangerous vicinity of a Bourbon dynasty, and still more the temptation offered by a miraculous folly, outrunning even his desires, urged him to a deed, which, well accepted would have proved beneficial to the people, but enforced contrary to their wishes was unhallowed by justice benevolence.  In an evil hour for his own greatness and the happiness of others he commenced the fatal project.  Founded in violence, attended with fraud, it spread desolation through the Peninsula, was calamitous to France, destructive to himself, and the conflict between his hardy veterans and the vindictive race he insulted was of unmitigated ferocity;  for the Spaniards defended their just cause with proverbial, hereditary cruelty;  while the French struck a terrible balance of barbarous a action.

Napoleon, although startled at the energy of the Peninsulars, then bent his whole force to the work—England lent her power in opposition—and the two leading nations of the world were thus brought into contact when both were disturbed by angry passions, eager for great events, and of astonishing dominion.  The French empire, including Upper Italy, the confederation of the Rhine, Switzerland, the Duchy of Warsaw, and the dependent states of Holland and Naples, enabled Napoleon, through the conscription, to array an army numerous as the host which followed the Persian of old, and though like it gathered from many nations, trained with Roman discipline, and led with Carthaginian genius.  The officers, habituated to victory, were bold and enterprising, as the troops they led were hardy and resolute.  And to this land-power was joined a formidable navy, for though the ships of France were chained in harbours, her naval strength was only rebuked, not destroyed.  Inexhaustible resources for building, vast establishments, a coast line of immense length, and the creative genius of Napoleon was nursing a navy, which the war then impending between England and the United States promised to render efficient.  Maritime commerce was fainting, yet the French internal and continental traffic was robust, manufactures were rapidly improving, the debt was small, and financial operations conducted with exact economy;  the supplies were all raised within the year without great pressure of taxation, and from a metallic currency.  There seemed no reason therefore why Napoleon should fail to bring any war to a favourable conclusion;  for by a happy combination of vigour and flattery, of order, discipline, and moral excitement, adapted to the genius of his people, he had created a power seemingly resistless.  And it would have been so if applied to only one great object at a time, but this the ambition of the man, or rather the force of circumstances, did not permit.

England, omnipotent on the ocean, was little regarded as a military power;  her enormous debt, yearly augmenting in an accelerated ratio, a necessary consequence of anticipating the national resources and dealing in a fictitious currency, was sapping her vital strength.  Merchants and manufacturers were indeed thriving from incidental circumstances, but the labouring population suffered and degenerated;  pauperism and its sure attendant crime were augmenting in the land, and the community splitting into classes;  one rich and arrogant, the other poor and discontented—the first profiting, the second distressed by the war.  Of Ireland it is unnecessary to speak, her wrongs, her misery, peculiar and unparalleled, are but too well known, too little regarded.

This comparative statement, so favourable to France, would, however, be a false criterion of relative strength with regard to the struggle in the Peninsula.  A cause manifestly unjust is a heavy weight upon the operations of a general;  it reconciles men to desertion, sanctifies want of zeal, furnishes pretexts for cowardice, renders hardships more irksome, dangers more obnoxious, glory less satisfactory to the mind of the soldier.  The invasion of Spain, whatever its real origin, was an act of violence repugnant to the feelings of mankind;  the French were burthened with a sense of its iniquity, the British exhilarated by a contrary sentiment.  All the continental nations had smarted under the sword of Napoleon, yet none were crushed except Prussia;  a common feeling of humiliation, the hope of revenge, the ready subsidies of England, were therefore bonds of union among their governments stronger than treaties: France could calculate on their fears, England on their self-love.  Hatred of French principles was general with the privileged classes of Europe, and they personally hated Napoleon, because his genius had given stability to institutions growing out of the revolution;  because his victories, baffling their hopes, had shaken their hold of power.  Chieftain and champion of new France, he was constrained to continue his career until her destiny was accomplished;  and this necessity, overlooked by the generality, furnished plausible ground for imputing insatiable ambition, of which ample advantage was taken.  Rapacity, injustice, insolence, even cowardice, were said to be inseparable from the French character;  and, it was more than insinuated, that all the enemies of France were inherently virtuous and disinterested.  Unhappily, history is a record of crimes, and the arrogance of men buoyed up by a spring-tide of military glory, did with allies, as well as with vanquished enemies, produce sufficient disgust to insure belief in false accusations.

Napoleon was the contriver and support of a political system, requiring time and victory to consolidate;  he was the connecting power between the new social views and what was still vigorous in the old;  he held them together, yet belonged to neither, and was in danger from both.  His power, unsanctified by prescription, had to be as delicately as it was vigorously exercised, and was rather peremptory than despotic: there were questions of administration with which he dared not meddle even wisely, much less arbitrarily.  Customs, prejudices, and the dregs of revolutionary licence, rendered his policy complicated and difficult, the policy of his adversaries easy;  for the delusion of parliamentary representation gave the English government unlimited power over persons and property, and a corrupt press gave it nearly the same power over the public mind.  English commerce, penetrating as it were into every home on the face of the globe, supplied a thousand channels of intelligence;  the spirit of traffic, which seldom acknowledges the ties of patriotism, was universally on the side of Great Britain;  and those twin curses, paper-money and public credit, so truly described as ‘strength in the beginning, weakness in the end,’ were recklessly used by statesmen, whose policy discarded the rights of posterity.

These were the adventitious elements of England’s power, and her natural resources were many and great.  If credit is to be given to the census, the population was at that period twenty millions;  France reckoned but twenty-seven millions when Frederick the Great said, ‘If he were her king, not a gun should be fired in Europe without his leave.’  The French army was very formidable from numbers, discipline, and skill, and bravery;  yet, contrary to general opinion, the British army was not inferior, save as to numbers: in discipline it was superior, because a national force will bear a sterner code than a mixed one will suffer.  With the latter, military crimes may be punished, when moral offences can hardly be repressed.  Men will endure severity in regulations they know to be necessary, but the constraint of petty though wholesome rules, they will escape from by desertion, or resist by mutiny when not bound by national ties and customs;  the disgrace of bad conduct attaches only to the people under whose colours they serve.  Great, indeed, is the genius which keeps men of different nations firm to their colours, and enforces a rigid discipline.  Napoleon’s military system was, from this cause, looser than the British, which combines the solidity of the German with the rapidity of the French, excluding the mechanical dulness of the one, and the dangerous vivacity of the other;  yet, before the Peninsula had proved its excellence, the British troops were absurdly underrated in foreign countries and despised in their own.  They could not then move in large bodies so readily as the long practised French, but the soldier was stigmatized as stupid, the officer ridiculed, and a British army coping with a French one for a single campaign was considered a chimera.

Very subject to false impressions are the English;  and being proud of their credulity, as if it were a virtue, they cling to error with a tenacity proportioned to its grossness.  An ignorant contempt for the soldiery was prevalent long before the ill-success in 1794 and 1799 seemed to justify public prejudice;  the cause of those failures was not traced;  the excellent system introduced by the duke of York was disregarded;  and England, at home and abroad, was, in 1808, scorned as a military power, when she possessed, without a frontier swallowing armies in its fortresses, at least two hundred thousand soldiers, the best disciplined, and best equipped in the universe, together with an immense recruiting establishment, and the power of drawing, through the militia, without limit on the population.  Many were necessarily employed in defence of the colonies, yet enough remained to furnish a force greater than Napoleon at Austerlitz, double that with which he conquered Italy.  In material resources also, the superiority of English mechanical skill was shown, and that intellectual power which in science, arts, and literature is nationally conspicuous, was not wanting to her generals in war.

For many years antecedent to the French invasion, the royal family of Spain had been distracted by domestic quarrels;  the son’s hand was against the mother, the father’s against the son;  and the court was a scene of continual broils, under cover of which artful men, as is usual in such cases, pushed their own interest, while seeming to act for the party whose cause they espoused.  Charles IV. attributed this unhappy state of his house to the intrigues of his sister-in-law, the queen of the Two Sicilies.  He was a weak old man, governed by his wife, and she by don Manuel Godoy, of whose person she was enamoured even to folly.  From the rank of a simple gentleman of the royal guards, this man had been raised to the highest dignities, and was called Prince of the Peace ! a strange title to be connected for ever with one of the bloodiest wars filling the pages of history.  Ferdinand, prince of the Asturias, hated this favourite, and the miserable death of his young wife, his own youth, and apparently forlorn condition, made the people partake of his feelings;  thus the disunion of the royal family, extending its effects beyond the precincts of the court, involved the nation in ruin.  The hatred of Spaniards is so venemous, that Godoy who was really a mild good-natured man, has been overloaded with imprecations, as if he alone had been the cause of all disasters;  but it was not so: The canon Escoiquiz, a subtle intriguer, the chief of Ferdinand’s party, finding the influence of Godoy too strong, looked for support in a powerful quarter;  and under his tuition, Ferdinand wrote upon the 11th of October, 1807, to the emperor Napoleon, complaining of the influence which bad men had obtained over his father.  He prayed therefore for the interference of the ‘hero destined by Providence,’ so runs the text, ‘to save Europe and to support thrones;’ asked an alliance by marriage with the Buonaparte family, and desired his communication might be kept secret from his father, lest it should be taken as a proof of disrespect.  He received no answer, and fresh matter of quarrel being found by his enemies at home, he was placed in arrest, and his father denounced him to the emperor as guilty of treason, and projecting the assassination of his own mother.  Napoleon seized this pretext for interfering in the domestic policy of Spain,—and thus the honour and independence of a great people were jeopardized by the squabbles of the most worthless persons in the nation.

A short time before this, Godoy, instigated by ambition, or fearing the death of the king would expose him to Ferdinand’s vengeance, proposed to the French emperor the conquest and division of Portugal, promising the aid of Spain if a principality for himself should be set apart from the spoil.  Napoleon adopted this project.  Under pretext of supporting his army in Portugal, he might pour troops into Spain, and seize a prize which the royal squabble, referred to his arbitration, placed within his reach.  A secret treaty and a dependent convention was therefore concluded at Fontainbleau, marshal Duroc on the part of France, Ugenio Ysquierdo on the part of Spain.  It was ratified by Napoleon the 29th of October, 1807, and provided, 1°, That the house of Braganza should be driven from Portugal, and that kingdom divided into three portions, one of which, the Entre Minho e Duero, including the city of Oporto, was to be called North Lusitania, and given to the dispossessed sovereign of Etruria.  2°.  The Alemtejo and Algarves to form a principality for Godoy, who still to be in some respects a dependent on the Spanish crown.  3°.  The Tras os Montes, Beira, Estremadura, and Lisbon, to be held in deposit until a general peace, and then changed, under certain conditions, against English conquests.  4°.  The transmarine dominions of the exiled family to be equally divided, and within three years the king of Spain to have the title of Emperor of the two Americas.

The convention provided that France was to employ 25,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry.  Spain 24,000 infantry, 30 guns, and 3,000 cavalry.  The French contingent to be joined at Alcantara by the Spanish cavalry, artillery, and one-third of the infantry, and from thence to march to Lisbon.  Of the remaining Spanish infantry, 10,000 were to occupy the Entre Minho e Duero and Oporto;  6,000 to invade Estremadura and the Algarves.  Meantime, 40,000 men assembling at Bayonne, were to take the field by the 20th of November should England interfere, or the Portuguese people resist;  and if the king of Spain, or any of his family, joined the army, the command was to be vested in the person so joining;  with that exception, the French general was to be obeyed whenever the troops of the two nations came into contact.  During the march through Spain, the French soldiers were to be fed by that country, paid by their own.  The revenues of the conquered provinces were to be administered by the general actually in possession, and for the benefit of the nation in whose name the province was held.

This treaty and convention certainly enabled Napoleon to pour forces into Spain without creating much suspicion.  Yet it does not follow, as some authors have asserted, they were contrived by the emperor to render the royal family odious to the world, and debar interest in their fate, when it should be convenient to apply the same measure of injustice to themselves.  Such a policy, founded on the error that justice and not interest sways governments, would have been silly.  Portugal was intrinsically a great object.  History speaks not of the time when the inhabitants wanted spirit;  the natural obstacles to invasion had often baffled large armies;  and the long line of communication from Bayonne to the frontier could only be supported with Spanish co-operation.  Moreover England could so easily give aid, that it is probable Napoleon’s first design accorded with the literal meaning of the treaty, and his subsequent projects arose as the wonderful imbecility of the Spanish Bourbons became manifest.  The convention also sent Spanish armies to the north and south, from whence they could most readily succour their own country;  and, in fact, Solano’s and Taranco’s troops did form the nucleus and strength of the Andalusian and Gallician armies, one of which gained the victory of Baylen, and the other contended for it at Rio Seco.

From Bayonne, the force destined to invade Portugal actually entered Spain before the treaty was signed.  It was called ‘The first army of the Gironde,’ and was commanded by Junot, a young general, bold and ambitious, but of greater reputation than he could support, and his conscript soldiers were ill fitted to endure the hardships awaiting them.  He marched in small divisions, and the Spaniards, from latent fear, or the dislike to foreigners usual with a secluded people, were unfriendly.  At Salamanca he halted to complete the organization, and await a favourable moment for passing into Portugal, but political events marched so fast that the emperor ordered an immediate advance;  whereupon the Bragazza family emigrated, and the French entered Lisbon while Spain was bending to the first gusts of that hurricane which was to sweep over her with such destructive violence.

Judicial proceedings had been instituted against Ferdinand for treason and intended matricide.  He was absolved of those horrid crimes, but acknowledged his other offences, saying he had been instigated by his friends to deeds he abhorred;  nevertheless, the intrigues continued, and Napoleon’s plans were thereby necessarily advanced.  And though the Fontainbleau convention provided only for a reserve at Bayonne, other troops were assembled at different points, and, in December, two corps entered Spain, and marched to Vittoria.  The one, under general Dupont, was called ‘The second army of the Gironde,’ the other, under marshal Moncey, was called ‘The army of the Côte d’Océan.’  They mustered fifty-three thousand men, forty thousand being with the eagles.  Dupont soon advanced upon Valladolid, from whence four thousand seven hundred of men, designed to reinforce Junot, moved to Salamanca.  These armies seemed to follow the natural line of communication with Portugal ;  but Dupont and Moncey really cut off the northern provinces from Madrid, and secured the road from Bayonne to that capital.  Small divisions continually reinforced them, and twelve thousand men, under general Duhesme, penetrating by the Eastern Pyrenees, entered Barcelona.

The royal family quarrel was now brought to a crisis.  The king, deceived and frightened, was going, it is said, to take refuge in America, and preparations for a journey to Seville were in progress, when, on the 17th of March, the prince’s grooms commenced a tumult, the populace of Aranjuez joined, and quietness was only restored by an assurance that no journey was contemplated.  On the 18th the Madrid populace sacked the house of Godoy, and the 19th the riots recommenced in Aranjuez.  The favourite secreted himself, but was discovered and on the point of being killed, when the soldiers of the royal guard rescued him.  Charles, terrified by the violence of his subjects, had abdicated the day before, that event was proclaimed at Madrid the 20th, and Ferdinand was declared king to the great joy of the people.  The fable of the frogs demanding a monarch was repeated.

During these transactions, Murat, grand duke of Berg, having assumed command of the French in Spain, passed the Somosierra, and the 23rd entered Madrid with Moncey’s corps and a fine body of cavalry.  Dupont also marched by Segovia to the Escurial and Aranjuez.  Ferdinand arrived at Madrid the 24th, and though he was not recognised as king by Murat, that dangerous guest demanded the sword of Francis I., and it was delivered to him with much ceremony.  Charles, however, protested to Murat that his abdication had been forced, and also wrote to Napoleon in the same strain.

This state of affairs disquieted the emperor, and he sent general Savary to conduct his plans, which appear to have been deranged by the vehemence of the people, and the precipitation with which Murat had seized the capital.  However, previous to Savary’s arrival, Don Carlos, the brother of Ferdinand, departed from Madrid, hoping to meet the emperor, who was confidently expected in that city.  He was followed on the 10th by Ferdinand, who had instituted a supreme junta, of which his uncle Don Antonio was president, and Murat a member.  The true causes of their journey have not yet been exposed, and perhaps when they shall be made known, some petty intrigue will be found to have had more influence than the grand machinations attributed to Napoleon, who could not have anticipated such surprising weakness when framing a great political scheme.

Everywhere the people displayed anger and alarm at Ferdinand’s journey.  At Vittoria they cut the traces of his carriage, and gallant men offered to carry him away by sea, despite of the French troops on the road.  Unmoved by their zeal, and regardless of the warning contained in a letter he received from Napoleon, who, withholding the title of majesty, sharply reproved him for his past conduct, Ferdinand continued his progress, and the 20th of April found himself a prisoner in Bayonne.  His father had, meanwhile, resumed the royal authority under the protection of Murat, and then obtaining Godoy’s liberty, quitted Spain, and also placed himself, his cause and kingdom, in the emperor’s hands.  These events were sufficient to drive a more cautious people than the Spaniards into action, if other measures had not exposed the French designs;  but their troops, admitted frankly into several fortresses, had abused that hospitality, and by various artifices got possession of the citadels of St. Sebastian in Guipuscoa, Pampeluna in Navarre, and of Figueras, Monjuik, and Barcelona in Catalonia.  Thus, in a time of profound peace, a foreign force was suddenly established in the capital, on the communications, and in the principal fortresses;  its chief was admitted into the government, and the nation was laid prostrate, without a blow struck, a warning voice raised, or a suspicion excited in time to resist an intrusion on which all gazed with stupid amazement.

It is idle to attribute this event to Napoleon’s subtlety, and Godoy’s treachery;  such a calamity could only result from previous bad government, and the consequent degradation of public feeling.  It is however easier to oppress the people than destroy their generous sentiments;  and when patriotism is lost amongst the upper classes, it may still be found among the lower.  In the Peninsula it was not found, it started into life with a fervor and energy ennobling even the wild and savage form in which it appeared;  nor was it the less admirable that it burst forth attended by many evils—the good feeling displayed was the people’s own, their cruelty, folly, and perverseness were the effects of long misgovernment.

Napoleon had many reasons for meddling with the affairs of Spain;  there seems no good one for his manner of doing it.  The Spanish Bourbons could not be sincere friends to France while he held the sceptre, and the proclamation issued before the battle of Jena, evinced their secret enmity.  It did not follow that the people sympathised with the government, but Napoleon looked more to the court than the nation.  Had he brought them into collision first—and many occasions could have been found—he would have appeared, not as the treacherous arbitrator in a domestic quarrel, but as the deliverer of a great people.

Ferdinand’s journey, Godoy’s liberation, Charles’s flight, Murat’s seat in the junta, and the concentric movement of the French troops towards Madrid, awaked all the slumbering passion of the Spaniards, producing tumults and assassinations.  At Toledo a serious riot occurred on the 23rd of April, and the country people joined the citizens against the French.  A division of infantry and some cavalry of Dupont’s corps, then quartered at Aranjuez, restored order, but the agitation of the public mind increased;  for the French troops being of the last conscription, young, and only disciplined after they entered Spain, their apparent feebleness excited the contempt of the Spaniards, who pride themselves upon personal prowess.  The swelling tumour broke at last.  On the 2nd of May, the people gathered in front of the Madrid palace about a carriage, designed as they supposed to convey Don Antonio to France.  They would not, they said, let the last of the royal family be spirited away, and, with imprecations, cut the traces.  At that moment, La Grange, Murat’s aide-de-camp, came up;  he was maltreated, and in an instant the whole city rose in commotion.  The unarmed French soldiers, expecting no violence, were killed in every street;  and the hospital was attacked, but the attendants and sick men defended it successfully.  The alarm spread to the camp outside the city, the cavalry galloped in by the gate of Alcala, general Lanfranc entered the Calle Ancha de Bernardo with three thousand infantry, and when crossing the street of Maravelles, a cannon was discharged against his column by Daois and Velarde, two Spanish officers in a state of great excitement from drink.  The French voltigeurs immediately killed them;  and the column continuing its march, released, not without bloodshed, several superior officers besieged in their quarters.  The cavalry, treating the affair as a mere riot, for no Spanish soldiers took part, only sought to make prisoners, though some persons were killed or maimed by the horses.  Finally, tranquillity was restored in the city by the exertions of general Harispe, marshal Moncey, and Gonzalvo O’Farril, but the peasantry of the neighbourhood, armed and in considerable numbers, beset the gates after nightfall, and about sixty were killed or wounded by the guard.

Murat, incensed at the loss of his soldiers, had the prisoners capitally condemned by a military commission, yet, when the municipality urged the cruelty of visiting this natural ebullition of an injured and insulted people so severely, he yielded to their arguments, and forbad execution.  Nevertheless, general Grouchy, in whose immediate power the prisoners remained, exclaiming, that his own life had been attempted, that the blood of French soldiers was not to be spilt with impunity, that the captives had been condemned by a council of war and should be executed, proceeded to shoot them in the Prado, and forty were thus slain before Murat could interfere.  Next day, the Spanish authorities discovering that a colonel of the Imperial Guards still retained many prisoners, applied to Murat, for their release, and it is said by some, though denied by others of greater authority, that the colonel, hearing of this, and enraged at the loss of his choice soldiers, put forty-five of his captives to death, before his bloody proceedings could be stayed.

This celebrated tumult, in which the wild cry of Spanish warfare was first heard, has been represented by authors who adopt all the reports of the day, sometimes as a wanton massacre, sometimes as a barbarous political stroke to impress dread of French power.  It was neither.  The fiery temper of the Spaniards, excited by strange events and the recent tumults against Godoy, rendered an explosion inevitable, and so it happened.  If the French had stimulated this disposition to violence, with a view to an example, they would have prepared some check on the Spanish garrison;  they would not have left their hospital unguarded, or have so arranged, that their own loss should surpass that of the Spaniards;  finally, they would have profited from their policy after having suffered the injury.  Moncey and Harispe were, however, most active in restoring order, and, including the peasants killed outside the gates and the executions afterwards, the whole number of the Spanish slain did not exceed one hundred and twenty, while more than five hundred French were killed.  Amongst the wounded were seventy of the imperial guards, which would alone disprove any premeditation;  for if Murat were base enough to sacrifice his men with such a detestable policy, he would have given the conscripts to slaughter rather than the select soldiers of the emperor.

It was certainly accidental and not bloody for the patriots, but policy induced both sides to attribute secret motives and exaggerate the loss of life.  The Spaniards sought to impress the provinces with an opinion of French ferocity, and thereby excite them to insurrection.  The French, feeling such an impression could not be effaced by an accurate relation, encouraged the worst accounts, to convey a terrible idea of their power and severity.  Hence the extraordinary stories propagated, of citizens immolated by Murat in numbers varying from five to fourteen thousand.  It is the part of history to reduce such amplifications;  yet none can be unmoved by the gallantry and devotion of a populace which dared to assail an army, rather than abandon one of their princes.  Such, however, were the Spaniards throughout the war.  Prone to sudden and rash actions, they were fierce and confident individually, and, though weak in military execution, always manifested an intuitive perception of what was great and noble.

This commotion was the forerunner of insurrections in every part of Spain, few of which were so honourable.  Unprincipled villains, taking this opportunity to direct the passions of the multitude under the mask of patriotism, turned the unthinking fury of the people against whomever it pleased them to rob or to destroy.  Pillage, massacres, assassination, cruelties of the most revolting kind were everywhere perpetrated, and the intrinsic goodness of the cause disfigured by the enormities committed at Cadiz, Seville, Badajos, and Valencia, pre-eminent in barbarity when all were barbarous ! The first burst of popular feeling being thus misdirected, the energy of the people was wasted, and lassitude succeeded the insolence of tumult at the approach of real danger;  for to shine in the work of butchery is easier than to establish discipline, which can alone sustain the courage of the multitude in the hour of trial.

To cover the suspicious measure of introducing more troops than the convention warranted, a variety of reports had been propagated.  At one time Gibraltar was to be besieged, and officers were dispatched to examine the Mediterranean coasts of Spain and Barbary;  at another, Portugal was to be the theatre of great events;  and a mysterious importance was given to the movements of the French armies, with a view to deceive a court, which fear and sloth disposed for belief of anything but the truth, and to impose upon a people whose unsuspicious ignorance was at first mistaken for tameness.  Active agents also sought to form a French party in the capital;  and as the tumults of Aranjuez and Madrid taught Napoleon how fierce the Spanish temper was, he enjoined more caution upon Murat than the latter was disposed to practise;  for his precipitation disclosed the emperor’s real plans before they were ripened;  his concentric movement on the capital, and his resolution to control the provincial government, had alarmed the people, and the riot at Toledo indicated their feelings before the explosion at Madrid placed them in direct hostility.  He seems to have been intrusted with only a half confidence, and his natural impetuosity urged him to appear as a conqueror before a ground of quarrel was laid;  yet he was not entirely without excuse, for a letter received by him about this period from Napoleon, contained these expressions;  ‘The duke of Infantado has a party in Madrid;  it will attack you;  dissipate it, and seize the government.’

At Bayonne the political events kept pace with those of Madrid.  Charles reclaimed his rights in presence of Napoleon, and commanded Don Antonio to relinquish the presidency of the governing junta to Murat, who received the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom.  This appointment, and the restoration of Charles to the regal dignity, were proclaimed in Madrid, with the acquiescence of the council of Castille, on the 10th of May;  but five days previous to that period, the old monarch had again ceded his authority to Napoleon, and Ferdinand and himself were consigned with large pensions to the tranquillity of private life.  The right to fill the throne, thus rendered vacant, was assumed by the emperor, in virtue of Charles’s cession, and he desired that a member of his own family might be chosen king of Spain.  After some hesitation, the council of Castille, in concert with the municipality of Madrid and the governing junta, declared their choice to have fallen upon Joseph Buonaparte, then king of Naples;  and the Cardinal Bourbon, primate of Spain, first cousin of Charles IV., and archbishop of Toledo, acceding to this arrangement, wrote to Napoleon a formal explicit adhesion to the new order of things.  Joseph was already journeying from Naples to Bayonne, where he arrived the 7th of June, the principal men of Spain having been previously invited to meet there on the 15th.  This was called the Assembly of the Notables.  Ninety-one Spaniards of eminence appeared, unanimously accepted Joseph as their king, and discussing in detail a new constitution presented by Napoleon, after several sittings adopted it, and swore to maintain its provisions.

Calculated to draw forth all the resources of Spain, this constitution, compared to the old system was a blessing, and would have been received as such under different circumstances;  now arms were to decide its fate, for in every province the cry of war had been raised.  In Catalonia, in Valencia, in Andalusia, Estremadura, Gallicia, and the Asturias, the people fiercely declared their determination to resist French intrusion.  Nevertheless Joseph crossed the frontier on the 9th of July, and on the 12th arrived at Vitoria.  The inhabitants, still remembering Ferdinand’s journey to Bayonne, seemed disposed to hinder his entrance;  but their opposition did not break out into actual violence, and the next morning he continued his progress.  The 20th of July he entered Madrid.  The 24th he was proclaimed king of Spain and the Indies, with all the solemnities usual upon such occasions, thus making himself the enemy of eleven millions of people, the object of a nation’s hatred ! With a strange accent he called from the midst of foreign bands upon a fierce and haughty race, to accept a constitution which they did not understand, his hope of success resting on the strength of his brother’s arms, his claims, upon the consent of an imbecile monarch, and the weakness of a few pusillanimous nobles, in contempt of the rights of millions now arming to oppose him.  This was the unhallowed part of the enterprise, this it was that rendered his offered constitution odious, covered it with a leprous skin, and drove the noble-minded far from the pollution of its touch !

JOSEPH required the council of Castille to take the oath of allegiance prescribed by the constitution, but that body, hitherto obsequious, met his orders with a remonstrance;  for war, virtually declared on the 2nd of May, was at this time raging in all parts of the peninsula, and the council was secretly apprized that a great misfortune had befallen the French arms.  It was no longer a question between Joseph and some reluctant public bodies;  it was an awful struggle between great nations;  and how the spirit of insurrection, breaking forth simultaneously in every province, was nourished in each until it acquired the consistence of regular warfare, shall now be shown.

Just before the tumult of Aranjuez, the marquis of Solano y Soccoro, commanding the Spanish auxiliary force of the Alemtejo, received an order from Godoy to take post near Andalusia, to cover the projected journey of Charles IV.  Napoleon, aware of this order, would not interrupt its execution, and Solano quitted Portugal without difficulty;  but in the latter part of May, observing the general agitation, he repaired to his government of Cadiz, where five French sail of the line and a frigate had just taken refuge from the English fleet.  Seville was in a ferment, and Solano being required to head an insurrection in favour of Ferdinand, refused and went to Cadiz.  Meanwhile certain persons at Seville, assuming the title of the ‘Supreme Junta of Spain and the Indies,’ declared war in form against the intrusive monarch.  They called on the troops in the camp of San Roque to acknowledge their authority, ordered all men between sixteen and forty-five to take arms, and directed Solano to attack the French squadron.  He refused to acknowledge this self-constituted government, and while hesitating to commit his country in war with a power whose strength he knew better than the temper of his country men, he was cruelly murdered.  His abilities, courage, and unblemished character, have never been denied, yet there is too much reason to believe the junta of Seville sent an agent expressly to procure his assassination.  This was followed, at Seville, by the death of the Conde del Aguilar, universally admitted to be virtuous and accomplished, yet, without even the imputation of guilt, inhumanly butchered in the streets by a mob, said to be instigated by Gusman de Tilly, a member of the new junta, and described as a man ‘capable of dishonouring a whole nation by his crimes.’

Previous to these murders, admiral Purvis, commanding a British squadron off Cadiz, had offered, in concert with general Spencer, who happened to be near with an expedition of five thousand men, to co-operate in an attack upon the French ships.  This offer was, on the death of Solano, renewed to his successor, don Thomas Morla, who, for reasons to be hereafter mentioned, refused, and reduced the hostile squadron himself.  But before this event, in April, general Castanos, then commanding the camp at San Roque, had resolved to resist the French, and opened a communication with Sir Hew Dalrymple, the governor of Gibraltar.  He was the first Spaniard who united prudence with patriotism.  Readily acknowledging the self-constituted junta, he stifled the suggestions of self-interest with a virtue rare amongst his countrymen, and united himself closely with the British commanders: from them he obtained arms, ammunition, and money, and, at the instance of Sir Hew, the merchants of Gibraltar advanced a loan of forty-two thousand dollars.

The murders at Cadiz and Seville were imitated in every part of Spain;  hardly can a town be named in which some innocent and worthy persons were not slain.  Grenada, Carthagena and Valencia reeked with blood.  Miguel Saavedra, governor of the last city, escaped at first by flight, but, returning, was deliberately sacrificed.  Balthazar Calvo, a canon of San Isidro in Madrid, then appeared in Valencia, and collecting a band of fanatics, commenced a massacre of the French residents;  and his ruthless villany was unchecked until, French victims failing, his thirst for murder urged him to menace the local junta of government.  This body, with the exception of Mr. Tupper, the English consul, had not opposed his previous violence, but now readily found the means to crush him: while in the act of braving their authority he was seized by stratagem and strangled, together with two hundred of his band.  Serbelloni, captain-general of the province, then proceeded to organize an army, acting in unison with the old count Florida Blanca, who had meanwhile put himself at the head of the Murcian insurrection.

In Catalonia the presence of the French troops at first repressed popular effervescence;  the insurrection broke out notwithstanding at Manresa, and spread to all parts of the province.

In Aragon the arrival of don Joseph Palafox kindled the fire of patriotism.  He had escaped from Bayonne, and his family were greatly esteemed, as of the noblest among a people absurdly vain of their ancient descent.  The captain-general, fearing a tumult, ordered Palafox to quit the province, but this circumstance, joined to some appearance of mystery in his escape from Bayonne, increased the passions of the multitude;  a crowd surrounding his abode, forced him to assume the command, the captain-general was confined, some persons were murdered, and a junta was formed.  Palafox was considered by his companions as of slender capacity and great vanity, and there is nothing in his exploits to render the justness of this opinion doubtful.  It was not Palafox who upheld the glory of Aragon, it was the spirit of the people, which he had not excited and could so little direct, that, for a long time after the commencement of the first siege, he was kept a sort of prisoner in Zaragoza, his courage and fidelity being distrusted by the population he is supposed to have ruled.

This state of Aragon aroused the Navarrese, and Logrono became the focus of an insurrection which extended along most of the valleys of that kingdom.  In the northern and western provinces, the spirit of independence was as fierce, and as decidedly pronounced, accompanied also by the same excesses.  In Badajos the condo de la Torre del Frenio was butchered by the populace, and his mangled carcass dragged through the streets in triumph.  At Talavera de la Reyna, the corregidor with difficulty escaped a similar fate by a hasty flight.  Leon presented a wide unbroken scene of anarchy, and all who opposed the people’s wishes were slain.

Gallicia held back for a moment, but the example of Leon, and the arrival of an agent from the Asturias, where the insurrection was in full force, produced a general movement.  A junta was formed, and Filanghieri, an Italian, governor of Coruña, was desired to exercise the functions of royalty by declaring war in form against France.  Like every man of sense in Spain, he was unwilling to commence a revolution upon such uncertain grounds;  the impatient populace sought his death, and though saved at the moment by the courage of an officer of his staff, his horrible fate was only deferred.  Able and sincerely attached to Spain, he exerted himself to organize the military resources of the province, and no suspicion attached to his conduct;  yet such was the inherent ferocity of the people and of the time, that the soldiers of the regiment of Navarre seized him at Villa Franca del Bierzo, and, according to some, stuck him full of bayonets;  according to others, planted their weapons in the ground, tossed him on to their points, left him there to struggle, and disbanded themselves.

The Asturians had been the first to exercise the indefeasible democratic right of establishing a new government when the old one ceased to afford protection: a local junta declared war against the French, and sent deputies to solicit assistance from England.  The great towns in Biscay and the Castilles were overawed by fifty thousand foreign bayonets, but the peasantry commenced a war in their manner against the stragglers and the sick, and thus a hostile chain cast round the French army was completed in every link.  This simultaneous rising of a whole nation was beheld by the rest of Europe with astonishment and admiration—astonishment at the energy of a people deemed unnerved and debased—admiration at a spectacle which, seen at a distance, and its odious parts unknown, presented the ideal beauty of Numantian virtue.  In England, all classes, with a generous sympathy, attributed to disinterested vigour of character, what was really the effect of many co-operating causes, many of which were anything but commendable.

Constituted as modern states are, with systems ill adapted to nourish intense feelings of patriotism, it would have been miraculous if real grandeur had been displayed by a nation which, for two centuries, had been debased by civil and religious despotism.  The Spanish character, in relation with public affairs, is marked by inordinate pride and arrogance.  Dilatory, improvident, singly and in mass, they cherish an absurd confidence that everything suggested by their heated imaginations is practicable;  they see no difficulties, and the obstacles encountered are attributed to treachery;  hence the sudden murder of so many virtuous men in this commotion.  Kind and warm in his attachments, savage in his enmity, the Spaniard is patient under privations, firm in bodily suffering, prone to sudden anger, vindictive, remembering insult longer than injury, bloody and cruel in revenge.  With a natural perception of what is noble, his promise is lofty, but as his passions always overrule his reason, his performance is mean.  In this war, the tenacity of vengeance peculiar to the people supplied the want of cool persevering intrepidity, and led to deeds of craft and cruelty rather than daring open warfare.  The abstraction of the royal family, and Napoleon’s insulting pretensions to the crown, aroused all the national pride;  the tumults of Madrid and Aranjuez had prepared the public for violent movements, and the French protection of Godoy increased the ferment, because a dearly-cherished vengeance was thereby frustrated at the moment of its expected accomplishment, and the disappointment excited the uncontrollable fierceness of Spanish passion.  Then came the tumult of Madrid, swollen, distorted, cast like Caesar’s body before the people, to excite them to frenzy;  and madly they arose, not boldly to confront a danger understood, but to slake their thirst of blood.

Godoy’s administration had trenched on church property, and France and Italy gave testimony that Joseph would continue that policy.  This involved the interests and stimulated the activity of monks and priests, who easily persuaded an ignorant people that the aggressive stranger was the foe of religion, and accursed of God.  By processions, miracles, prophecies, distribution of reliques, and the appointment of saints to lead the armies, the patriots were fanaticised, and in all parts the clergy were zealously active;  monks and friars were invariably the leaders in tumult, or at the side of those who were, instigating them to murder and cruelty.  Buonaparte found the same cause producing similar effects during his early campaigns in Italy;  and if that country had been as favourable for protracted resistance, and been as powerfully aided by England, Spain would have been rivalled, perhaps surpassed in partizan warfare.

Napoleon’s continental system was another spring in this complicated machinery.  It threatened the already decayed commerce of the maritime towns, and the contraband trade, carried on in Spain to an incredible extent, was certain of destruction;  with that trade the fate of one hundred thousand excise and custom-house officers was involved.  A preventive system, organized after the French manner, and stimulated by a vigorous administration, would have crushed smuggling, which was, in truth, only a consequence of monopolies and internal restrictions upon the trade of one province with another—vexations abolished by the constitution of Bayonne.  The activity and intelligence of the merchants engaged in foreign trade, the corruption of revenue officers, the lawlessness of smugglers, were thus agitated against the invaders, and hence the readiness at Gibraltar to lend Castaños money.

Civilization also was, in Spain, at that point which best suits insurrection.  If the people had been aware of their deficiencies, they would have submitted;  if really enlightened, the invasion could not have happened.  But in a country where the comforts of society are less attended to than in any other part of Europe, where a warm and dry climate renders it agreeable to sleep the greatest part of the year in the open air, and where nearly all men went armed, it was easy for energetic leaders to assemble large masses of credulous, excited peasants.  No story was too gross for their belief, if it agreed with their wishes.  ‘Es verdad, los dicen,’ ‘It is true, they say it,’ was the invariable answer when an absurd report was doubted.  Temperate in food, possessing little furniture, hoarding all the gold he can get, a Spaniard is little concerned to relinquish his abode;  his doing so must not be measured by an English scale;  and, once engaged in an adventure, the lightness of his spirits and the brilliancy of his sky make the angry peasant careless of wandering.  The evils afflicting Spain, previous to the invasion, had tended also to prepare the people for violence.  Poverty, disease, famine, the loss of commerce, restrictions on internal trade, unequal taxation, oppression;  they had endured all, and could not be enthusiastic for such a system.  But they had been taught by the clergy to believe Godoy the sole author of their misery, and to look to Ferdinand as the redresser of their grievances.  The French were the protectors of the former, the oppressors of the latter, and it was easy to add this bitterness to the natural hatred of foreign domination.

Such were the principal causes of this revolution, so fertile of great events, without producing one man of eminent capacity to control, or direct the spirit thus accidentally excited.  Clearly does this fact show the heterogeneous nature of the feelings and interests brought together.  It cannot be attributed to deficiency of natural talent, the genius of the Spanish people is notoriously ardent, subtle, and vigorous;  but there was no common bond of feeling, save hatred to the French, by which a great man could influence large masses.  Sagacious persons saw very early, that the Spanish revolution, like a leafy shrub in a violent gale of wind, greatly agitated, yet disclosing only slight unconnected stems, afforded no sure hold for the ambition of a master-spirit, if such there were;  that the cause must fail unless supported by England;  and that she would not let her resources be wielded by men whose views and policy might afterwards thwart her own.  Nor was it difficult to perceive that the downfall of Napoleon, not the regeneration of Spain, was the object of her cabinet.

Spanish public feeling was fierce in expression, because political passions will always be vehement at first with a people new to civil commotion, and unused to have their heat evaporate in public discussions.  The result was a wonderful change in the affairs of Europe;  it seems yet undecided whither for better or worse.  In their struggle, the Spaniards developed more cruelty than courage, more violence than intrepidity, more personal hatred than enthusiasm;  they opened a wide field for the exertions of others, presented the fulcrum for a lever which moved the civilized world, but the impelling power came from another quarter.  Useful accessories they were;  as principals they displayed neither wisdom, spirit, nor skill sufficient to resist the prodigious force by which they were assailed.  If they seemed at first heedless of danger, it was not because they were prepared to perish rather than submit, but that they were reckless of provoking a power whose terrors they could not estimate, and in their ignorance despised.

It is not surprising that great expectations were at first formed of the heroism of the Spaniards, and those expectations were greatly augmented by their agreeable qualities;  there is not any people more attractive in the intercourse of society.  Their majestic language, fine persons, and becoming dress;  their lively imaginations;  the inexpressible beauty of their women, and the air of romance they throw over every action, and infuse into every feeling, combine to delude the senses and impose upon the judgment.  As companions, they are the most agreeable of mankind, but danger and disappointment attend the man who, confiding in their promises and energy, ventures upon a difficult enterprise.  ‘Never do to-day what you can put off until to-morrow,’ is the favourite proverb of Spain.