TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
* Italics are denoted by underscores as in _italics_, and small caps
are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS.
* Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected.
* Original spelling was kept, but variant spellings were made
consistent when a predominant usage was found.
* To aid referencing places and names in present-day maps and
documents, outdated and current spellings of some proper names
follow:
Aguilar del Campo, now Aguilar de Campóo,
Albuquerque, now Alburquerque,
Alcaniz, now Alcañiz,
Alemtejo, now Alentejo,
Aljafferia, now Aljafería,
Aljubarotta, now Aljubarrota,
Almanza, now Almansa,
Ampurdam, now Ampurdán,
Arens de Mar, now Arenys de Mar,
Arguelles, now Argüelles,
Baylen, now Bailén,
Bergara, now Vergara,
Bidassoa, now Bidasoa,
Biscay, now Vizcaya,
Busaco, now Buçaco,
Cacabellos, now Cacabelos,
Cascaes, now Cascais,
Castro Gonzalo, now Castrogonzalo,
Compostella, now Compostela,
Constantino, now Constantín (Baralla, Lugo),
Cordova or Cordoue, now Córdoba,
Corunna, now La Coruña,
Despeña Perros, now Despeñaperros,
Elvina, now Elviña,
Estremadura, now Extremadura (for Spain),
Estremadura (for Portugal),
Freneda, now Freineda,
Gihon, now Gijón,
Guadalaviar (river), now Turia,
Guarraman, now Guarromán,
Huerba (river), now Huerva,
La Baneza, now La Bañeza,
Liñares, now Linares,
Loxa, now Loja,
Mulhaçen, now Mulhacén,
Nava (river), now Navia,
Noguera (river), now Noguera Ribagorzana,
Oña (river), now Oñar,
Pallaresa (river), now Noguera Pallaresa,
Pampeluna, now Pamplona,
Penilla, now Pinilla,
Peñas de Europa, now Picos de Europa,
Pezo-de-Ragoa, now Peso da Régua,
Porcuña, now Porcuna,
Praganza, now Pregança,
Puycerda, now Puigcerdá,
Requeña, now Requena,
Reynosa, now Reinosa,
San Estevan del Puerto, now Santisteban del Puerto,
Sanguesa, now Sangüesa,
Saragossa, now Zaragoza,
Setuval, now Setúbal,
Siguenza, now Sigüenza,
Tagus, now Tajo,
Tajuna, now Tajuña,
Toreño, now Toreno,
Truxillo, now Trujillo,
Valdestillos, now Vasdestillas,
Valmaceda, now Valmaseda,
Vellimar, now Villímar,
Vierzo, now Bierzo,
Vincente, now Vicente,
Vittoria, now Vitoria,
Zornoza, now Amorebieta-Echano.
* Some maps and illustrations have been moved so that they do not
break up paragraphs and lie near the text they illustrate. Their
page numbers in the Lists of Maps and Portraits have been modified
accordingly.
* Footnotes have been renumbered into a single series. Each footnote
is placed at the end of the paragraph that includes its anchor.
* In p. 53, the anchor placement for footnote 54 is conjectured.
None found in the printed original.
[Illustration:
CARLOS IIII.
_REY DE ESPAÑA._]
A HISTORY OF THE
PENINSULAR WAR
BY
CHARLES OMAN, M.A.
FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE
AND DEPUTY-PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY (CHICHELE)
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
VOL. I
1807-1809
FROM THE TREATY OF FONTAINEBLEAU
TO THE BATTLE OF CORUNNA
WITH MAPS, PLANS AND PORTRAITS
[Illustration]
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1902
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK
PREFACE
It is many years since an attempt has been made in England to deal
with the general history of the Peninsular War. Several interesting
and valuable diaries or memoirs of officers who took part in the
great struggle have been published of late[1], but no writer of the
present generation has dared to grapple with the details of the whole
of the seven years of campaigning that lie between the _Dos Mayo_
and Toulouse. Napier’s splendid work has held the field for sixty
years. Meanwhile an enormous bulk of valuable material has been
accumulating in English, French, and Spanish, which has practically
remained unutilized. Papers, public and private, are accessible whose
existence was not suspected in the ’thirties; an infinite number of
autobiographies and reminiscences which have seen the light after fifty
or sixty years of repose in some forgotten drawer, have served to fill
up many gaps in our knowledge. At least one formal history of the first
importance, that of General Arteche y Moro, has been published. I fancy
that its eleven volumes are practically unknown in England, yet it is
almost as valuable as Toreño’s _Guerra de la Independencia_ in enabling
us to understand the purely Spanish side of the war.
[1] I need only mention the diaries of Sir Harry Smith, Blakeney,
Shaw, and Tomkinson on our side, and Foy’s private diary and the
Memoirs of Fantin des Odoards, St. Chamans, and Thiébault on the
French.
I trust therefore that it will not be considered presumptuous for one
who has been working for some ten or fifteen years at the original
sources to endeavour to summarize in print the results of his
investigations; for I believe that even the reader who has already
devoted a good deal of attention to the Peninsular War will find a
considerable amount of new matter in these pages.
My resolve to take in hand a general history of the struggle was
largely influenced by the passing into the hands of All Souls College
of the papers of one of its most distinguished fellows, the diplomatist
Sir Charles Vaughan. Not only had Vaughan unique opportunities for
observing the early years of the Peninsular War, but he turned them
to the best account, and placed all his observations on record.
I suppose that there was seldom a man who had a greater love for
collecting and filing information. His papers contain not only his
own diaries and correspondence, but an infinite number of notes made
for him by Spanish friends on points which he desired to master, and
a vast bulk of pamphlets, proclamations, newspapers, and tables of
statistics, carefully bound together in bundles, which (as far as I
can see) have not been opened between the day of his death and that
on which they passed, by a legacy from his last surviving relative,
into the possession of his old college. Vaughan landed at Corunna in
September, 1808, in company with Charles Stuart, the first English
emissary to the Central Junta. He rode with Stuart to Madrid and
Aranjuez, noting everything that he saw, from Roman inscriptions to
the views of local Alcaldes and priests on the politics of the day.
He contrived to interview many persons of importance--for example,
he heard from Cuesta’s own lips of his treasonable plot to overthrow
the Junta, and he secured a long conversation with Castaños as to
the Capitulation of Baylen, from which I have extracted some wholly
new facts as to that event. He then went to Aragon, where he stayed
three weeks in the company of the Captain-General Joseph Palafox.
Not only did he cross-question Palafox as to all the details of his
famous defence of Saragossa, but he induced San Genis (the colonel
who conducted the engineering side of the operations) to write him a
memorandum, twelve pages long, as to the character and system of his
work. Vaughan accompanied Palafox to the front in November, but left
the Army of Aragon a day before the battle of Tudela. Hearing of the
disaster from the fugitives of Castaños’s army, he resolved to take
the news to Madrid. Riding hard for the capital, he crossed the front
of Ney’s cavalry at Agreda, but escaped them and came safely through.
On arriving at Madrid he was given dispatches for Sir John Moore,
and carried them to Salamanca. It was the news which he brought that
induced the British general to order his abortive retreat on Portugal.
Moore entrusted to him not only his dispatch to Sir David Baird,
bidding him retire into Galicia, but letters for Lord Castlereagh,
which needed instant conveyance to London. Accordingly Vaughan rode
with headlong speed to Baird at Astorga, and from Astorga to Corunna,
which he reached eleven days after his start from Tudela. From thence
he took ship to England and brought the news of the Spanish disasters
to the British Ministry.
Vaughan remained some time in England before returning to Spain, but
he did not waste his time. Not only did he write a short account
of the siege of Saragossa, which had a great vogue at the moment,
but he collected new information from an unexpected source. General
Lefebvre-Desnouettes, the besieger of Saragossa, arrived as a prisoner
in England. Vaughan promptly went to Cheltenham, where the Frenchman
was living on parole, and had a long conversation with him as to the
details of the siege, which he carefully compared with the narrative
of Palafox. Probably no other person ever had such opportunities for
collecting first-hand information as to that famous leaguer. It will
please those who love the romantic side of history, to know that
Vaughan was introduced by Palafox to Agostina, the famous ‘Maid of
Saragossa,’ and heard the tale of her exploit from the Captain-General
less than three months after it had occurred. The doubts of Napier and
others as to her existence are completely dissipated by the diary of
this much-travelled Fellow of All Souls College.
Vaughan returned to Spain ere 1809 was out, and served under various
English ambassadors at Seville and Cadiz for the greater part of the
war. His papers and collections for the later years of the struggle are
almost as full and interesting as those for 1808 which I have utilized
in this volume.
I have worked at the Record Office on the British official papers of
the first years of the war, especially noting all the passages which
are omitted in the printed dispatches of Moore and other British
generals. The suppressed paragraphs (always placed within brackets
marked with a pencil) contain a good deal of useful matter, mainly
criticisms on individuals which it would not have been wise to publish
at the time. There are a considerable number of intercepted French
dispatches in the collection, and a certain amount of correspondence
with the Spaniards which contains facts and figures generally unknown.
Among the most interesting are the letters of General Leith, who was
attached to the head quarters of Blake; in them I found by far the best
account of the operations of the Army of Galicia in Oct.-Nov., 1808,
which I have come upon.
As to printed sources of information, I have read all the Parliamentary
papers of 1808-9, and the whole file of the _Madrid Gazette_, as well
as many scores of memoirs and diaries, French, English, and Spanish.
I think that no important English or French book has escaped me;
but I must confess that some of the Spanish works quoted by General
Arteche proved unprocurable, both in London and Paris. The British
Museum Library is by no means strong in this department; it is even
short of obvious authorities, such as the monographs of St. Cyr and
of Cabanes on the War in Catalonia. The memoirs of the Peninsular
veterans on both sides often require very cautious handling; some
cannot be trusted for anything that did not happen under the author’s
eye. Others were written so long after the events which they record,
that they are not even to be relied upon for facts which must have been
under his actual observation. For example, General Marbot claims that
he brought to Bayonne the dispatch from Murat informing Napoleon of
the insurrection of Madrid on May 2, and gives details as to the way
in which the Emperor received the news. But it is absolutely certain,
both from the text of Murat’s letter and from Napoleon’s answer to it,
that the document was carried and delivered by a Captain Hannecourt.
The aged Marbot’s memory had played him false. There are worse cases,
where an eye-witness, writing within a short time of the events which
he describes, gives a version which he must have known to be incorrect,
for the glorification of himself or some friend. Thiébault and Le
Noble are bad offenders in this respect: Thiébault’s account of some
of the incidents in Portugal and of the combat of Aldea del Ponte, Le
Noble’s narrative of Corunna, seem to be deliberately falsified. I have
found one English authority who falls under the same suspicion. But
on both sides the majority of the mistakes come either from writers
who describe that which did not pass under their own eyes, or from
aged narrators who wrote their story twenty, thirty, or forty years
after the war was over. Their diaries written at the time are often
invaluable correctives to their memoirs or monographs composed after
an interval; e.g. Foy’s rough diary lately published by Girod de l’Ain
contains some testimonials to Wellington and the British army very much
more handsomely expressed than anything which the General wrote in his
formal history of the early campaigns of 1808.
I hope to insert in my second volume a bibliography of all the works
useful for the first two years of the war. The inordinate size to which
my first volume has swelled has made it impossible to include in it a
list of authorities, which covers a good many pages.
It will be noticed that my Appendices include several extensive tables,
giving the organization of the French and Spanish armies in 1808.
For part of them I am indebted to General Arteche’s work; but the
larger half has been constructed at great cost of time and labour from
scattered contemporary papers--from returns to be found in the most
varied places (some of the most important Spanish ones survive only in
the Record Office or in Vaughan’s papers, others only in the _Madrid
Gazette_). No one, so far as I know, had hitherto endeavoured to
construct the complete table of the Spanish army in October, or of that
of the exact composition of Napoleon’s ‘grand army’ in the same month.
I hope my Appendices therefore may be found of some use.
More than one friend has asked me during the last few months whether
it is worth while to rewrite the history of the Peninsular War when
Napier’s great work is everywhere accessible. I can only reply that I
no more dream of superseding the immortal six volumes of that grand
old soldier, than Dr. S. R. Gardiner dreamed of superseding Clarendon’s
_History of the Great Rebellion_ when he started to write the later
volumes of his account of the reign of Charles I. The books of Napier
and Clarendon must remain as all-important contemporary narratives,
written by men who saw clearly one aspect of the events which they
describe; in each the personal element counts for much, and the
political and individual sympathies and enmities of the historian have
coloured his whole work. No one would think of going to Clarendon for
an unprejudiced account of the character and career of Oliver Cromwell.
But I do not think that it is generally realized that it is just as
unsafe to go to Napier for an account of the aims and undertakings of
the Spanish Juntas, or the Tory governments of 1808-14. As a narrator
of the incidents of war he is unrivalled: no one who has ever read them
can forget his soul-stirring descriptions of the charge of the Fusilier
brigade at Albuera, of the assault on the Great Breach at Badajoz, or
the storming of Soult’s positions on the Rhune. These and a hundred
other eloquent passages will survive for ever as masterpieces of
vigorous English prose.
But when he wanders off into politics, English or Spanish, Napier is
a less trustworthy guide. All his views are coloured by the fact that
he was a bitter enemy of the Tories of his own day. The kinsman not
only of Charles James Fox, but of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, he could
never look with unprejudiced eyes on their political opponents. Canning
and Spencer Perceval were in his ideas men capable of any folly, any
gratuitous perversity. Castlereagh’s splendid services to England
are ignored: it would be impossible to discover from the pages of
the _Peninsular War_ that this was the man who picked out Wellington
for the command in Spain, and kept him there in spite of all manner
of opposition. Nor is this all: Napier was also one of those strange
Englishmen who, notwithstanding all the evidence that lay before them,
believed that Napoleon Bonaparte was a beneficent character, thwarted
in his designs for the regeneration of Europe by the obstinate and
narrow-minded opposition of the British Government. In his preface, he
goes so far as to say that the Tories fought the Emperor not because
he was the dangerous enemy of the British Empire, but because he
was the champion of Democracy, and they the champions of caste and
privilege. When the tidings of Napoleon’s death at St. Helena reached
him (as readers of his _Life_ will remember), he cast himself down on
his sofa and wept for three hours! Hence it was that, in dealing with
the Tory ministries, he is ever a captious and unkind critic, while
for the Emperor he displays a respect that seems very strange in an
enthusiastic friend of political liberty. Every one who has read the
first chapters of his great work must see that Bonaparte gets off with
slight reproof for his monstrous act of treachery at Bayonne, and for
the even more disgusting months of hypocritical friendship that had
preceded it. While pouring scorn on Charles IV and Ferdinand VII, the
silly father and the rebellious son, whose quarrels were the Emperor’s
opportunity, Napier forgets to rise to the proper point of indignation
in dealing with the false friend who betrayed them. He almost writes
as if there were some excuse for the crimes of robbery and kidnapping,
if the victim were an imbecile or a bigot, or an undutiful son. The
prejudice in favour of the Emperor goes so far that he even endeavours
to justify obvious political and military mistakes in his conduct of
the Peninsular War, by throwing all the blame on the way in which his
marshals executed his orders, and neglecting to point out that the
orders themselves were impracticable.
On the other hand, Napier was just as over-hard to the Spaniards as
he was over-lenient to Bonaparte. He was one of those old Peninsular
officers who could never dismiss the memory of some of the things that
he had seen or heard. The cruelties of the Guerillas, the disgraceful
panic on the eve of Talavera, the idiotic pride and obstinacy of
Cuesta, the cowardice of Imaz and La Peña, prejudiced him against
all their countrymen. The turgid eloquence of Spanish proclamations,
followed by the prosaic incapacity of Spanish performance, sickened
him. He always accepts the French rather than the Spanish version
of a story, forgetting that Bonaparte and his official writers were
authorities quite as unworthy of implicit credence as their opponents.
In dealing with individual Spaniards--we may take for example Joseph
Palafox, or the unfortunate Daoiz and Velarde--he is unjust to the
extreme of cruelty. His astounding libel on La Romana’s army, I have
had occasion to notice in some detail on page 416 of this work.
He invariably exaggerates Spanish defeats, and minimizes Spanish
successes. He is reckless in the statements which he gives as to their
numbers in battle, or their losses in defeat. Evidently he did not
take the trouble to consult the elaborate collection of morning-states
of armies and other official documents which the Spanish War Office
published several years before he wrote his first volume. All his
figures are borrowed from the haphazard guesses of the French marshals.
This may seem strong language to use concerning so great an author,
but minute investigation seems to prove that nearly every statement of
Napier’s concerning a battle in which the Spaniards were engaged is
drawn from some French source. The Spaniards’ version is ignored. In
his indignation at the arrogance and obstinacy with which they often
hampered his hero Wellington, he refuses to look at the extenuating
circumstances which often explain, or even excuse, their conduct.
After reading his narrative, one should turn to Arguelles or Toreño or
Arteche, peruse their defence of their countrymen, and then make one’s
ultimate decision as to facts. Every student of the Peninsular War, in
short, must read Napier: but he must not think that, when the reading
is finished, he has mastered the whole meaning and importance of the
great struggle.
The topographical details of most of my maps are drawn from the
splendid Atlas published by the Spanish War Office during the last
twenty years. But the details of the placing of the troops are my own.
I have been particularly careful in the maps of Vimiero and Corunna to
indicate the position of every battalion, French or English.
I am in duty bound to acknowledge the very kind assistance of three
helpers in the construction of this volume. The first compiled the
Index, after grappling with the whole of the proofs. The second, Mr.
C. E. Doble, furnished me with a great number of suggestions as to
revision, which I have adopted. The third, Mr. C. T. Atkinson, of
Exeter College, placed at my disposition his wide knowledge of British
regimental history, and put me in the way of obtaining many details as
to the organization of Wellesley’s and Moore’s armies. I am infinitely
obliged to all three.
C. OMAN.
ALL SOULS COLLEGE,
_March 31, 1902_.
CONTENTS
SECTION I
NAPOLEON AND THE SPANISH BOURBONS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Treaty of Fontainebleau 1
II. The Court of Spain 12
III. The Conquest of Portugal 26
IV. The French aggression in Spain: Abdication of Charles IV 33
V. The Treachery at Bayonne 43
VI. The Second of May: Outbreak of the Spanish Insurrection 57