When Captain Marbot, bearing despatches from Murat announcing the riot
in Madrid, reached the château of Marrac, he found the Emperor in the
park, taking his after-dinner walk, with the Queen of Spain on his arm
and Charles IV. beside him, followed by the Empress Josephine, Prince
Ferdinand, Don Carlos, Marshal Duroc, and some ladies.
“What news from Madrid?” cried Napoleon, as Marbot, covered with dust,
drew near. The despatches were delivered in silence, and Napoleon drew
to one side to read them, and to overwhelm the officer with questions.
In vivid terms, Marbot described the despair of the Spanish people, the
fury with which they had fought, the threatening aspect of the populace
even after the revolt had been put down.
“Bah!” exclaimed Napoleon, cutting him short; “they will calm down
and will bless me as soon as they see their country freed from the
discredit and disorder into which it has been thrown by the weakest and
most corrupt administration that ever existed!”
When the Emperor had explained to the King and Queen of Spain what had
occurred in Madrid, they turned upon Ferdinand with an outburst of
rage. “Wretch!” cried the old King, “you may now be satisfied. Madrid
has been bathed in the blood of my subjects shed in consequence of your
rebellion against your father; their blood be on your head!” The Queen
was no less bitter, and even offered to strike her son. Napoleon put a
stop to the painful scene.
“Bah! they will soon calm down.” So Napoleon thought, having no
fear whatever that a tumultuous rising of peasants would make head
against his troops. What his army had done in Italy and in Egypt, it
could do in Spain. It only annoyed him, and somewhat puzzled him,
to see that the people should reject his liberal constitution, and
devote themselves with such frantic zeal to the most worthless of
Bourbon kings. That Joseph would soon be in peaceful possession of
the peninsula, that his generals would soon sweep the peasant bands
out of the field, he did not doubt. Had he lacked faith as to this,
he would probably not have given the crown to Joseph,--the placid,
self-satisfied, comprehensively incapable Joseph. Had he dreamed of the
long years of war that were to follow, he might have hearkened to the
pleadings of Murat, and left that brilliant soldier to defend the crown
which he so ardently coveted.
Amid ovations the Emperor and Josephine toured the provinces, on the
return trip to Paris, everywhere welcomed with joy and admiration,
while in the peninsula the great storm was muttering. Throughout Spain,
in the highways and byways, from pulpit to market-place, Napoleon was
denounced, defied, and resisted. Priests led the crusade, cursing the
man of the Concordat as anti-Christ, minister of the devil, worthy
of death and damnation. Committees of defence, juntas, sprang up
everywhere; armies mustered almost at the stamp of the foot. Wherever
a Frenchman could be stabbed, shot from ambush, or taken and sawn
asunder, it was done. Roads were lined with ambuscades, stragglers and
detached parties cut off, and the French generals were soon thrown on
the defensive by this despised uprising of the people. At Saragossa
and Valencia the French troops were repulsed; in Andalusia hordes of
Spaniards surrounded Dupont’s army of twenty thousand, beat it in
battle, and forced it to capitulate (Baylen, July, 1808).
In August the English landed troops in Portugal; and Junot, whose
forces were scattered, fought with only thirteen thousand men against
Wellington with sixteen thousand, was worsted at Vimeiro (August 21,
1808) and by the convention of Cintra (August 30, 1808) agreed to
evacuate Portugal. He, too, had wanted to become a king; he, too, had
thought of himself rather than of his master; he, too, had wrecked a
splendid plan by sheer mismanagement and monstrous rapacity.
The disaster in Spain and Portugal came upon Napoleon like a
thunderbolt; his grief and indignation knew no bounds; cries of rage
and pain were wrung from him; pointing to his uniform, he said, “There
is a stain here.” At Aboukir, Brueys had at least fought and died like
a soldier; at Trafalgar Frenchmen had shown desperate valor; but at
Baylen an army of twenty thousand imperial troops had laid down their
arms to gangs of insurgents! Oh, the shame of it! Who could estimate
its effect in Europe? When the Emperor spoke of Baylen to his council
of state, his voice trembled, and his eyes were full of tears.
Conscious of the peril which menaced his supremacy, Napoleon determined
to go in person and put down the Spanish revolt. But before doing so
it was necessary that he and the Czar should have another conference,
smooth over certain points of difference which had arisen, and come
to a better understanding--hence the famous gathering at Erfurth
(October, 1808). This time Alexander was Napoleon’s guest, and very
royally was he entertained. A more brilliant assembly was never seen
in Europe. Subject kings, vassals, lords of the Empire, civil and
military dignitaries, courtiers, ambassadors, diplomats, eminent men
of letters, surrounded the two great Emperors, and rendered homage.
Business and pleasure intermingled; and while frontiers of empire were
being arranged, there were banquets, balls, grand hunts, orchestral
music, and the drama. Actors brought from Paris played to the Emperors
and their trains, and the Czar stood up one night and took Napoleon’s
hand at the line “the friendship of a great man is a gift from the
gods.” Davoust used to say that Napoleon had been nodding till the Czar
improvised this little by-play.
If Napoleon was anxious for the future of his power, he concealed
it well; his face showed nothing but serenity, good nature, and
confidence. He found time to converse at length with Goethe and
Wieland; he found time to act the suave host to lords and ladies; he
was as firm with Alexander as he had been at Tilsit; and when the
conference broke up, he had arranged everything as completely to his
satisfaction.
In the _Memoirs_ of Marshal Oudinot, we find the following anecdote of
the Erfurth meeting:--
“Napoleon had occasional fits of forgetfulness which prevented him from
displaying, in his relations with the sovereigns, all the forethought
expected in a host.
“One day we were riding into the country, the two Emperors, Napoleon
and Alexander, riding side by side. At a given moment, the former,
carried away by his thoughts, took the lead, whistling, and seeming to
forget those he was leaving behind. I shall always remember Alexander,
turning stiffly toward his neighbor, and asking, ‘Are we to follow?’
‘Yes, sire.’ I rejoined Napoleon and told him of this little scene. He
fell back, offered an explanation, and that was the end of it.”
So Marshal Oudinot thought, but as the compiler of the _Memoirs_ asks,
who knows what influence this trifling incident may have had upon the
proud, sensitive, suspicious, and wavering Czar?
By the terms of the new agreement, Alexander was to have a free hand
on the Danube to take Moldavia and Wallachia; that much had been
understood at Tilsit, perhaps, but “Constantinople, never! That is the
empire of the world!” In return for the liberty to seize the Danubian
provinces, the Czar was to keep central Europe quiet, while Napoleon
conquered Spain and Portugal. Prussia was notified by the Czar that she
must remain quiet, bow to Napoleon’s will, and agree to his demands,
one of which was that Stein should be dismissed.
To Germans, generally, the heavy hand of the Czar, coming down upon
Frederick William in this imperative fashion, must have suggested the
thought that it was high time the Lord’s Anointed autocrat of Russia
was being sworn to friendship to Prussia, once more, at the tomb of the
great Frederick. The two oaths already taken seemed to have slipped
their hold.
Suppose that Napoleon had solemnly gone in state to the Escorial
and there, at night, had taken in his own the hand of the Spanish
king, and had, over the bones of dead Spanish monarchs, sworn eternal
friendship to Spain; suppose he had broken this vow as soon as made;
suppose he had gone the second time and sworn it all over again;
suppose he had violated his oath a second time:--would royalist and
clerical authors _ever_ have found ink black enough to fill their
righteously indignant pens?
If we would correctly judge Napoleon, let us keep our equilibrium and
our standards of comparison; let us throw him into contrast, not with
the ideal man, but with other rulers of his own time. By so doing we
may hope to come, in the humblest spirit and manner, to know the great
Corsican as he actually was.
Once more an effort was made to put an end to war. The two Emperors
sent couriers,--one French and the other Russian,--to England, bearing
offers of peace. These couriers were treated almost as spies by the
English, were kept under surveillance, and were finally sent back with
a note which gave no encouragement to the monarchs who sent them.
King Joseph had been driven out of Madrid, was now at Vittoria, and
the insurgents controlled the country with the exception of the soil
occupied by the French armies.
Losing no time after the Erfurth interview, Napoleon hastened to Spain,
took command of the troops at Vittoria (November 5, 1808), and moved
forward. In a few days the entire military situation was changed.
The Spaniards were out-generalled, beaten at all points, and escaped
complete annihilation by the too great haste of some of the French
generals. Within four weeks after the commencement of the campaign,
Madrid was retaken, and once more put into the possession of the feeble
Joseph.
On his march to the Spanish capital, Napoleon found his road blocked
at the mountain pass of Sommo-Sierra. The insurgents had fortified the
heights, their cannon completely controlling the defile. So strong was
the position that a handful of veterans there might have checked an
army.
But the impudence of these Spanish bands in presuming to resist his
march threw Napoleon into a fury. He would not wait till his infantry
could advance upon either side, turn the enemy, and almost certainly
secure a bloodless victory. He raged and stormed, “What! my army
stopped by armed bands, wretched peasants!”
“Patience, sire, I pray,” pleaded General Walthour, who assured him
that in a few minutes the pass would be cleared by infantry, which was
even then advancing on either side. But no; the enemy must be charged
with cavalry--a bristling battery, on the crest of a mountain gorge,
must be swept out of the way by a cavalry dash.
“Go, Ségur! Go at once; make my Poles charge, make them take
everything!”
There was astonishment--but the order had to be obeyed. At full speed
the splendid soldiers of the Polish squadron dashed up the pass, to
melt away in an awful fire from the battery above. Historians say that
the cavalry charge succeeded. Ségur, who led the dash and was shot down
in it, relates that the flanking infantry columns did the work.
“Does anybody know how Ségur came to be hurt? Was he carrying an
order?” Napoleon asked, after the battle.
When reminded that he had himself given Ségur the order, he was silent,
and “fell into a very thoughtful mood.”
An English army under Sir John Moore had entered Spain and was
advancing toward Madrid. When it learned that Napoleon was in the
field, it began a retreat to the coast, which is famous in military
history. The French, led by the Emperor, set out in hot pursuit; and
it would be hard to say with certainty which party suffered the more
frightful hardships,--the pursuers or the pursued. The weather was
bitterly cold, with cutting winds, chilly rains, blinding snowstorms.
In crossing the Gaudamara Mountains the storm was so fierce, the cold
and the snow so terrible, that the advance guard of Napoleon actually
began to retreat. It required all the Emperor’s personal influence
and example to encourage the men onwards. Dismounting, he trudged
along on foot, Lannes and Duroc on either side, and hour after hour
he plodded thus through the snow, up the mountain, at the head of his
men. Near the summit, on account of the jackboots the officers wore,
they could go no farther. Napoleon was lifted on to a gun carriage,
and riding on a cannon, he reached the top, his generals similarly
mounted. By forced marches the French were pushed on in the hope of
cutting off the English retreat, but it could not be done. Horribly
as they suffered, the English were not wholly demoralized. There were
always some gallant thousands who would turn and fight when the French
pressed them too hard. In this way the pursuers met bloody repulses.
Many frightful scenes took place among the English; but General Marbot
relates an incident of the French pursuit which throws a vivid light
over the hideous character of this whole campaign. He saw three French
grenadiers kill themselves because they were tired out, could no
longer keep up, and chose death rather than the tortures which awaited
them if they fell into the hands of the Spanish peasants.
Napoleon was so deeply impressed by the suicide of his grenadiers that
in spite of the drenching rain and bitter cold he went the rounds of
the bivouac that night, speaking to the wretched soldiers and trying to
restore their courage.
At Astorga a courier arrived, bringing despatches from Paris which
warned Napoleon that Austria was ready now “to begin again.” She had
completely reorganized her army, had patiently waited for the right
moment, and was sure that it had come. The veteran troops of France
were scattered over the Spanish peninsula; England had made good her
grip on Portugal; Austria had about five hundred thousand soldiers
ready, and now was the time to strike. The pursuit of the English
was turned over to Soult, and the race for the seacoast continued as
before. When the French could overtake the English at all, it was with
an advance guard too small to crush the English rear-guard. If there was
a clash, the French were repulsed. If the French came up in force, the
English continued the retreat. At last the coast was made. There was a
bloody fight, the battle of Corunna. Sir John Moore was killed, but his
army, or what remained of it, got on board the English ships and sailed
away.
As to Napoleon, he returned to Valladolid, where he busied himself
for several days regulating the affairs of Spain, and in sending off
innumerable despatches. Then springing upon his horse, he spurred
away for Bayonne, in perhaps the wildest ride an emperor ever made.
His escort clattered after him, strung out behind, and the wondering
peasants of Spain long remembered that meteoric vision. They heard in
the distance a faint noise as of frantic racing; there burst into view
a breathless cavalcade; it came on like a wind-driven cloud; there was
a rush, and a noise like thunder, a fleeting glimpse of bent riders and
straining steeds; there was, perhaps, a shout in passing; then it went
as it came, and in a moment it was gone.
General Thiébault, on his way to Vittoria, was in the road, with
carriage, aides, escort, and servants, when one of his attendants said,
“Here comes the Emperor, I think.” The General was about to alight from
the carriage when he heard some one call:--
“Who is in that carriage?”
The servant hardly had time to answer “General Thiébault” before the
imperial party tore by. “Savary was first, after him the Emperor,
lashing Savary’s horse, and digging the spurs into his own.... A good
minute afterward Duroc and the Emperor’s Mameluke galloped by, and at
a like distance from them came a guide, exhausted with his efforts to
make up lost ground, and four more brought up the rear as best they
could.”
From Valladolid to Burgos, some seventy-five miles, Napoleon rode in
three hours and a half (January, 1809).