MODERN SPAIN
THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG--PHILIP II.--DEFEAT OF THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA--A
BOURBON AMONG THEM--THE PENINSULAR WAR--ALFONSO XIII.
With the death of Ferdinand begins the period of uninterrupted Hapsburg
rule in Spain, which lasted for nearly two centuries. In the course of
this period, the monarchy obtained absolute authority, and Spain, after
rising for a time to be the foremost State in Europe, sank to the
position of a second-rate power, from which it has never since emerged.
Aragon and Castile were distinct kingdoms, and the former was again
divided into the three provinces of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia,
each of which had its own Cortes, its own privileges, and the most
warmly-cherished traditions of independence. The foreign possessions of
the two crowns were a source of weakness rather than of strength. France
stood ready at the earliest opportunity to contest the possession of
Navarre with Castile, and that of Naples with Aragon.
The difficulties of domestic government were increased by the fact that
the prospective ruler was a youthful foreigner, who had never visited
Spain, and who was completely ignorant of the customs and even of the
language of the country. Charles--the son of Philip, archduke of
Austria, and of Jane, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella--had been born
and educated in the Netherlands, of which he had been nominal ruler ever
since the death of his father in 1506. All his friends and advisers were
Flemings, who cared nothing for Spanish interests, and had already
acquired an evil reputation for selfish greed. The first symptom of
discontent in Spain was excited by Charles’s demand to be recognized as
king, in utter disregard of his mother. In Aragon the demand was
unhesitatingly refused, but in Castile the vigorous measures of the
famous Cardinal Ximenez secured Charles’s proclamation.
The regent, however, had great difficulties to face. The nobles,
delighted to be rid of the strong government of Ferdinand, wished to
utilize the opportunity to regain the privileges and independence they
had lost. In this crisis the loyal devotion of Ximenez saved the
monarchy. Throwing himself upon the support of the citizen class, he
organized a militia which overawed the nobles and maintained order. A
French invasion of Navarre was repulsed, and to avoid any danger from
the discontent of the inhabitants, all the fortresses of the province,
with the single exception of Pamplona, were dismantled. These
distinguished services were rewarded with more than royal ingratitude by
Charles, who came to Spain in 1517, and who allowed the aged cardinal to
die on November 8th, without even granting him an interview.
Charles’s enormous inheritance was increased by the successes of Cortes
in Mexico and of Pizarro in Peru, by his own annexation of the Milanese,
and by his conquests in northern Africa.
The glory of Spain was then at its apogee. After his death, which
occurred in 1558, the decline set in. From this time also the House of
Hapsburg became divided into its contemporary branches.
Charles was succeeded by Philip II., his only legitimate son. The
administration of the latter, while successful at home, was a failure
abroad. During his reign a claim to the throne of Portugal was
successfully asserted, and the unity of the Peninsula was completed.
Moreover, colonial possessions were greatly extended. Yet his religious
intolerance excited the revolt of the Netherlands, which resulted in a
loss of the seven northern provinces. His effort to obtain a
preponderant influence over France was dexterously foiled by the
succession and triumph of Henry IV. But his great and historical defeat
was that which he experienced with the Armada.
Besides the Spanish crown, Philip succeeded to the kingdoms of Naples
and Sicily, the Duchy of Milan, Franche-Comte, and the Netherlands. In
Africa he possessed Tunis, Oran, the Cape Verd, and the Canary Islands;
and in Asia, the Philippine and Sunda Islands, and a part of the
Moluccas. Beyond the Atlantic he was lord of the most splendid portions
of the New World. The empires of Peru and Mexico, New Spain, and Chili,
with their abundant mines of the precious metals, Hispaniola and Cuba,
and many other of the American islands, were provinces of the sovereign
of Spain.
Philip had also the advantage of finding himself at the head of a large
standing army in a perfect state of discipline and equipment, in an age
when, except some few insignificant corps, standing armies were unknown
to Christendom. The renown of the Spanish troops was justly high, and
the infantry in particular was considered the best in the world. His
fleet, also, was far more numerous, and better appointed, than that of
any other European power; and both his soldiers and his sailors had the
confidence in themselves and their commanders which a long career of
successful warfare alone can create.
One nation only had been his active, his persevering, and his successful
foe. England had encouraged his revolted subjects in Flanders against
him, and given them the aid in men and money without which they must
soon have been humbled in the dust. English ships had plundered his
colonies; had defied his supremacy in the New World, as well as the Old;
they had inflicted ignominious defeats on his squadrons; they had
captured his cities, and burned his arsenals on the very coasts of
Spain. The English had made Philip himself the object of personal
insult. He was held up to ridicule in their stage plays and masks, and
these scoffs at the man had (as is not unusual in such cases) excited
the anger of the absolute king, even more vehemently than the injuries
inflicted on his power. Personal as well as political revenge urged him
to attack England. Were she once subdued, the Dutch must submit; France
could not cope with him, the empire would not oppose him; and universal
dominion seemed sure to be the result of the conquest of that malignant
island.
For some time the destination of an enormous armament which he had long
been preparing was not publicly announced. Only Philip himself, the Pope
Sixtus, the Duke of Guise, and Philip’s favorite minister, Mendoza, at
first knew its real object. Rumors were sedulously spread that it was
designed to proceed to the Indies to realize vast projects of distant
conquest. Sometimes hints were dropped by Philip’s embassadors in
foreign courts that their master had resolved on a decisive effort to
crush his rebels in the Low Countries. But Elizabeth and her statesmen
could not view the gathering of such a storm without feeling the
probability of its bursting on their own shores. As early as the spring
of 1587, Elizabeth sent Sir Francis Drake to cruise off the Tagus. Drake
sailed into the Bay of Cadiz and the Lisbon Roads, and burned much
shipping and military stores, causing thereby an important delay in the
progress of the Spanish preparations. Drake called this “Singeing the
king of Spain’s beard.” Elizabeth also increased her succors of troops
to the Netherlanders, to prevent the Prince of Parma from overwhelming
them, and from thence being at full leisure to employ his army against
her dominions.
Philip had an ally in France who was far more powerful than the French
king. This was the Duke of Guise, the chief of the League, and the idol
of the fanatic partisans of the Romish faith. Philip prevailed on Guise
openly to take up arms against Henry III. (who was reviled by the
Leaguers as a traitor to the true Church, and a secret friend to the
Huguenots); and thus prevent the French king from interfering in favor
of Queen Elizabeth. “With this object, the commander, Juan Iniguez
Moreo, was dispatched by him in the early part of April to the Duke of
Guise at Soissons. He met with complete success. He offered the Duke of
Guise, as soon as he took the field against Henry III., three hundred
thousand crowns, six thousand infantry, and twelve hundred pikemen, on
behalf of the king, his master, who would, in addition, withdraw his
embassador from the court of France, and accredit an envoy to the
Catholic party. A treaty was concluded on these conditions, and the Duke
of Guise entered Paris, where he was expected by the Leaguers, and
whence he expelled Henry III. on the 12th of May, by the insurrection of
the barricades. A fortnight after this insurrection, which reduced Henry
III. to impotence, and, to use the language of the Prince of Parma, did
not even ‘permit him to assist the Queen of England with his tears, as
he needed them all to weep over his own misfortunes,’ the Spanish fleet
left the Tagus and sailed toward the British isles.”
Meanwhile in England, from the sovereign on the throne to the peasant in
the cottage, all hearts and hands made ready to meet the imminent deadly
peril. A camp was formed at Tilbury; and there Elizabeth rode through
the ranks, encouraging her captains and her soldiers by her presence and
her words.
The ships of the royal navy at this time amounted to no more than
thirty-six; but the most serviceable merchant vessels were collected
from all the ports of the country; and the citizens of London, Bristol,
and the other great seats of commerce, showed as liberal a zeal in
equipping and manning vessels as the nobility and gentry displayed in
mustering forces by land. The seafaring population of the coast, of
every rank and station, was animated by the same ready spirit; and the
whole number of seamen who came forward to man the English fleet was
17,472. The number of the ships that were collected was 191; and the
total amount of their tonnage 31,985. There was one ship in the fleet
(the “Triumph”) of 1,100 tons, one of 1,000, one of 900, two of 800
each, three of 600, five of 500, five of 400, six of 300, six of 250,
twenty of 200, and the residue of inferior burden. Application was made
to the Dutch for assistance: and, as Stowe expresses it, “The Hollanders
came roundly in, with threescore sail, brave ships of war, fierce and
full of spleen, not so much for England’s aid, as in just occasion for
their own defense; these men foreseeing the greatness of the danger that
might ensue, if the Spaniards should chance to win the day and get the
mastery over them; in due regard whereof their manly courage was
inferior to none.”
The equipment of the Spanish forces consisted of 130 ships (besides
caravels), 3,165 cannon, 8,050 sailors, 2,088 galley-slaves, 18,973
soldiers, 1,382 noblemen, gentlemen, and attendants, 150 monks, with
Martin Alarco, vicar of the Inquisition--the whole under the command of
the Duke of Medina Sidonia.
While this huge armada was making ready in the southern ports of the
Spanish dominions, the Prince of Parma, with almost incredible toil and
skill, collected a squadron of warships at Dunkirk, and his flotilla of
other ships and of flat-bottomed boats for the transport to England of
the picked troops, which were designed to be the main instruments in
subduing England. Thousands of workmen were employed, night and day, in
the construction of these vessels, in the ports of Flanders and Brabant.
One hundred of the kind called hendes, built at Antwerp, Bruges, and
Ghent, and laden with provisions and ammunition, together with sixty
flat-bottomed boats, each capable of carrying thirty horses, were
brought, by means of canals and fosses, dug expressly for the purpose,
to Nieuport and Dunkirk. One hundred smaller vessels were equipped at
the former place, and thirty-two at Dunkirk, provided with twenty
thousand empty barrels, and with materials for making pontoons, for
stopping up the harbors, and raising forts and intrenchments. The army
which these vessels were designed to convey to England amounted to
thirty thousand strong, besides a body of four thousand cavalry,
stationed at Courtroi, composed chiefly of the ablest veterans of
Europe; invigorated by rest (the siege of Sluys having been the only
enterprise in which they were employed during the last campaign), and
excited by the hopes of plunder and the expectation of certain conquest.
Philip had been advised by the deserter, Sir William Stanley, not to
attack England in the first instance, but first to effect a landing and
secure a strong position in Ireland; his admiral, Santa Cruz, had
recommended him to make sure, in the first instance, of some large
harbor on the coast of Holland or Zealand, where the Armada, having
entered the Channel, might find shelter in case of storm, and whence it
could sail without difficulty for England; but Philip rejected both
these counsels, and directed that England itself should be made the
immediate object of attack; and on the 20th of May the Armada left the
Tagus, in the pomp and pride of supposed invincibility, and amid the
shouts of thousands, who believed that England was already conquered.
But steering to the northward, and before it was clear of the coast of
Spain, the Armada was assailed by a violent storm, and driven back with
considerable damage to the ports of Biscay and Galicia. It had, however,
sustained its heaviest loss before it left the Tagus, in the death of
the veteran admiral Santa Cruz, who had been destined to guide it
against England.
This experienced sailor, notwithstanding his diligence and success, had
been unable to keep pace with the impatient ardor of his master. Philip
II. had reproached him with his dilatoriness, and had said with
ungrateful harshness, “You make an ill return for all my kindness to
you.” These words cut the veteran’s heart, and proved fatal to Santa
Cruz. Overwhelmed with fatigue and grief, he sickened and died. Philip
II. had replaced him by Alonzo Perez de Gusman, duke of Medina Sidonia,
one of the most powerful of the Spanish grandees, but wholly unqualified
to command such an expedition. He had, however, as his lieutenants, two
seamen of proved skill and bravery, Juan de Martinez Recalde of Biscay,
and Miguel Orquendo of Guipuzcoa.
On the 12th of July the Armada, having completely refitted, sailed again
for the Channel, and reached it without obstruction or observation by
the English.
The design of the Spaniards was, that the Armada should give them, at
least for a time, the command of the sea, and that it should join the
squadron which Parma had collected off Calais. Then, escorted by an
overpowering naval force, Parma and his army were to embark in their
flotilla, and cross the sea to England, where they were to be landed,
together with the troops which the Armada brought from the ports of
Spain. The scheme was not dissimilar to one formed against England a
little more than two centuries afterward.
The orders of King Philip to the Duke of Medina Sidonia were, that he
should, on entering the Channel, keep near the French coast, and, if
attacked by the English ships, avoid an action, and steer on to Calais
Roads, where the Prince of Parma’s squadron was to join him. The hope of
surprising and destroying the English fleet in Plymouth led the Spanish
admiral to deviate from these orders, and to stand across to the English
shore; but, on finding that Lord Howard was coming out to meet him, he
resumed the original plan, and determined to bend his way steadily
toward Calais and Dunkirk, and to keep merely on the defensive against
such squadrons of the English as might come up with him.
It was on Saturday, the 20th of July, that Lord Effingham came in sight
of his formidable adversaries. The Armada was drawn up in form of a
crescent, which from horn to horn measured some seven miles. There was a
southwest wind; and before it the vast vessels sailed slowly on. The
English let them pass by; and then, following in the rear, commenced an
attack on them. A running fight now took place, in which some of the
best ships of the Spaniards were captured; many more received heavy
damage; while the English vessels, which took care not to close with
their huge antagonists, but availed themselves of their superior
celerity in tacking and maneuvering, suffered little comparative loss.
The Spanish admiral showed great judgment and firmness in following the
line of conduct that had been traced out for him; and on the 27th of
July he brought his fleet unbroken, though sorely distressed, to anchor
in Calais Roads. The Armada lay off Calais, with its largest ships
ranged outside, “like strong castles fearing no assault; the lesser
placed in the middle ward.” The English admiral could not attack them in
their position without great disadvantage, but on the night of the 29th
he sent eight fire-ships among them, with almost equal effect to that of
the fire-ships which the Greeks so often employed against the Turkish
fleets in their war of independence. The Spaniards cut their cables and
put to sea in confusion. One of the largest galeasses ran foul of
another vessel and was stranded. The rest of the fleet was scattered
about on the Flemish coast, and when the morning broke, it was with
difficulty and delay that they obeyed their admiral’s signal to range
themselves round him near Gravelines. Now was the golden opportunity for
the English to assail them, and prevent them from ever letting loose
Parma’s flotilla against England; and nobly was that opportunity used.
Drake and Fenner were the first English captains who attacked the
unwieldy leviathans: then came Fenton, Southwell, Burton, Cross, Raynor,
and then the lord-admiral, with Lord Thomas Howard and Lord Sheffield.
The Spaniards only thought of forming and keeping close together, and
were driven by the English past Dunkirk, and far away from the Prince of
Parma, who, in watching their defeat from the coast, must, as Drake
expressed it, have chafed like a bear robbed of her whelps. This was
indeed the last and the decisive battle between the two fleets.
Many of the largest Spanish ships were sunk or captured in the action of
this day. And at length the Spanish admiral, despairing of success,
fled northward with a southerly wind, in the hope of rounding Scotland,
and so returning to Spain without a further encounter with the English
fleet. Lord Effingham left a squadron to continue the blockade of the
Prince of Parma’s armament; but that wise general soon withdrew his
troops to more promising fields of action. Meanwhile the lord-admiral
himself and Drake chased the vincible Armada, as it was now termed, for
some distance northward; and then, when it seemed to bend away from the
Scotch coast toward Norway, it was thought best, in the words of Drake,
“to leave them to those boisterous and uncouth northern seas.”
The sufferings and losses which the unhappy Spaniards sustained in their
flight round Scotland and Ireland are well known. Of their whole Armada
only fifty-three shattered vessels brought back their beaten and wasted
crews to the Spanish coast which they had quitted in such pageantry and
pride.
At the death of Philip, which occurred on September 13, 1598, he left to
his son and successor, Philip III., an empire nominally undiminished,
but unwieldy and internally exhausted. Resources had been squandered.
The attention of the masses had been turned from industry to war. The
soldiery once regarded as invincible had lost their prestige in the
Netherland swamps. Enormous taxes, from which nobles and clergy were
exempt, were multiplied on the people. That being insufficient, Philip
III. proved his orthodoxy by completing the work. In 1609 the Moors, or
Moriscoes, as they were called, were ordered to quit the Peninsula
within three days, and the penalty of death was decreed against all who
failed to obey, and against any Christians who should shelter the
recalcitrants.
The edict was obeyed, but it was the ruin of Spain. The Moriscoes were
the backbone of the industrial population, not only in trade and
manufactures, but also in agriculture. The haughty and indolent
Spaniards had willingly left what they considered degrading employments
to their inferiors. The Moors had introduced into Spain the cultivation
of sugar, cotton, rice and silk. They had established a system of
irrigation which had given fertility to the soil. The province of
Valencia in their hands had become a model of agriculture to the rest of
Europe. In manufactures and commerce they had shown equal superiority to
the Christian inhabitants, and many of the products of Spain were
eagerly sought for by other countries. All these advantages were
sacrificed to an insane desire for religious unity.
The resources of Spain, already exhausted, never recovered from this
terrible blow. Philip III. died in March, 1621. His reign had not been
glorious or advantageous to Spain, but it contrasts favorably with those
of his successors. Spanish literature and art, which had received a
great impulse from the intercourse with foreign countries under previous
rulers, reached their zenith during his lifetime. Three writers have
obtained European fame--Cervantes, who produced the immortal “Don
Quixote” between 1605 and 1613, and two of the most fertile of romantic
dramatists, Lope de Vega and Calderon. In the domain of art, Spain
produced two of the greatest masters of the seventeenth century,
Velasquez and Murillo.
Philip II. was succeeded by Philip III. After him came Philip IV. and
then Charles II. Of these monarchs Mignet said: “Philip II. was merely a
king. Philip III. and Philip IV. were not kings, and Charles II. was not
even a man.” The death of the latter precipitated the War of the
Succession, the military operations of which were rendered famous by the
military exploits of Eugene and Marlborough. But this is not the place
to recite them. The chief scenes of hostilities were the Netherlands,
Germany and Italy, and their narration belongs more properly to the
histories of these lands. Suffice it to say that by the Treaty of
Utrecht war was concluded in 1711, and Philip V., a Bourbon, second
grandson of Louis XIV., was, in accordance with the will of Charles II.,
acknowledged King of Spain. By the same treaty England gained Gibraltar,
while the Spanish Netherlands, Milan, Naples and Sardinia were ceded to
Austria.
With the accession of a Bourbon, Spain entered into a new period of
history, during which it once more played a part in the politics of
Europe, as also in its wars; those, for instance, of the Polish and
Austrian successions--the country meanwhile being additionally embroiled
with England.
Philip V. was succeeded by Ferdinand VI., and the latter by Charles
III., whose death, together with the accession of Charles IV., were
contemporary with the French Revolution. The execution of Louis XVI.
made a profound impression on a country where loyalty was a
superstition. Charles IV. was roused to demand vengeance for the insult
to his family. Godoy, the Prime Minister, could but follow the national
impulse; and Spain became a member of the first coalition against
France. But the two campaigns which ensued provoked the contempt of
Europe. They form a catalogue of defeats. Under the circumstances it is
no wonder that Spain followed the example of Prussia and concluded a
treaty of peace.
The next event of importance was Napoleon’s famous coup de main--the
seizure of the Spanish royal family at Bayonne--the jugglery which he
performed with the crown, its transference by him from Ferdinand VII.
(son of Charles IV.) to Joseph Bonaparte, and the revolt of the South
American colonies which that act produced.
Then came the restoration of Spanish independence through England’s aid;
Wellington’s famous campaign; the battles of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos;
the entry into Madrid; the retreat of Joseph to Valencia; Napoleon’s
crushing defeat at Leipzig, and Ferdinand’s return from captivity at
Valençay.
The circumstances through which these last-mentioned events were induced
or precipitated, and which are collectively known as the Peninsular War,
originated at the moment when Napoleon was practically master of Europe.
Its whole face was changed. Prussia was occupied by French troops.
Holland was changed into a monarchy by a simple decree of the French
emperor, and its crown bestowed on his brother Louis. Another brother,
Jerome, became King of Westphalia, a new realm built up out of the
electorates of Hesse-Cassel and Hanover. A third brother, Joseph, was
made King of Naples; while the rest of Italy, and even Rome itself, was
annexed to the French empire. It was the hope of effectually crushing
the world-power of Britain which drove him to his worst aggression, the
aggression upon Spain.
Napoleon acted with his usual subtlety. In October, 1807, France and
Spain agreed to divide Portugal between them; and on the advance of
their forces the reigning House of Braganza fled helplessly from Lisbon
to a refuge in Brazil. But the seizure of Portugal was only a prelude to
the seizure of Spain. Charles IV., whom a riot in his capital drove at
this moment to abdication, and his son, Ferdinand VII., were drawn to
Bayonne in May, 1808, and forced to resign their claims to the Spanish
crown; while a French army entered Madrid and proclaimed Napoleon’s
brother Joseph king of Spain.
This high-handed act of aggression was hardly completed when Spain rose
as one man against the stranger; and desperate as the effort of its
people seemed, the news of the rising was welcomed throughout England
with a burst of enthusiastic joy. “Hitherto,” cried Sheridan, a leader
of the Whig opposition, “Bonaparte has contended with princes without
dignity, numbers without ardor, or peoples without patriotism. He has
yet to learn what it is to combat a people who are animated by one
spirit against him.” Tory and Whig alike held that “never had so happy
an opportunity existed in Britain to strike a bold stroke for the rescue
of the world”; and Canning at once resolved to change the system of
desultory descents on colonies and sugar islands for a vigorous warfare
in the Peninsula.
The furious and bloody struggle which ensued found its climax at
Vittoria, but it would be difficult to find in the whole history of war
a more thrilling chapter than that which tells of the six great
campaigns of which the war itself was composed.
The Peninsular War was perhaps the least selfish conflict ever waged. It
was not a war of aggrandizement or of conquest. It was fought to deliver
Europe from the despotism of Napoleon. At its close the fleets of Great
Britain rode triumphant, and in the Peninsula between 1808-14 her land
forces fought and won nineteen pitched battles, made or sustained ten
fierce and bloody sieges, took four great fortresses, twice expelled the
French from Portugal and once from Spain. Great Britain expended in
these campaigns more than one hundred million pounds sterling on her own
troops, besides subsidizing the forces of Spain and Portugal. This
“nation of shopkeepers” proved that when kindled to action it could wage
war on a scale and in a fashion that might have moved the wonder of
Alexander or of Cæsar, and from motives too lofty for either Cæsar or
Alexander so much as to comprehend. It is worth while to tell afresh the
story of some of the more picturesque incidents in that great strife.
On April 6, 1812, Badajos was stormed by Wellington; and the story forms
one of the most tragical and splendid incidents in the military history
of the world. Of “the night of horrors at Badajos,” Napier says,
“posterity can scarcely be expected to credit the tale.” No tale,
however, is better authenticated, or, as an example of what disciplined
human valor is capable of achieving, better deserves to be told.
Wellington was preparing for his great forward movement into Spain, the
campaign which led to Salamanca, the battle in which “forty thousand
Frenchmen were beaten in forty minutes.” As a preliminary he had to
capture, under the vigilant eyes of Soult and Marmont, the two great
border fortresses, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos. He had, to use Napier’s
phrase, “jumped with both feet” on the first-named fortress, and
captured it in twelve days with a loss of twelve hundred men and ninety
officers.
But Badajos was a still harder task. The city stands on a rocky ridge
which forms the last spur of the Toledo range, and is of extraordinary
strength. The river Rivillas falls almost at right angles into the
Guadiana, and in the angle formed by their junction stands Badajos, oval
in shape, girdled with elaborate defenses, with the Guadiana, five
hundred yards wide, as its defense to the north, the Rivillas serving as
a wet ditch to the west, and no less than five great fortified
outposts--Saint Roque, Christoval, Picurina, Pardaleras, and a fortified
bridge-head across the Guadiana--as the outer zone of its defenses.
Twice the English had already assailed Badajos, but assailed it in vain.
It was now held by a garrison five thousand strong, under a soldier,
General Phillipson, with a real genius for defense, and the utmost art
had been employed in adding to its defenses. On the other hand,
Wellington had no means of transport and no battery train, and had to
make all his preparations under the keen-eyed vigilance of the French.
Perhaps the strangest collection of artillery ever employed in a great
siege was that which Wellington collected from every available quarter
and used at Badajos. Of the fifty-two pieces, some dated from the days
of Philip II. and the Spanish Armada, some were cast in the reign of
Philip III., others in that of John IV. of Portugal, who reigned in
1640; there were 24-pounders of George II.’s day, and Russian naval
guns; the bulk of the extraordinary medley being obsolete brass engines
which required from seven to ten minutes to cool between each discharge.
Wellington, however, was strong in his own warlike genius and in the
quality of the troops he commanded. He employed eighteen thousand men in
the siege, and it may well be doubted whether--if we put the question of
equipment aside--a more perfect fighting instrument than the force under
his orders ever existed. The men were veterans, but the officers on the
whole were young, so there was steadiness in the ranks and fire in the
leading. Hill and Graham covered the siege, Picton and Barnard, Kempt
and Colville led the assaults. The trenches were held by the third,
fourth, and fifth divisions, and by the famous light division. Of the
latter it has been said that the Macedonian phalanx of Alexander the
Great, the Tenth Legion of Cæsar, the famous Spanish infantry of Alva,
or the iron soldiers who followed Cortes to Mexico, did not exceed it in
warlike quality. Wellington’s troops, too, had a personal grudge against
Badajos, and had two defeats to avenge. Perhaps no siege in history, as
a matter of fact, ever witnessed either more furious valor in the
assault, or more of cool and skilled courage in the defense. The siege
lasted exactly twenty days, and cost the besiegers five thousand men, or
an average loss of two hundred and fifty per day. It was waged
throughout in stormy weather, with the rivers steadily rising, and the
tempests perpetually blowing; yet the thunder of the attack never paused
for an instant.
Wellington’s engineers attacked the city at the eastern end of the oval,
where the Rivillas served it as a gigantic wet ditch; and the Picurina,
a fortified hill, ringed by a ditch fourteen feet deep, a rampart
sixteen feet high, and a zone of mines, acted as an outwork. Wellington,
curiously enough, believed in night attacks, a sure proof of his faith
in the quality of the men he commanded; and on the eighth night of the
siege, at nine o’clock, five hundred men of the third division were
suddenly flung on the Picurina. The fort broke into a ring of flame, by
the light of which the dark figures of the stormers were seen leaping
with fierce hardihood into the ditch and struggling madly up the
ramparts, or tearing furiously at the palisades. But the defenses were
strong, and the assailants fell literally in scores.
Napier tells how “the axmen of the light division, compassing the fort
like prowling wolves,” discovered the gate at the rear, and so broke
into the fort. The engineer officer who led the attack declares that
“the place would never have been taken had it not been for the coolness
of these men” in absolutely walking round the fort to its rear,
discovering the gate, and hewing it down under a tempest of bullets. The
assault lasted an hour, and in that period, out of the five hundred men
who attacked, no less than three hundred, with nineteen officers, were
killed or wounded! Three men out of every five in the attacking force,
that is, were disabled, and yet they won!
There followed twelve days of furious industry, of trenches pushed
tirelessly forward through mud and wet, and of cannonading that only
ceased when the guns grew too hot to be used. Captain MacCarthy, of the
Fiftieth Regiment, has left a curious little monograph on the siege,
full of incidents, half tragic and half amusing, but which show the
temper of Wellington’s troops. Thus he tells how an engineer officer,
when marking out the ground for a breaching-battery very near the wall,
which was always lined with French soldiers in eager search of human
targets, “used to challenge them to prove the perfection of their
shooting by lifting up the skirts of his coat in defiance several times
in the course of his survey; driving in his stakes and measuring his
distances with great deliberation, and concluding by an extra shake of
his coat-tails and an ironical bow before he stepped under shelter!”
On the night of April 6, Wellington determined to assault. No less than
seven attacks were to be delivered. Two of them--on the bridge-head
across the Guadiana and on the Pardaleras--were mere feints. But on the
extreme right Picton with the third division was to cross the Rivillas
and escalade the castle, whose walls rose, time-stained and grim, from
eighteen to twenty-four feet high. Leith with the fifth division was to
attack the opposite or western extremity of the town, the bastion of San
Vincente, where the glacis was mined, the ditch deep, and the scarp
thirty feet high. Against the actual breaches Colville and Andrew
Barnard were to lead the light division and the fourth division, the
former attacking the bastion of Santa Maria and the latter the Trinidad.
The hour was fixed for ten o’clock, and the story of that night attack,
as told in Napier’s immortal prose, is one of the great battle-pictures
of literature; and any one who tries to tell the tale will find himself
slipping insensibly into Napier’s cadences.
The night was black; a strange silence lay on rampart and trench, broken
from time to time by the deep voices of the sentinels that proclaimed
all was well in Badajos. “Sentinelle garde à vous,” the cry of the
sentinels, was translated by the British private as “All’s well in
Badahoo!” A lighted carcass thrown from the castle discovered Picton’s
men standing in ordered array, and compelled them to attack at once.
MacCarthy, who acted as guide across the tangle of wet trenches and the
narrow bridge that spanned the Rivillas, has left an amusing account of
the scene. At one time Picton declared MacCarthy was leading them wrong,
and, drawing his sword, swore he would cut him down. The column reached
the trench, however, at the foot of the castle walls, and was instantly
overwhelmed with the fire of the besieged. MacCarthy says we can only
picture the scene by “supposing that all the stars, planets, and meteors
of the firmament, with innumerable moons emitting smaller ones in their
course, were descending on the heads of the besiegers.” MacCarthy
himself, a typical and gallant Irishman, addressed his general with the
exultant remark, “‘Tis a glorious night, sir--a glorious night!” and,
rushing forward to the head of the stormers, shouted, “Up with the
ladders!” The five ladders were raised, the troops swarmed up, an
officer leading, but the first files were at once crushed by cannon
fire, and the ladders slipped into the angle of the abutments. “Dreadful
their fall,” records MacCarthy of the slaughtered stormers, “and
appalling their appearance at daylight.” One ladder remained, and, a
private soldier leading, the eager red-coated crowd swarmed up it. The
brave fellow leading was shot as soon as his head appeared above the
parapet; but the next man to him--again a private--leaped over the
parapet, and was followed quickly by others, and this thin stream of
desperate men climbed singly, and in the teeth of the flashing musketry,
up that solitary ladder, and carried the castle.
In the meanwhile the fourth and light divisions had flung themselves
with cool and silent speed on the breaches. The storming party of each
division leaped into the ditch. It was mined, the fuse was kindled, and
the ditch, crowded with eager soldiery, became in a moment a sort of
flaming crater, and the storming parties, five hundred strong, were in
one fierce explosion dashed to pieces. In the light of that dreadful
flame the whole scene became visible--the black ramparts, crowded with
dark figures and glittering arms, on the one side; on the other, the red
columns of the British, broad and deep, moving steadily forward like a
stream of human lava. The light division stood at the brink of the
smoking ditch for an instant, amazed at the sight. “Then,” says Napier,
“with a shout that matched even the sound of the explosion,” they leaped
into it and swarmed up to the breach. The fourth division came running
up and descended with equal fury but the ditch opposite the Trinidad was
filled with water; the head of the division leaped into it, and, as
Napier puts it, “about one hundred of the fusiliers, the men of Albuera,
perished there.” The breaches were impassable. Across the top of the
great slope of broken wall glittered a fringe of sword-blades,
sharp-pointed, keen-edged on both sides, fixed in ponderous beams
chained together and set deep in the ruins. For ten feet in front the
ascent was covered with loose planks, studded with sharp iron points.
Behind the glittering edge of sword-blades stood the solid ranks of the
French, each man supplied with three muskets, and their fire scourged
the British ranks like a tempest.
Hundreds had fallen, hundreds were still falling; but the British clung
doggedly to the lower slopes, and every few minutes an officer would
leap forward with a shout, a swarm of men would instantly follow him,
and, like leaves blown by a whirlwind, they swept up the ascent. But
under the incessant fire of the French, the assailants melted away. One
private reached the sword-blades, and actually thrust his head beneath
them till his brains were beaten out, so desperate was his resolve to
get into Badajos. The breach, as Napier describes it, “yawning and
glittering with steel, resembled the mouth of a huge dragon belching
forth smoke and flame.” But for two hours, and until two thousand men
had fallen, the stubborn British persisted in their attacks. Currie, of
the 52d, a cool and most daring soldier, found a narrow ramp beyond the
Santa Maria breach only half-ruined; he forced his way back through the
tumult and carnage to where Wellington stood watching the scene,
obtained an unbroken battalion from the reserve, and led it toward the
broken ramp. But his men were caught in the whirling madness of the
ditch and swallowed up in the tumult. Nicholas, of the engineers, and
Shaw of the 43d, with some fifty soldiers, actually climbed into the
Santa Maria bastion, and from thence tried to force their way into the
breach. Every man was shot down except Shaw, who stood alone on the
bastion. “With inexpressible coolness he looked at his watch, said it
was too late to carry the breaches,” and then leaped down! The British
could not penetrate the breach; but they would not retreat. They could
only die where they stood. The buglers of the reserve were sent to the
crest of the glacis to sound the retreat; the troops in the ditch would
not believe the signal to be genuine, and struck their own buglers who
attempted to repeat it. “Gathering in dark groups, and leaning on their
muskets,” says Napier, “they looked up in sullen desperation at
Trinidad, while the enemy, stepping out on the ramparts, and aiming
their shots by the light of fire-balls, which they threw over, asked as
their victims fell, ‘Why they did not come into Badajos.’”
All this while, curiously enough, Picton was actually in Badajos, and
held the castle securely, but made no attempt to clear the breach. On
the extreme west of the town, however, at the bastion of San Vincente,
the fifth division made an attack as desperate as that which was failing
at the breaches. When the stormers actually reached the bastion, the
Portuguese battalions, who formed part of the attack, dismayed by the
tremendous fire which broke out on them, flung down their ladders and
fled. The British, however, snatched the ladders up, forced the
barrier, jumped into the ditch, and tried to climb the walls. These were
thirty feet high, and the ladders were too short. A mine was sprung in
the ditch under the soldiers’ feet; beams of wood, stones, broken
wagons, and live shells were poured upon their heads from above. Showers
of grape from the flank swept the ditch.
The stubborn soldiers, however, discovered a low spot in the rampart,
placed three ladders against it, and climbed with reckless valor. The
first man was pushed up by his comrades; he, in turn, dragged others up,
and the unconquerable British at length broke through and swept the
bastion. The tumult still stormed and raged at the eastern breaches,
where the men of the light and fourth division were dying sullenly, and
the men of the fifth division marched at speed across the town to take
the great eastern breach in the rear. The streets were empty, but the
silent houses were bright with lamps. The men of the fifth pressed on;
they captured mules carrying ammunition to the breaches, and the French,
startled by the tramp of the fast-approaching column, and finding
themselves taken in the rear, fled. The light and fourth divisions broke
through the gap hitherto barred by flame and steel, and Badajos was won!
In that dreadful night assault the English lost three thousand five
hundred men. “Let it be considered,” says Napier, “that this frightful
carnage took place in the space of less than a hundred yards
square--that the slain died not all suddenly, nor by one manner of
death--that some perished by steel, some by shot, some by water; that
some were crushed and mangled by heavy weights, some trampled upon,
some dashed to atoms by the fiery explosions--that for hours this
destruction was endured without shrinking, and the town was won at last.
Let these things be considered, and it must be admitted a British army
bears with it an awful power. And false would it be to say the French
were feeble men. The garrison stood and fought manfully and with good
discipline, behaving worthily. Shame there was none on any side. Yet who
shall do justice to the bravery of the British soldiers or the noble
emulation of the officers?... No age, no nation, ever sent forth braver
troops to battle than those who stormed Badajos.”
In addition to Badajos, the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo and of San Sebastian
deserve mention. The annals of strife nowhere record assaults more
daring than those which raged in turn around these three great
fortresses. Of them all that of Badajos was the most picturesque and
bloody; that of San Sebastian the most sullen and exasperating; that of
Ciudad Rodrigo the swiftest and most brilliant. A great siege tests the
fighting quality of an army as nothing else can test it. In the night
watches in the trenches, in the dogged toil of the batteries, and the
crowded perils of the breach, all the frippery and much of the real
discipline of an army dissolves. The soldiers fall back upon what may be
called the primitive fighting qualities--the hardihood of the individual
soldier, the daring with which the officers will lead, the dogged
loyalty with which the men will follow. As an illustration of the
warlike qualities in a race by which empire has been achieved, nothing
better can be desired than the story of how the breaches were won at
Ciudad Rodrigo.
At the end of 1811 the English and the French were watching each other
jealously across the Spanish border. The armies of Marmont and of Soult,
sixty-seven thousand strong, lay within touch of each other, barring
Wellington’s entrance into Spain. Wellington, with thirty-five thousand
men, of whom not more than ten thousand men were British, lay within
sight of the Spanish frontier. It was the winter time. Wellington’s army
was wasted by sickness, his horses were dying of mere starvation, his
men had received no pay for three months, and his muleteers none for
eight months. He had no siege train, his regiments were ragged and
hungry, and the French generals confidently reckoned the British army
as, for the moment at least, une quantite negligeable.
And yet at that precise moment, Wellington, subtle and daring, was
meditating a leap upon the great frontier fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, in
the Spanish province of Salamanca. Its capture would give him a safe
base of operations against Spain; it was the great frontier place
d’armes for the French; the whole siege equipage and stores of the army
of Portugal were contained in it. The problem of how, in the depth of
winter, without materials for a siege, to snatch a place so strong from
under the very eyes of two armies, each stronger than his own, was a
problem which might have taxed the warlike genius of a Cæsar. But
Wellington accomplished it with a combination of subtlety and audacity
simply marvelous.
He kept the secret of his design so perfectly that his own engineers
never suspected it, and his adjutant-general, Murray, went home on leave
without dreaming anything was going to happen. Wellington collected
artillery ostensibly for the purpose of arming Almeida, but the guns
were transshipped at sea and brought secretly to the mouth of the Douro.
No less than eight hundred mule-carts were constructed without anybody
guessing their purpose. Wellington, while these preparations were on
foot, was keenly watching Marmont and Soult, till he saw that they were
lulled into a state of mere yawning security, and then, in Napier’s
expressive phrase, he “instantly jumped with both feet upon Ciudad
Rodrigo.”
This famous fortress, in shape, roughly resembles a triangle with the
angles truncated. The base, looking to the south, is covered by the
Agueda, a river given to sudden inundations; the fortifications were
strong and formidably armed; as outworks it had to the east the great
fortified Convent of San Francisco, to the west a similar building
called Santa Cruz; while almost parallel with the northern face rose two
rocky ridges called the Great and Small Teson, the nearest within six
hundred yards of the city ramparts, and crowned by a formidable redoubt
called Francisco. The siege began on January 8. The soil was rocky and
covered with snow, the nights were black, the weather bitter. The men
lacked intrenching tools. They had to encamp on the side of the Agueda
furthest from the city, and ford that river every time the trenches were
relieved. The 1st, 3d, and light divisions formed the attacking force;
each division held the trenches in turn for twenty-four hours. Let the
reader imagine what degree of hardihood it took to wade in the gray and
bitter winter dawn through a half-frozen river, and, without fire or
warm food, and under a ceaseless rain of shells from the enemy’s guns,
to toil in the frozen trenches, or to keep watch, while the icicles
hung from eyebrow and beard, over the edge of the battery for
twenty-four hours in succession.
Nothing in this great siege is more wonderful than the fierce speed with
which Wellington urged his operations. Massena, who had besieged and
captured the city the year before in the height of summer, spent a month
in bombarding it before he ventured to assault. Wellington broke ground
on January 8, under a tempest of mingled hail and rain; he stormed it on
the night of the 19th.
He began operations by leaping on the strong work that crowned the Great
Teson the very night the siege began. Two companies from each regiment
of the light division were detailed by the officer of the day, Colonel
Colborne, for the assault. Colborne (afterward Lord Seaton), a cool and
gallant soldier, called his officers together in a group and explained
with great minuteness how they were to attack. He then lanched his men
against the redoubt with a vehemence so swift that, to those who watched
the scene under the light of a wintry moon, the column of redcoats, like
the thrust of a crimson sword-blade, spanned the ditch, shot up the
glacis, and broke through the parapet with a single movement. The
accidental explosion of a French shell burst the gate open, and the
remainder of the attacking party instantly swept through it. There was
fierce musketry fire and a tumult of shouting for a moment or two, but
in twenty minutes from Colborne’s lanching his attack every Frenchman in
the redoubt was killed, wounded, or a prisoner.
The fashion in which the gate was blown open was very curious. A French
sergeant was in the act of throwing a live shell upon the storming party
in the ditch, when he was struck by an English bullet. The lighted shell
fell from his hands within the parapet, was kicked away by the nearest
French in mere self-preservation; it rolled toward the gate, exploded,
burst it open, and instantly the British broke in.
For ten days a desperate artillery duel raged between the besiegers and
the besieged. The parallels were resolutely pushed on in spite of rocky
soil, broken tools, bitter weather, and the incessant pelting of the
French guns. The temper of the British troops is illustrated by an
incident which George Napier--the youngest of the three
Napiers--relates. The three brothers were gallant and remarkable
soldiers. Charles Napier in India and elsewhere made history; William,
in his wonderful tale of the Peninsular War, wrote history; and George,
if he had not the literary genius of the one nor the strategic skill of
the other, was a most gallant soldier. “I was a field-officer of the
trenches,” he says, “when a 13-inch shell from the town fell in the
midst of us. I called to the men to lie down flat, and they instantly
obeyed orders, except one of them, an Irishman and an old marine, but a
most worthless drunken dog, who trotted up to the shell, the fuse of
which was still burning, and striking it with his spade, knocked the
fuse out; then taking the immense shell in his hands, brought it to me,
saying, ‘There she is for you, now, yer ’anner. I’ve knocked the life
out of the crater.’”
The besieged brought fifty heavy guns to reply to the thirty light
pieces by which they were assailed, and day and night the bellow of
eighty pieces boomed sullenly over the doomed city and echoed faintly
back from the nearer hills, while the walls crashed to the stroke of the
bullet. The English fire made up by fierceness and accuracy for what it
lacked in weight; but the sap made no progress, the guns showed signs of
being worn out, and, although two apparent breaches had been made, the
counterscarp was not destroyed. Yet Wellington determined to attack,
and, in his characteristic fashion, to attack by night. The siege had
lasted ten days, and Marmont, with an army stronger than his own, was
lying within four marches. That he had not appeared already on the scene
was wonderful.
In a general order issued on the evening of the 19th Wellington wrote,
“Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed this evening.” The great breach was a
sloping gap in the wall at its northern angle, about a hundred feet
wide. The French had crowned it with two guns loaded with grape, the
slope was strewn with bombs, hand-grenades and bags of powder; a great
mine pierced it beneath; a deep ditch had been cut between the breach
and the adjoining ramparts, and these were crowded with riflemen. The
third division, under General Mackinnon, was to attack the breach, its
forlorn hope being led by Ensign Mackie, its storming party by General
Mackinnon himself. The lesser breach was a tiny gap, scarcely twenty
feet wide, to the left of the great breach; this was to be attacked by
the light division, under Craufurd, its forlorn hope of twenty-five men
being led by Gurwood, and its storming party by George Napier. General
Pack, with a Portuguese brigade, was to make a sham attack on the
eastern face, while a fourth attack was to be made on the southern front
by a company of the 83d and some Portuguese troops. In the storming
party of the 83d were the Earl of March, afterward Duke of Richmond;
Lord Fitzroy Somerset, afterward Lord Raglan; and the Prince of
Orange--all volunteers without Wellington’s knowledge!
At seven o’clock a curious silence fell suddenly on the battered city
and the engirdling trenches. Not a light gleamed from the frowning
parapets, not a murmur arose from the blackened trenches. Suddenly a
shout broke out on the right of the English attack; it ran, a wave of
stormy sound, along the line of the trenches. The men who were to attack
the great breach leaped into the open. In a moment the space between the
hostile lines was covered with the stormers, and the gloomy, half-seen
face of the great fortress broke into a tempest of fire.
Nothing could be finer than the vehement courage of the assault, unless
it were the cool and steady fortitude of the defense. Swift as was the
upward rush of the stormers, the race of the 5th, 77th, and 94th
regiments was almost swifter. Scorning to wait for the ladders, they
leaped into the great ditch, outpaced even the forlorn hope, and pushed
vehemently up the great breach, while their red ranks were torn by shell
and shot. The fire, too, ran through the tangle of broken stones over
which they climbed; the hand-grenades and powder-bags by which it was
strewn exploded. The men were walking on fire! Yet the attack could not
be denied. The Frenchmen--shooting, stabbing, yelling--were driven
behind their intrenchments. There the fire of the houses commanding the
breach came to their help, and they made a gallant stand. “None would go
back on either side, and yet the British could not get forward, and men
and officers falling in heaps choked up the passage, which from minute
to minute was raked with grape from two guns flanking the top of the
breach at the distance of a few yards. Thus striving, and trampling
alike upon the dead and the wounded, these brave men maintained the
combat.”
It was the attack on the smaller breach which really carried Ciudad
Rodrigo; and George Napier, who led it, has left a graphic narrative of
the exciting experiences of that dreadful night. The light division was
to attack, and Craufurd, with whom Napier was a favorite, gave him
command of the storming party. He was to ask for one hundred volunteers
from each of the three British regiments--the 43d, 52d, and the rifle
corps--in the division. Napier halted these regiments just as they had
forded the bitterly cold river on their way to the trenches. “Soldiers,”
he said, “I want one hundred men from each regiment to form the storming
party which is to lead the light division to-night. Those who will go
with me come forward!”
Instantly there was a rush forward of the whole division, and Napier had
to take his three hundred men out of a tumult of nearly one thousand
five hundred candidates. He formed them into three companies, under
Captains Ferguson, Jones, and Mitchell. Gurwood, of the 52d, led the
forlorn hope, consisting of twenty-five men and two sergeants.
Wellington himself came to the trench and showed Napier and Colborne,
through the gloom of the early night, the exact position of the breach.
A staff-officer, looking on, said, “Your men are not loaded. Why don’t
you make them load?” Napier replied, “If we don’t do the business with
the bayonet we shall not do it at all. I shall not load.”--“Let him
alone,” said Wellington; “let him go his own way.” Picton had adopted
the same grim policy with the third division. As each regiment passed
him, filing into the trenches, his injunction was, “No powder! We’ll do
the thing with the _could_ iron.”
A party of Portuguese carrying bags filled with grass were to run with
the storming party and throw the bags into the ditch, as the leap was
too deep for the men. But the Portuguese hesitated, the tumult of the
attack on the great breach suddenly broke on the night, and the forlorn
hope went running up, leaped into the ditch, a depth of eleven feet, and
clambered up the steep slope beyond, while Napier with his stormers came
with a run behind them. In the dark for a moment the breach was lost,
but found again, and up the steep quarry of broken stone the attack
swept.
About two-thirds of the way up, Napier’s arm was smashed by a
grape-shot, and he fell. His men, checked for a moment, lifted their
muskets to the gap above them, whence the French were firing vehemently,
and forgetting their pieces were unloaded, snapped them. “Push on with
the bayonet, men!” shouted Napier, as he lay bleeding. The officers
leaped to the front, the men with a stern shout followed; they were
crushed to a front of not more than three or four. They had to climb
without firing a shot in reply up to the muzzles of the French muskets.
But nothing could stop the men of the light division. A 24-pounder was
placed across the narrow gap in the ramparts; the stormers leaped over
it, and the 43d and 52d, coming up in sections abreast, followed. The
43d wheeled to the right toward the great breach, the 52d to the left,
sweeping the ramparts as they went.
Meanwhile the other two attacks had broken into the town; but at the
great breach the dreadful fight still raged, until the 43d, coming
swiftly along the ramparts, and brushing all opposition aside, took the
defense in the rear. The British there had, as a matter of fact, at that
exact moment pierced the French defense. The two guns that scourged the
breach had wrought deadly havoc among the stormers, and a sergeant and
two privates of the 88th--Irishmen all, and whose names deserve to be
preserved--Brazel, Kelly, and Swan--laid down their firelocks that they
might climb more lightly, and, armed only with their bayonets, forced
themselves through the embrasure among the French gunners. They were
furiously attacked, and Swan’s arm was hewed off by a saber stroke; but
they stopped the service of the gun, slew five or six of the French
gunners, and held the post until the men of the 5th, climbing behind
them, broke into the battery.
So Ciudad Rodrigo was won, and its governor surrendered his sword to the
youthful lieutenant leading the forlorn hope of the light division, who,
with smoke-blackened face, torn uniform, and staggering from a dreadful
wound, still kept at the head of his men.
In the eleven days of the siege Wellington lost one thousand three
hundred men and officers, out of whom six hundred and fifty men and
sixty officers were struck down on the slopes of the breaches. Two
notable soldiers died in the attack--Craufurd, the famous leader of the
light division, as he brought his men up to the lesser breach; and
Mackinnon, who commanded a brigade of the third division, at the great
breach. Mackinnon was a gallant Highlander, a soldier of great promise,
beloved by his men. His “children,” as he called them, followed him up
the great breach till the bursting of a French mine destroyed all the
leading files, including their general. Craufurd was buried in the
lesser breach itself, and Mackinnon in the great breach--fitting graves
for soldiers so gallant.
Alison says that with the rush of the English stormers up the breaches
of Ciudad Rodrigo “began the fall of the French empire.” That siege, so
fierce and brilliant, was, as a matter of fact, the first of that
swift-following succession of strokes which drove the French in ruin out
of Spain, and it coincided in point of time with the turn of the tide
against Napoleon in Russia.
But, as already noted, the climax of the war occurred at Vittoria.
Wellington, overtaking the French at that place, inflicted on them a
defeat which drove in utter rout one hundred and twenty thousand veteran
troops from Spain. There is no more brilliant chapter in military
history; and, at its close, to quote Napier’s clarion-like sentences,
“the English general, emerging from the chaos of the Peninsular
struggle, stood on the summit of the Pyrenees a recognized conqueror.
From those lofty pinnacles the clangor of his trumpets pealed clear and
loud, and the splendor of his genius appeared as a flaming beacon to
warring nations.”
The victory not only freed Spain from its invaders; it restored the
spirit of the allies. The close of the armistice was followed by a union
of Austria with the forces of Prussia and the Czar; and in October a
final overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig forced the French army to fall
back in rout across the Rhine. The war now hurried to its close. Though
held at bay for a while by the sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, as
well as by an obstinate defense of the Pyrenees, Wellington succeeded in
the very month of the triumph at Leipzig in winning a victory on the
Bidassoa which enabled him to enter France. He was soon followed by the
allies. On the last day of 1813 their forces crossed the Rhine; and a
third of France passed, without opposition, into their hands. For two
months more Napoleon maintained a wonderful struggle with a handful of
raw conscripts against their overwhelming numbers; while in the south,
Soult, forced from his intrenched camp near Bayonne and defeated at
Orthes, fell back before Wellington on Toulouse. Here their two armies
met in April in a stubborn and indecisive engagement. But though neither
leader knew it, the war was even then at an end. The struggle of
Napoleon himself had ended at the close of March with the surrender of
Paris; and the submission of the capital was at once followed by the
abdication of the emperor and the return of Ferdinand.
After the convulsions it had endured, Spain required a period of firm
but conciliatory government; but the ill-fate of the country gave the
throne at this crisis to the worst of her Bourbon kings. Ferdinand VII.
had never possessed the good qualities which popular credulity had
assigned to him, and he had learned nothing in his four years’ captivity
except an aptitude for lying and intrigue. He had no conception of the
duties of a ruler; his public conduct was regulated by pride and
superstition, and his private life was stained by the grossest sensual
indulgence.
But Spain was not allowed to work out its own salvation. Europe was
dominated at this time by the Holy Alliance, which disguised a
resolution to repress popular liberties and to maintain despotism under
a pretended zeal for piety, justice and brotherly love. At the Congress
of Verona (October, 1822), France, Austria, Russia and Prussia agreed
upon armed intervention in Spain, in spite of the protest of Canning on
the part of England. Spain was to be called upon to alter her
constitution and to grant greater liberty to the king, and if an
unsatisfactory answer were received France was authorized to take active
measures. The demand was unhesitatingly refused, and a French army,
100,000 strong, at once entered Spain under the Duke of Angouleme
(April, 1823). No effective resistance was made, and Madrid was entered
by the invaders (May 23). The Cortes, however, had carried off the king
to Seville, whence they again retreated to Cadiz. The bombardment of
that city terminated the revolution and Ferdinand was released (October
1). His first act was to revoke everything that had been done since
1819. The Inquisition was not restored, but the secular tribunals took a
terrible revenge upon the leaders of the rebellion. The protest of the
Duke of Angouleme against these cruelties was unheeded. Even the fear of
revolt, the last check upon despotism, was removed by the presence of
the French army, which remained in Spain till 1827. But Spain had to pay
for the restoration of the royal absolutism, as Canning backed up his
protest against the intervention of France by acknowledging the
independence of the Spanish colonies.
Ferdinand VII. was enabled to finish his worthless and disastrous reign
in comparative peace. In 1829 he married a fourth wife, Maria Christina
of Naples, and at the same time he issued a “Pragmatic Sanction”
abolishing the Salic law in Spain. No one expected any practical results
from this edict, but a formal protest was made against it by the king’s
brothers, Carlos and Francisco, and also by the French and Neapolitan
Bourbons. In the next year, however, the queen gave birth to a daughter,
Isabella, who was proclaimed as queen on her father’s death in 1833,
while her mother undertook the office of regent.
Don Carlos at once asserted his intention of maintaining the Salic law,
and rallied round him all the supporters of absolutism, especially the
inhabitants of the Basque Provinces. Christina was compelled to rely
upon the Liberals, and to conciliate them by the grant of a
constitution, the estatuto real, which established two chambers chosen
by indirect election. But this constitution, drawn up under the
influence of Louis Philippe of France, failed to satisfy the advanced
Liberals, and the Christinos split into two parties, the Moderados and
Progresistas. In 1836 the latter party extorted from the regent the
revival of the constitution of 1812. All this time the government was
involved in a desperate struggle with the Carlists, who at first gained
considerable successes under Zumalacarregui and Cabrera. But the death
of Zumalacarregui in 1835 and the support of France and England
ultimately gave the regent the upper hand, and in 1839 her general,
Espartoro, forced the Basque Provinces to submit to Isabella. Don Carlos
renounced his claims in favor of his eldest son, another Carlos, and
retired to Trieste, where he died in 1855.
Christina now tried to sever herself from the Progresistas, and to
govern with the help of the moderate party who enjoyed the patronage of
Louis Philippe. But England, jealous of French influence at Madrid,
threw the weight of her influence on to the side of the Radicals, who
found a powerful leader in Espartero. In 1840, Christina had to retire
to France, and Espartero was recognized as regent by the Cortes. But his
elevation was resented by the other officers, while his subservience to
England made him unpopular, and in 1848 he also had to go into exile.
Isabella was now declared of age. Christina returned to Madrid, and the
Moderados under Narvaez obtained complete control over the government.
This was a great victory for France, and Louis Philippe abused his
success by negotiating the infamous “Spanish marriages.” A husband was
found for Isabella in her cousin, Francis of Assis, whose recommendation
in French eyes was the improbability of his begetting children. On the
same day the queen’s sister, Maria Louisa, was married to Louis
Philippe’s son, the Duke of Montpensier. By this means it was hoped to
secure the reversion of the Spanish throne for the House of Orleans.
The scheme recoiled on the heads of those who framed it. The alienation
of England gave a fatal impulse to the fall of Louis Philippe, while the
subsequent birth of children to Isabella deprived the Montpensier
marriage of all importance.
Spanish history during the reign of Isabella II. presents a dismal
picture of faction and intrigue. The queen herself sought compensation
for her unhappy marriage in sensual indulgence, and tried to cover the
dissoluteness of her private life by a superstitious devotion to
religion and by throwing her influence to the side of the clerical and
reactionary party. Every now and then the Progresistas and Moderados
forced themselves into office, but their mutual jealousy prevented them
from acquiring any permanent hold upon the government. In 1866, Isabella
was induced to take vigorous measures against the Liberal opposition.
Narvaez was appointed chief minister; and the most prominent Liberals,
Serrano, Prim and O’Donnell, had to seek safety in exile. The Cortes
were dissolved, and many of the deputies were transported to the Canary
Islands. The ascendency of the court party was maintained by a rigorous
persecution, which was continued after Narvaez’s death (April, 1868) by
Gonzales Bravo.
Common dangers succeeded at last in combining the various sections of
the Liberals for mutual defense, and the people, disgusted by the
scandals of the court and the contemptible camarilla which surrounded
the queen, rallied to their side. In September, 1868, Serrano and Prim
returned to Spain, where they raised the standard of revolt and offered
the people the bribe of universal suffrage. The revolution was speedily
accomplished and Isabella fled to France, but the successful rebels were
at once confronted with the difficulty of finding a successor for her.
During the interregnum Serrano undertook the regency and the Cortes drew
up a now constitution by which a hereditary king was to rule in
conjunction with a senate and a popular chamber.
As no one of the Bourbon candidates for the throne was acceptable, it
became necessary to look around for some foreign prince. The offer of
the crown to Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen excited the jealousy of
France, and gave Napoleon III. the opportunity of picking a quarrel,
which proved fatal to himself, with the rising state of Prussia. At last
a king was found (1870) in Amadeus of Aosta, the second son of Victor
Emmanuel, who made an honest effort to discharge the difficult office of
a constitutional king in a country which was hardly fitted for
constitutional government. But he found the task too hard and too
distasteful, and resigned in 1878.
A provisional republic was now formed, of which Castelar was the guiding
spirit. But the Spaniards, trained to regard monarchy with superstitious
reverence, had no sympathy with republican institutions. Don Carlos
seized the opportunity to revive the claim of inalienable male
succession, and raised the standard of revolt in the Basque Provinces,
where his name was still a power. The disorders of the democrats and the
approach of civil war threw the responsibility of government upon the
army. The Cortes were dissolved by a military _coup d’etat_; Castelar
threw up his office in disgust; and the administration was undertaken by
a committee of officers. Anarchy was suppressed with a strong hand, but
it was obvious that order could only be restored by reviving the
monarchy. Foreign princes were no longer thought of, and the crown was
offered to and accepted by Alfonso XII., the young son of the exiled
Isabella (1874).
His first task was to terminate the Carlist war, which still continued
in the north, and this was successfully accomplished in 1876. Time was
required to restore the prosperity of Spain under a peaceful and orderly
government and to consolidate by prescription the authority of the
restored dynasty. Unfortunately a premature death carried off Alfonso
XII. in 1885, before he could complete the work which circumstances laid
upon him. The regency was intrusted to his widow, Christina of Austria,
and the birth of a posthumous son (May 17, 1886), who is now the titular
king of Spain, has excited a feeling of pitying loyalty which may help
to secure the Bourbon dynasty in the last kingdom which is left to it.