These were the main clauses of Napoleon’s letter, but they are embedded

in a quantity of turgid verbiage, in which we are only uncertain

whether the hypocrisy or the bad taste is the more offensive. ‘How

perilous is it for kings to permit their subjects to seek justice for

themselves by deeds of blood! I pray God that your royal highness may

not experience this for yourself some day! It is not for the interest

of Spain that the Prince of the Peace should be hunted down: he is

allied by marriage to the royal house and has governed the realm for

many years. He has no friends now: but if your royal highness were to

fall into similar disgrace you would have no more friends than he. You

cannot touch him without touching your parents. You have no rights to

the crown save those which your mother has transmitted to you: if in

trying the Prince you smirch her honour, you are destroying your own

rights. You have no power to bring him to judgement: his evil deeds are

hidden behind the throne.... O wretched Humanity! Weakness, and Error,

such is our device! But all can be hushed up: turn the Prince out of

Spain, and I will give him an asylum in France.’

In the next paragraph Napoleon tells Ferdinand that he should never

have written to him in the preceding autumn without his father’s

knowledge--‘in that your royal highness was culpable; but I flatter

myself that I contributed by my remonstrances in securing a happy end

to the affair of the Escurial.’ Finally Ferdinand might assure himself

that he should have from his ally precisely the same treatment that his

father had always experienced--which again is a double-edged saying, if

we take into consideration the history of the relations of Charles IV

and France.

The King and his confidant Escoiquiz read and reread this curious

document without coming to any certain conclusion: probably they

thought (as would any one else who did not know the Emperor thoroughly)

that the meeting at Bayonne would open with a scolding, and end

with some tiresome concessions, but that Ferdinand’s title would be

recognized. Savary’s commentary was reassuring: Spanish witnesses say

that he exclaimed ‘I am ready to have my head taken off if, within a

quarter of an hour of your majesty’s arrival at Bayonne, the Emperor

has not saluted you as King of Spain and the Indies.... The whole

negotiation will not take three days, and your majesty will be back in

Spain in a moment[50].’

[50] Cevallos, p. 36.

On April 19, therefore, the royal party set out amid the groans of

the populace of Vittoria, who tried to hold back the horses, and to

cut the traces of the King’s coach: on the twentieth they reached

Bayonne. Napoleon entertained them at dinner, but would not talk

politics: after the meal they were sent home to the not very spacious

or magnificent lodgings prepared for them. An hour later the shameless

Savary presented himself at the door, with the astounding message that

the Emperor had thought matters over, and had come to the conclusion

that the best thing for Spain would be that the house of Bourbon should

cease to reign, and that a French prince should take their place. A

prompt acquiescence in the bargain should be rewarded by the gift of

the kingdom of Etruria, which had just been taken from Ferdinand’s

widowed sister and her young son.

The possibility of such an outrage had never occurred to the young king

and his counsellors: when something of the kind had been suggested

to them at Vittoria, they had cried out that it was insulting to the

honour of the greatest hero of the age to dream that he could be

plotting treachery[51]. And now, too late, they learnt the stuff of

which heroes were made. Even with Savary’s words ringing in their ears,

they could not believe that they had heard aright. It must be some mere

threat intended to frighten them before negotiations began: probably

it meant that Spain would have to cede some American colonies or some

Catalonian frontier districts. Next morning, therefore, Ferdinand sent

his minister Cevallos to plead his cause: Napoleon refused to bargain

or compromise: he wanted nothing, he said, but a prompt resignation

of his rights by the Prince of the Asturias: there was nothing left

to haggle about. It was gradually borne in upon Ferdinand that the

Emperor meant what he had said. But though timid he was obstinate,

and nothing like an abdication could be got out of him. He merely

continued to send to Napoleon one agent after another--first the

minister Cevallos, then his tutor and confidant Escoiquiz, then Don

Pedro Labrador, a councillor of state, all charged with professions

of his great readiness to do anything, short of resigning the Spanish

throne, which might satisfy his captor. Cevallos and Escoiquiz have

left long narratives of their fruitless embassies. That of the latter

is especially interesting: he was admitted to a long conference with

Bonaparte, in which he plied every argument to induce him to leave

Ferdinand on the throne, after marrying him to a French princess and

exacting from him every possible guarantee of fidelity. The Emperor

was ready to listen to every remonstrance, but would not move from

his projects. He laughed at the idea that Spain would rise in arms,

and give him trouble. ‘Countries full of monks, like yours,’ he said,

‘are easy to subjugate. There may be some riots, but the Spaniards

will quiet down when they see that I offer them the integrity of

the boundaries of the monarchy, a liberal constitution, and the

preservation of their religion and their national customs[52].’

[51] It was the Duke of Infantado who made this exclamation. See

Urquijo’s letter to Cuesta in Llorente’s collection of papers on

the Bayonne business.

[52] Escoiquiz, p. 318. Every student of Napoleon should read the

whole of the wonderful dialogue between the Emperor and the Canon

of Toledo.

When such were Napoleon’s ideas it was useless to argue with him. But

Ferdinand refused to understand this, and kept reiterating all sorts

of impracticable offers of concession and subservience, while refusing

to do the one thing which the Emperor required of him. Napoleon, much

irritated at the refusal of such a poor creature to bow to his will,

has left a sketch of him during these trying days. ‘The Prince of the

Asturias,’ he wrote, ‘is very stupid, very malicious, a very great

hater of France.... He is a thoroughly uninteresting person, so dull

that I cannot get a word out of him. Whatever one says to him he makes

no reply. Whether I scold him, or whether I coax him, his face never

moves. After studying him you can sum him up in a single word--he is a

sulky fellow[53].’

[53] Napoleon to Talleyrand, May 6, 1808.

As Ferdinand would not budge, Bonaparte had now to bring his second

device to the front. With the old king’s protest before him, the

Emperor could say that Charles IV had never abdicated in any real sense

of the word. He had been made to sign a resignation ‘with a pistol

levelled at his head,’ as a leading article in the _Moniteur_ duly

set forth. Such a document was, of course, worth nothing: therefore

Charles was still King of Spain, and might sign that surrender of

his rights which Ferdinand denied. Napoleon promptly sent for the old

king and queen, who arrived under a French escort on April 30, ten

days after their son’s captivity began. At Bayonne they rejoined their

dearly-loved Godoy, whom Murat had extorted from the Junta of Regency,

under cover of a consent sent by Ferdinand to Napoleon from Vittoria

two days before he crossed the frontier.

Charles IV arrived in a state of lachrymose collapse, sank on

Napoleon’s breast and called him his true friend and his only support.

‘I really do not know whether it is his position or the circumstances,

but he looks like a good honest old man,’ commented the Emperor. ‘The

Queen has her past written on her face--that is enough to define her.

As to the Prince of the Peace, he looked like a prize bull, with a dash

of Count Daru about him.’ Godoy and the Queen had only one thought, to

avenge themselves on Ferdinand: after what had taken place they could

never go back to rule in Spain, so they cared little what happened to

the country. As to the King, his wife and his favourite pulled the

strings, and he gesticulated in the fashion that they desired. The

Emperor treated them with an ostentatious politeness which he had

always refused to the new king: at the first banquet that he gave them

occurred the absurd scene (already mentioned by us), in which Charles

refused to sit down to table till Godoy had been found and put near him.

Two days after their arrival Napoleon compelled Ferdinand to appear

before his parents: he himself was also present. The interview[54]

commenced by King Charles ordering his son to sign a complete and

absolute renunciation of the Spanish throne. Bonaparte then threw in

a few threatening words: but Ferdinand, still unmoved, made a steady

refusal. At this the old king rose from his chair--he was half-crippled

with rheumatism--and tried to strike his son with his cane, while the

Queen burst in with a stream of abuse worthy of a fishwife. Napoleon,

horrified at the odious scene, according to his own narrative of it,

hurried Ferdinand, ‘who looked scared,’ out of the room.

[54] Of this interview we have the version of Napoleon himself

in a dispatch to Murat, dated May 1; another by Cevallos,

Ferdinand’s minister; a third by De Pradt (afterwards Archbishop

of Mechlin), then present at Bayonne.

The same night [May 1], Ferdinand’s advisers bethought them of a new

and ingenious move--we need not ascribe it to his own brains, which

were surely incapable of the device. He wrote to King Charles to the

effect that he had always regarded the abdication at Aranjuez as free

and unconstrained, but that if it had not been so, he was ready to lay

down his crown again and hand it back to his father. But the ceremony

must be done in an open and honourable way at Madrid, before the

Cortes. If his parent personally resumed the reins of power, he bowed

to his authority: but if his age and infirmities induced him to name a

regent, that regent should be his eldest son.

This proposal did not suit the Emperor at all, so he dictated to the

old king a long letter, in which the Napoleonesque phraseology peeps

out in a score of places. Charles refuses all terms, says that his

son’s conduct had ‘placed a barrier of bronze between him and the

Spanish throne,’ and concludes that ‘only the Emperor can save Spain,

and he himself would do nothing that might stir up the fire of discord

among his loved vassals or bring misery on them’ [May 2]. Ferdinand

replied with an equally long letter justifying at large all his conduct

of the past year [May 4].

When things stood at this point there arrived from Madrid the news of

the bloody events of the second of May, which we have to relate in the

next chapter. This brought Napoleon up to striking point, and once

more he intervened in his own person. He sent for Ferdinand, and in

the presence of his parents accused him of having stirred up the riot

in the capital, and informed him that if he did not sign an abdication

and an acknowledgement of his father as the only true king by twelve

that night ‘he should be dealt with as a traitor and rebel.’ This is

Napoleon’s own version[55], but Spanish witnesses say that the words

used were that ‘he must choose between abdication and death[56].’

[55] Dispatch to Murat of May 5.

[56] ‘Prince, il faut opter entre la cession et la mort’

(Cevallos, p. 60).

To any one who remembered the fate of the Duc d’Enghien such a phrase

was more than an idle threat. It brought the stubborn Ferdinand to his

knees at last. That evening he wrote out a simple and straightforward

form of abdication--‘without any motive, save that I limited my former

proposal for resignation by certain proper conditions, your majesty has

thought fit to insult me in the presence of my mother and the Emperor.

I have been abused in the most humiliating terms: I have been told

that unless I make an unconditional resignation I and my companions

shall be treated as criminals guilty of conspiracy. Under such

circumstances I make the renunciation which your majesty commands, that

the government of Spain may return to the condition in which it was on

March 19 last, the day on which your majesty _spontaneously_ laid down

your crown in my favour[57]’ [May 6].

[57] Toreño, Appendix, i. 466, 467.

Ferdinand having abdicated, Napoleon at once produced a treaty which

King Charles had ratified on the previous day, twenty-four hours before

his son gave in. By it the old man ‘resigned all his rights to the

throne of Spain and the Indies to the Emperor Napoleon, the only person

who in the present state of affairs can re-establish order.’ He only

annexed two conditions: ‘(1) that there should be no partition of the

Spanish monarchy; (2) that the Roman Catholic religion should be the

only one recognized in Spain: there should, according to the existing

practice, be no toleration for any of the reformed religions, much less

for infidels.’ If anything is wanting to make the silly old man odious,

it is the final touch of bigotry in his abdication. The rest of the

document consists of a recital of the pensions and estates in France

conferred by the Emperor on his dupe in return for the abdication.

It took five days more to extort from Don Ferdinand a formal cession

of his ultimate rights, as Prince of the Asturias, to the succession

to the throne. It was signed on May 10, and purported to give him in

return a palace in France and a large annual revenue. But he was really

put under close surveillance at Talleyrand’s estate of Valençay, along

with his brother Don Carlos, and never allowed to go beyond its bounds.

The Emperor’s letter of instructions to Talleyrand is worth quoting

for its cynical brutality. He wrote to his ex-minister, who was much

disgusted with the invidious duty put upon him: ‘Let the princes be

received without any show, but yet respectably, and try to keep them

amused. If you chance to have a theatre at Valençay there would be no

harm in importing some actors now and then. You may bring over Mme de

Talleyrand [the notorious Mme Grand of 1800], and four or five ladies

in attendance on her. If the prince should fall in love with some

pretty girl among them, there would be no harm in it, especially if you

are quite sure of her. The prince must not be allowed to take any false

step, but must be amused and occupied. I ought, for political safety,

to put him in Bitche or some other fortress-prison: but as he placed

himself into my clutches of his own free will, and as everything in

Spain is going on as I desire, I have resolved merely to place him in a

country house where he can amuse himself under strict surveillance....

Your mission is really a very honourable one--to take in three[58]

illustrious guests and keep them amused is a task which should suit a

Frenchman and a personage of your rank[59].’ Napoleon afterwards owned

that he was framing what he called ‘a practical joke’ on Talleyrand, by

billeting the Spaniards on him. The Prince of Benevento had wished to

make no appearance in the matter, and the Emperor revenged himself by

implicating him in it as the jailor of his captives. Talleyrand’s anger

may be imagined, and estimated by his after conduct.

[58] The _third_ prisoner was Ferdinand’s uncle, Don Antonio.

[59] This letter, eliminated by the editors of the

_Correspondance de Napoléon_, may be found in Lecestre, _Lettres

inédites de Napoléon I_, i. p. 207.

At Valençay the unfortunate Ferdinand was destined to remain for nearly

six years, not amusing himself at all according to Napoleon’s ideas

of amusement, but employed in a great many church services, a little

partridge shooting, and (so his unwilling jailor tells us) the spoiling

of much paper, not with the pen but with the scissors; for he developed

a childish passion for clipping out paper patterns and bestowing them

on every one that he met. One could pardon him everything if he had

not spoilt his attitude as victim and martyr by occasionally sending

adulatory letters to the Emperor, and even to his own supplanter,

Joseph Bonaparte the new King of Spain.

SECTION I: CHAPTER VI

THE SECOND OF MAY: OUTBREAK OF THE SPANISH INSURRECTION

When King Ferdinand had taken his departure to Bayonne, the position

of Murat in Madrid became very delicate. He might expect to hear at

any moment, since the Emperor’s plans were more or less known to him,

either that the Spanish king had been made a prisoner, or that he had

taken the alarm, escaped from his escort, and fled into the mountains.

In either case trouble at Madrid was very probable, though there was

no serious military danger to be feared, for of Spanish troops there

were only 3,000 in the city, while some 35,000 French were encamped in

or about it. But there might be a moment of confusion if the Junta of

Regency should take violent measures on hearing of the King’s fate,

or the populace of Madrid (and this was much more likely) burst into

rioting.

From the tenth of April, the day of the King’s departure for the north,

down to the twenty-ninth there was no serious cause for apprehension.

The people were no doubt restless: they could not understand why the

French lingered in Madrid instead of marching on Portugal or Gibraltar,

according to their expressed intention. Rumours of all kinds, some

of which hit off fairly well the true projects of Bonaparte, were

current. Murat’s conduct was not calculated to reassure observers;

he gave himself the airs of a military governor, rather than those

of an officer engaged in conducting an allied army through friendly

territory. Some of his acts gave terrible offence, such as that of

insisting that the sword of Francis I, taken at Pavia in 1525, the

pride for three centuries of the royal armoury, should be given up to

him[60]. His call on the Junta for the surrender of the Prince of

the Peace, whom he forwarded under French escort to Bayonne, could

not fail to be unpopular. But the first real signs of danger were

not seen till the twenty-second of April, when Murat, in obedience

to his master, intended to publish the protest of Charles IV against

his abdication. It was to be presented to the Junta in the form of a

letter to its president, Don Antonio. Meanwhile French agents were

set to print it: their Spanish underlings stole and circulated some

of the proofs. Their appearance raised a mob, for the name of Charles

IV could only suggest the reappearance of Godoy. An angry crowd broke

into the printing office, destroyed the presses, and hunted away the

Frenchmen. Murat at once made a great matter of the affair, and began

to threaten the Junta. ‘The army which he commanded could not without

dishonouring itself allow disorders to arise: there must be no more

anarchy in Spain. He was not going to allow the corrupt tools of the

English government to stir up troubles.’ The Junta replied with rather

more spirit than might have been expected, asked why an army of 35,000

French troops had now lingered more than a month around the capital,

and expressed an opinion that the riot was but an explosion of loyalty

to Ferdinand. But they undertook to deal severely with factious

persons, and to discourage even harmless assemblies like that of the

twenty-second.

[60] Napoleon, disapproving of Murat’s action on this point,

committed himself to two astounding historical statements. ‘Why

trouble about the sword,’ he wrote; ‘Francis I was a Bourbon [!]

and he was taken by the Italians, not the Spaniards’ [!!] (_Nap.

Corresp._, 13,724).

Meanwhile Murat wrote to the Emperor that it was absurd that he could

not yet establish a police of his own in Madrid, that he could not

print what he pleased, and that he had to negotiate with the Junta when

he wished his orders published, instead of being able to issue them

on his own authority[61]. He was answered in a style which must have

surprised him. Napoleon was ashamed, he said, of a general who, with

50,000 men at his back, asked for things instead of taking them. His

letters to the Junta were servile; he should simply assume possession

of the reins of power, and act for himself. If the _canaille_ stirred,

let it be shot down[62]. Murat could only reply that ‘if he had not yet

scattered rioters by a blast of grape, it was only because there were

no mobs to shoot: his imperial majesty’s rebuke had stunned him “like a

tile falling on his head” by its unmerited severity[63].’

[61] Murat to Napoleon, April 22.

[62] Napoleon to Murat, April 26.

[63] Murat to Napoleon, April 30.

Within three days of this letter there was to be plenty of grape-shot,

enough to satisfy both Emperor and Grand-Duke. They probably had the

revolt of Cairo and the 13th Vendémiaire in their mind, and were

both under the impression that a good _émeute_ pitilessly crushed by

artillery was the best basis of a new régime.

On the night of April 29 the first clear and accurate account of what

was happening at Bayonne arrived at Madrid. Napoleon had intercepted

all the letters which Don Ferdinand had tried to smuggle out of his

prison. He read them with grave disapproval, for his guest had not

scrupled to use the expression ‘the cursed French,’ and had hinted at

the propriety of resistance. He had not yet been cowed by the threat

of a rebel’s death. But on the twenty-third one of the Spaniards at

Bayonne succeeded in escaping in disguise, crossed the mountains by a

lonely track, and reached Pampeluna, whence he posted to Madrid. This

was a certain Navarrese magistrate named Ibarnavarro, to whom Ferdinand

had given a verbal message to explain Napoleon’s plans and conduct

to the Junta, and to inform them that he would never give in to this

vile mixture of force and fraud. He could not send them any definite

instructions, not knowing the exact state of affairs at Madrid, and a

premature stroke might imperil the life of himself, his brother, and

his companions: let them beware therefore of showing their warlike

intentions till preparations had been fully made to shake off the yoke

of the oppressor.

This message Ibarnavarro delivered on the night of April 29-30 to the

Junta[64], who had summoned in to hear it a number of judges and other

magnates of the city. Next morning, of course, the information, in a

more or less garbled shape, spread all round Madrid: there were foolish

rumours that the Biscayans had already taken arms, and that 30,000 of

them were marching on Bayonne to save the King, as also that certain

of the coast towns had invited the English to land. On the thirtieth

leaflets, both written and printed, were being secretly circulated

round the city, setting forth the unhappy condition of the King, and

bidding his subjects not to forget Numancia[65]. It is astonishing that

riots did not break out at once, considering the growing excitement

of the people, and the habitual insolence of the French soldiery.

But leaders were wanting, and in especial the Junta of Regency and

its imbecile old president made no move whatever, on the pretext,

apparently, that any commotion might imperil the lives of Napoleon’s

prisoners.

[64] Ibarnavarro’s story, written down by himself on September

27, 1808, can be found printed in full on pp. 457-9 of the

Appendix to Toreño’s first volume.

[65] For a specimen see the document on p. 462 of Count Murat’s

_Murat en Espagne_ (Paris, 1897).

It was Murat himself who brought matters to a head next day, by

ordering the Junta to put into his hands the remaining members of the

royal family, Ferdinand’s youngest brother Don Francisco, a boy of

sixteen, and his sister the widowed and exiled Queen of Etruria, with

her children. Only Don Antonio, the incapable president of the Junta,

and the Archbishop of Toledo, the King’s second-cousin, were to be left

behind: the rest were to be sent to Bayonne. Knowing what had happened

to Don Ferdinand and Don Carlos, the people were horrified at the

news; but they trusted that the Regency would refuse its leave. To its

eternal disgrace that body did nothing: it did not even try to smuggle

away the young Don Francisco before Murat should arrest him.

[Illustration: Madrid in 1808.]

On the morning, therefore, of May 2 the streets were filled with

people, and the palace gates in especial were beset by an excited mob.

It was soon seen that the news was true, for the Queen of Etruria

appeared and started for the north with all her numerous family. She

was unpopular for having sided with her mother and Godoy against Don

Ferdinand, and was allowed to depart undisturbed. But when the carriage

that was to bear off Don Francisco was brought up, and one of Murat’s

aides-de-camp appeared at the door to take charge of the young prince,

the rage of the crowd burst all bounds. The French officer was stoned,

and saved with difficulty by a patrol: the coach was torn to pieces.

Murat had not been unprepared for something of the kind: the battalion

on guard at his palace was at once turned out, and fired a dozen

volleys into the unarmed mob, which fled devious, leaving scores of

dead and wounded on the ground.

The Grand-Duke thought that the matter was over, but it had but just

begun. At the noise of the firing the excited citizens flocked into

the streets armed with whatever came to hand, pistols, blunderbusses,

fowling-pieces, many only with the long Spanish knife. They fell upon,

and slew, a certain number of isolated French soldiers, armed and

unarmed, who were off duty and wandering round the town, but they also

made a fierce attack on Murat’s guard. Of course they could do little

against troops armed and in order: in the first hour of the fight there

were only about 1,000 men at the Grand-Duke’s disposal, but this small

force held its own without much loss, though eight or ten thousand

angry insurgents fell upon them. But within seventy minutes the French

army from the suburban camps came pouring into the city, brigade after

brigade. After this the struggle was little more than a massacre: many

of the insurgents took refuge in houses, and maintained a fierce but

futile resistance for some time; but the majority were swept away in a

few minutes by cavalry charges. Only at one point did the fight assume

a serious shape. Almost the entire body of the Spanish garrison of

Madrid refrained from taking any part in the rising: without the orders

of the Junta the chiefs refused to move, and the men waited in vain for

the orders of their officers. But at the Artillery Park two captains,

Daoiz and Velarde, threw open the gates to the rioters, allowed them

to seize some hundreds of muskets, and when the first French column

appeared ran out three guns and opened upon it with grape[66]. Though

aided by no more than forty soldiers, and perhaps 500 civilians,

they beat off two assaults, and only succumbed to a third. Daoiz was

bayonetted, Velarde shot dead, and their men perished with them; but

they had poured three volleys of grape into a street packed with the

enemy, and caused the only serious losses which the French suffered

that day.

[66] Napier (i. 15) says that Daoiz and Velarde were ‘in a state

of excitement from drink,’ a disgraceful French calumny. How

could he bear to reproduce such a libel on these unfortunate

officers?

The whole struggle had occupied not more than four hours: when it was

over Murat issued an ‘order of the day,’ sentencing all prisoners taken

with arms in their hands, all persons discovered with arms concealed

in their houses, and all distributors of seditious leaflets, ‘the

agents of the English government,’ to be shot. It seems that at least a

hundred persons were executed under this edict, many of them innocent

bystanders who had taken no part in the fighting. Next morning Murat

withdrew his Draconian decree, and no further fusillades took place.

It is impossible, in the conflict of authorities, to arrive at any

clear estimate of the numbers slain on each side on May 2[67]. Probably

Toreño is not far out when he estimates the whole at something over a

thousand. Of these four-fifths must have been Spaniards, for the French

only lost heavily at the arsenal: the number of isolated soldiers

murdered in the streets at the first outbreak of the riot does not seem

to have been very large.

[67] The Junta, to soothe the feelings of Madrid, gave out that

only 150 Spaniards had fallen. The _Moniteur_ said that 2,000

criminals had been cut down or executed! Murat reported a loss of

eighty men only, while Napier says that he has excellent French

authority and eye-witnesses to the effect that 750 fell.

Many French authors have called the rising a deliberate and

preconcerted conspiracy to massacre the French garrison. On the other

hand Spanish writers have asserted that Murat had arranged everything

so as to cause a riot, in order that he might have the chance of

administering a ‘whiff of grape-shot,’ after his master’s plan.

But it is clear that both are making unfounded accusations: if the

insurrection had been premeditated, the Spanish soldiery would have

been implicated in it, for nothing would have been easier than to

stir them up. Yet of the whole 3,000 only forty ran out to help the

insurgents. Moreover, the mob would have been found armed at the first

commencement of trouble, which it certainly was not. On the other hand,

if Murat had been organizing a massacre, he would not have been caught

with no more than two squadrons of cavalry and five or six companies

of infantry under his hand. These might have been cut to pieces before

the troops from outside could come to their help. He had been expecting

riots, and was prepared to deal with them, but was surprised by a

serious insurrection on a larger scale than he had foreseen, and at a

moment when he was not ready.

For a few days after May 2, Murat at Madrid and his master at Bayonne

were both living in a sort of fools’ paradise, imagining that ‘the

affairs of Spain were going off wonderfully well,’ and that ‘the

party of Ferdinand had been crushed by the prompt suppression of its

conspiracy.’ The Grand-Duke had the simplicity or the effrontery to

issue a proclamation in which he said ‘that every good Spaniard had

groaned at the sight of such disorders,’ and another in which the

insurrection was attributed to ‘the machinations of our common enemy,

i.e. the British government[68].’ On May 4 Don Antonio laid down the

presidency of the Junta without a word of regret, and went off to

Bayonne, having first borrowed 25,000 francs from Murat. The latter, by

virtue of a decree issued by Charles IV, then assumed the presidency

of the Junta of Regency. The rest of the members of that ignoble body

easily sank into his servile instruments, though they had at last

received a secret note smuggled out from Bayonne, in which Ferdinand

(the day before his abdication) told them to regard his removal into

the interior of France as a declaration of war, and to call the nation

to arms. To this they paid no attention, while they pretended to take

the document of resignation, which Bonaparte had forced him to sign,

as an authentic and spontaneous expression of his will. The fact is

that twenty years of Godoy had thoroughly demoralized the bureaucracy

and the court of Spain: if the country’s will had not found better

exponents than her ministers and officials, Napoleon might have done

what he pleased with the Peninsula.

[68] Proclamations of May 2 and 3: there are originals in the

_Vaughan Papers_.

At present his sole interest seems to have lain in settling the details

of his brother Joseph’s election to the Spanish throne. Ferdinand’s

final resignation of all his rights having been signed on May 10, the

field was open for his successor. The Emperor thought that some sort of

deputation to represent the Spanish nation ought to be got together,

in order that his brother might not seem to receive the crown from his

own hands only. Murat was first set to work to terrorize the Junta

of Regency, and the ‘Council of Castile,’ a body which practically

occupied much the same position as the English Privy Council. At his

dictation the Junta yielded, but with an ill grace, and sent petitions

to Bayonne asking for a new monarch, and suggesting (as desired) that

the person chosen might be Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples [May

13]. Murat had just been informed that as all had gone well with the

Emperor’s plans he should have his reward: he might make his choice

between the thrones of Naples and of Portugal. He wisely chose the

former, where the rough work of subjection had already been done by his

predecessor.

But resolved to get together something like a representative body

which might vote away the liberty of Spain, Napoleon nominated, in

the Madrid Gazette of May 24, 150 persons who were to go to Bayonne

and there ask him to grant them a king. He named a most miscellaneous

crowd--ministers, bishops, judges, municipal officers of Madrid, dukes

and counts, the heads of the religious orders, the Grand Inquisitor and

some of his colleagues, and six well-known Americans who were to speak

for the colonies. To the eternal disgrace of the ruling classes of

Spain, no less than ninety-one of the nominees were base enough to obey

the orders given them, to go to Bayonne, and there to crave as a boon

that the weak and incompetent Joseph Bonaparte might be set to govern

their unhappy country, under the auspices of his brother the hero and

regenerator. Long before the degrading farce was complete, the whole

country was in arms behind them, and they knew themselves for traitors.

The election of King Joseph I was only taken in hand on June 15, while

twenty days before the north and south of Spain had risen in arms in

the name of the captive Ferdinand VII.

It took a week for the news of the insurrection of May 2 to spread

round Spain: in the public mouth it of course assumed the shape of

a massacre deliberately planned by Murat. It was not till some days

later that the full details of the events at Bayonne got abroad. But

ever since the surprise of the frontier fortresses in February and

March, intelligent men all over the country had been suspecting that

some gross act of treachery was likely to be the outcome of the French

invasion. Yet in most of the districts of Spain there was a gap of some

days between the arrival of the news of the King’s captivity and the

first outbreak of popular indignation. The fact was that the people

were waiting for the lawful and constituted authorities to take action,

and did not move of themselves till it was certain that no initiative

was to be expected from those in high places. But Spain was a country

which had long been governed on despotic lines; and its official

chiefs, whether the nominees of Godoy or of the knot of intriguers who

had just won their way to power under Ferdinand, were not the men to

lead a war of national independence. Many were mere adventurers, who

had risen to preferment by flattering the late favourite. Others were

typical bureaucrats, whose only concern was to accept as legitimate

whatever orders reached them from Madrid: provided those orders were

couched in the proper form and written on the right paper, they did not

look to see whether the signature at the bottom was that of Godoy or

of the Infante Don Antonio, or of Murat. Others again were courtiers

who owed their position to their great names, and not to any personal

ability. It is this fact that accounts for the fortnight or even three

weeks of torpor that followed the events of the second and sixth of

May. Murat’s orders during that space travelled over the country, and

most of the captains-general and other authorities seemed inclined to

obey them. Yet they were orders which should have stirred up instant

disobedience; the Mediterranean squadron was to be sent to Toulon,

where (if it did not get taken on the way by the British) it would

fall into the hands of Napoleon. A large detachment of the depleted

regular army was to sail for Buenos Ayres, with the probable prospect

of finding itself ere long on the hulks at Portsmouth, instead of on

the shores of the Rio de la Plata. The Swiss regiments in Spanish pay

were directed to be transferred to the French establishment, and to

take the oath to Napoleon. All this could have no object save that of

diminishing the fighting power of the country.

The first province where the people plucked up courage to act without

their officials, and to declare war on France in spite of the dreadful

odds against them, was the remote and inaccessible principality of

the Asturias, pressed in between the Bay of Biscay and the Cantabrian

hills. Riots began at its capital, Oviedo, as early as the first

arrival of the news from Madrid on May 9, when Murat’s edicts were

torn down in spite of the feeble resistance of the commander of the

garrison and some of the magistrates. The Asturias was one of the few

provinces of Spain which still preserved vestiges of its mediaeval

representative institutions. It had a ‘Junta General,’ a kind of local

‘estates,’ which chanced to be in session at the time of the crisis.

Being composed of local magnates and citizens, and not of officials and

bureaucrats, this body was sufficiently in touch with public opinion to

feel itself borne on to action. After ten days of secret preparation,

the city of Oviedo and the surrounding country-side rose in unison

on May 24: the partisans of the new government were imprisoned, and

next day the estates formally declared war on Napoleon Bonaparte, and

ordered a levy of 18,000 men from the principality to resist invasion.

A great part of the credit for this daring move must be given to the

president of the Junta, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, who had stirred

up his colleagues as early as the thirteenth by declaring that ‘when

and wherever one single Spaniard took arms against Napoleon, he would

shoulder a musket and put himself at that man’s side.’ The Asturians

had knowledge that other provinces would follow their example; there

was only one battalion of regular troops and one of militia under arms

in the province; its financial resources were small. Its only strength

lay in the rough mountains that had once sheltered King Pelayo from

the Moors. It was therefore an astounding piece of patriotism when the

inhabitants of the principality threw down the challenge to the victor

of Jena and Austerlitz, confiding in their stern resolution and their

good cause. All through the war the Asturias played a very creditable

part in the struggle, and never let the light of liberty go out, though

often its capital and its port of Gihon fell into French hands.

One of the first and wisest measures taken by the Asturian Junta was an

attempt to interest Great Britain in the insurrection. On May 30 they

sent to London two emissaries (one of whom was the historian Toreño)

on a Jersey privateer, whose captain was persuaded to turn out of his

course for the public profit. On June 7 they had reached London and had

an interview with Canning, the Foreign Secretary of the Tory government

which had lately come into power. Five days later they were assured

that the Asturias might draw on England for all it required in the way

of arms, munitions, and money. All this was done before it was known in

England that any other Spanish province was stirring, for it was not

till June 22 that the plenipotentiaries of the other juntas began to

appear in London.

The revolt of other provinces followed in very quick succession.

Galicia rose on May 30, in spite of its captain-general, Filanghieri,

whose resistance to the popular voice cost him his popularity and,

not long after, his life. Corunna and Ferrol, the two northern

arsenals of Spain, led the way. This addition to the insurgent

forces was very important, for the province was full of troops--the

garrisons that protected the ports from English descents. There were

eighteen battalions of regulars and fourteen of militia--a whole

army--concentrated in this remote corner of Spain. Napoleon’s plan

of removing the Spanish troops from the neighbourhood of Madrid had

produced the unintended result of making the outlying provinces very

strong for self-defence.

It is more fitting for a Spanish than an English historian to descend

into the details of the rising of each province of Spain. The general

characteristics of the outburst in each region were much the same:

hardly anywhere did the civil or military officials in charge of the

district take the lead. Almost invariably they hung back, fearing

for their places and profits, and realizing far better than did the

insurgents the enormous military power which they were challenging.

The leaders of the movement were either local magnates not actually

holding office--like the celebrated Joseph Palafox at Saragossa--or

demagogues of the streets, or (but less frequently than might have

been expected) churchmen, Napoleon was quite wrong when he called the

Spanish rising ‘an insurrection of monks.’ The church followed the

nation, and not the nation the church: indeed many of the spiritual

hierarchy were among the most servile instruments of Murat. Among them

was the primate of Spain, the Archbishop of Toledo, who was actually

a scion of the house of Bourbon. There were many ecclesiastics among

the dishonoured ninety-one that went to Bayonne, if there were others

who (like the Bishop of Santander) put themselves at the head of their

flocks when the country took arms.

It was a great misfortune for Spain that the juntas, which were

everywhere formed when the people rose, had to be composed in large

part of men unacquainted with government and organization. There were

many intelligent patriots among their members, a certain number of

statesmen who had been kept down or disgraced by Godoy, but also a

large proportion of ambitious windbags and self-seeking intriguers. It

was hard to constitute a capable government, on the spur of the moment,

in a country which had suffered twenty years of Godoy’s rule.

An unfortunate feature of the rising was that in most of the provinces,

and especially those of the south, it took from the first a very

sanguinary cast. It was natural that the people should sweep away in

their anger every official who tried to keep them down, or hesitated

to commit himself to the struggle with France. But there was no reason

to murder these weaklings or traitors, in the style of the Jacobins.

There was a terrible amount of assassination, public and private,

during the first days of the insurrection. Three captains-general were

slain under circumstances of brutal cruelty--Filanghieri in Galicia,

Torre del Fresno in Estremadura, Solano at Cadiz. The fate of Solano

may serve as an example: he tried to keep the troops from joining the

people, and vainly harangued the mob: pointing to the distant sails

of the English blockading squadron he shouted, ‘There are your real

enemies!’ But his words had no effect: he was hunted down in a house

where he took refuge, and was being dragged to be hung on the public

gallows, when the hand of a fanatic (or perhaps of a secret friend

who wished to spare him a dishonourable death) dealt him a fatal

stab in the side. Gregorio de la Cuesta, the Governor-General of Old

Castile, who was destined to play such a prominent and unhappy part in

the history of the next two years, nearly shared Solano’s fate. The

populace of Valladolid, where he was residing, rose in insurrection

like those of the other cities of Spain. They called on their military

chief to put himself at their head; but Cuesta, an old soldier of the

most unintelligent and brainless sort, hated mob-violence almost more

than he hated the French. He held back, not from a desire to serve

Bonaparte, but from a dislike to being bullied by civilians. The

indignant populace erected a gallows outside his house and came to hang

him thereon. It was not, it is said, till the rope was actually round

his neck that the obstinate old man gave in. The Castilians promptly

released him, and put him at the head of the armed rabble which formed

their only force. Remembering the awful slaughter at Cabezon, at Medina

de Rio Seco, and at Medellin, which his incapacity and mulish obstinacy

was destined to bring about, it is impossible not to express the wish

that his consent to take arms had been delayed for a few minutes longer.

All over Spain there took place, during the last days of May and

the first week of June, scores of murders of prominent men, of old

favourites of Godoy, of colonels who would not allow their regiments

to march, of officials who had shown alacrity in obeying the orders of

Murat. In the Asturias and at Saragossa alone do the new juntas seem

to have succeeded in keeping down assassination. The worst scenes took

place at Valencia, where a mad priest, the Canon Baltasar Calvo, led

out a mob of ruffians who in two days [June 6-7] murdered 338 persons,

the whole colony of French merchants residing in that wealthy town. It

is satisfactory to know that when the Junta of Valencia felt itself

firmly seated in the saddle of power, it seized and executed this

abominable person and his chief lieutenants. In too many parts of Spain

the murderers went unpunished: yet remembering the provocation which

the nation had received, and comparing the blood shed by mob-violence

with that which flowed in Revolutionary France, we must consider the

outburst deplorable rather than surprising.

When the insurrection had reached its full development, we find that

it centred round five points, in each of which a separate junta had

seized on power and begun to levy an army. The most powerful focus

was Seville, from which all Andalusia took its directions: indeed

the Junta of Seville had assumed the arrogant style of ‘supreme Junta

of Spain and the Indies,’ to which it had no legitimate title. The

importance of Andalusia was that it was full of troops, the regular

garrisons having been joined by most of the expeditionary corps which

had returned from southern Portugal. Moreover it was in possession of a

full treasury and a fleet, and had free communication with the English

at Gibraltar. On June 15 the Andalusians struck the first military blow

that told on Napoleon, by bombarding and capturing the French fleet

(the relics of Trafalgar) which lay at their mercy within the harbour

of Cadiz.

The second in importance of the centres of resistance was Galicia,

which was also fairly well provided with troops, and contained the

arsenals of Ferrol and Corunna. The risings in Asturias, and the

feebler gatherings of patriots in Leon and Old Castile, practically

became branches of the Galician insurrection, though they were directed

by their own juntas and tried to work for themselves. It was on the

army of Galicia that they relied for support, and without it they would

not have been formidable. The boundaries of this area of insurrection

were Santander, Valladolid, and Segovia: further east the troops of

Moncey and Bessières, in the direction of Burgos and Aranda, kept the

country-side from rising. There were sporadic gatherings of peasants

in the Upper Ebro valley and the mountains of Northern Castile, but

these were mere unorganized ill-armed bands that half a battalion could

disperse. It was the same in the Basque Provinces and Navarre: here too

the French lay cantoned so thickly that it was impossible to meddle

with them: their points of concentration were Vittoria and the two

fortresses of Pampeluna and San Sebastian.

The other horn of the half-moon of revolt, which encircled Madrid, was

composed of the insurrections in Murcia and Valencia to the south and

Aragon to the north. These regions were much less favourably situated

for forming centres of resistance, because they were very weak in

organized troops. When the Aragonese elected Joseph Palafox as their

captain-general and declared war on France, there were only 2,000

regulars and one battery of artillery in their realm. The levies which

they began to raise were nothing more than half-armed peasants, with no

adequate body of officers to train and drill them. Valencia and Murcia

were a little better off, because the arsenal of Cartagena and its

garrison lay within their boundaries, but there were only 9,000 men

in all under arms in the two provinces. Clearly they could not hope to

deliver such a blow as Galicia or Andalusia might deal.

The last centre of revolt, Catalonia, did not fall into the same

strategical system as the other four. It looked for its enemies not

at Madrid, but at Barcelona, where Lecchi and Duhesme were firmly

established ever since their _coup de main_ in February. The Catalans

had as their task the cutting off of this body of invaders from its

communication with France, and the endeavour to prevent new forces

from joining it by crossing the Eastern Pyrenees. The residence of the

insurrectionary Junta was at Tarragona, but the most important point in

the province for the moment was Gerona, a fortress commanding the main

road from France, which Napoleon had not had the foresight to seize at

the same moment that he won by treachery Barcelona and Figueras. While

the Spaniards could hold it, they had some chance of isolating the army

of Duhesme from its supports. In Catalonia, or in the Balearic Isles

off its coast, there were in May 1808, about 16,000 men of regular

troops, among whom there were only 1,200 soldiers of the cavalry arm.

There was no militia, but by old custom the _levée en masse_ might

always be called out in moments of national danger. These irregulars,

_somatenes_ as they were called (from _somaten_, the alarm-bell which

roused them), turned out in great numbers according to ancient custom:

they had been mobilized thirteen years before in the French War of

1793-5 and their warlike traditions were by no means forgotten. All

through the Peninsular struggle they made a very creditable figure,

considering their want of organization and the difficulty of keeping

them together.

The French armies, putting aside Duhesme’s isolated force at Barcelona,

lay compactly in a great wedge piercing into the heart of Spain. Its

point was at Toledo, just south of Madrid: its base was a line drawn

from San Sebastian to Pampeluna across the Western Pyrenees. Its

backbone lay along the great high road from Vittoria by Burgos to

Madrid. The advantageous point of this position was that it completely

split Central Spain in two: there was no communication possible

between the insurgents of Galicia and those of Aragon. On the other

hand the wedge was long and narrow, and exposed to be pierced by a

force striking at it either from the north-east or the north-west. The

Aragonese rebels were too few to be dangerous; but the strong Spanish

army of Galicia was well placed for a blow at Burgos, and a successful

attack in that direction would cut off Madrid from France, and leave

the troops in and about the capital, who formed the point of the

intrusive wedge, in a very perilous condition. This is the reason why,

in the first stage of the war, Napoleon showed great anxiety as to what

the army of Galicia might do, while professing comparative equanimity

about the proceedings of the other forces of the insurrection.

Having thus sketched the strategic position of affairs in the Peninsula

during the first days of June, we must set ourselves to learn the main

characteristics of the military geography of Spain, and to estimate the

character, organization, and fighting value of the two armies which

were just about to engage. Without some knowledge of the conditions

of warfare in Spain, a mere catalogue of battles and marches would be

absolutely useless.

SECTION II

THE LAND AND THE COMBATANTS

CHAPTER I

MILITARY GEOGRAPHY OF THE PENINSULA: MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, ROADS

Of all the regions of Europe, the Iberian Peninsula possesses the best

marked frontier. It is separated from France, its only neighbour, by

one broad range of mountains, which defines its boundaries even more

clearly than the Alps mark those of Italy. For the Alps are no single

chain, but a system of double and triple chains running parallel to

each other, and leaving between them debatable lands such as Savoy and

the Southern Tyrol. Between Spain and France there is no possibility

of any such claims and counter-claims. It is true that Roussillon,

where the eastern end of the Pyrenean range runs into the sea, was

Spanish down to 1659, but that was a political survival from the Middle

Ages, not a natural union: there can be no doubt that geographically

Roussillon is a French and not an Iberian land: the main backbone of

the boundary chain lies south and not north of it.

The Pyrenees, though in height they cannot vie with the Alps, and

though they are not nearly so jagged or scarped as the greater chain,

are extremely difficult to cross, all the more so because the hand of

man has seldom come to help the hand of nature in making practicable

lines of access between France and Spain. In the whole length between

the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean there are only two short fronts

where intercommunication is easy, and these lie at the extreme east

and west, where the mountains touch the sea. In the 250 miles which

intervene there is hardly one good pass practicable for wheeled traffic

or for the march of an army: most are mere mule-paths, rarely used

save by smugglers and shepherds. The only one of these minor routes

employed in the war was that which leads from Jaca in Aragon to Oloron

in Béarn, and that was not much used: only on one single occasion

in 1813 does it appear prominently in history, when Clausel’s French

division, fleeing before Wellington and pressed up against the foot of

the mountains, escaped across it with some difficulty.

The only passes that were systematically employed during the war were

those which lie close to the water at each end of the Pyrenean chain.

At the eastern end there are three which lead from Roussillon into

Catalonia. One hugs the water’s edge, and crawls along under the cliffs

from Perpignan to Rosas: this was not in 1808 the most important of the

three, though it is the one by which the railway passes to-day. Inland

there are two other roads over difficult crests--one ten, the other

forty miles from the shore--the former from Bellegarde to Figueras, the

other from Mont-Louis to Puycerda and Vich. The first was the pass most

used in the war, being less exposed than the Rosas route to English

descents from the sea: the coast road could actually be cannonaded by

warships at some corners. It was blocked indeed by the fortress of

Figueras, but that stronghold was only in Spanish hands for a very

short period of the war. The inmost, or Mont-Louis-Puycerda road was

bad, led into nothing more than a few upland valleys, and was very

little employed by the French. It would have been of importance had it

led down into the lowlands of Aragon, but after taking a long turn in

the hills it harks back towards the Catalan coast, and joins the other

two roads near Gerona--a fortress which is so placed as practically to

command every possible access into Eastern Spain.

Taking all three of these paths into Catalonia together, they do

but form a sort of back door into the Iberian Peninsula. They only

communicate with the narrow eastern coast-strip from Barcelona to

Valencia. There is no direct access from them into Castile, the heart

of the country, and only a roundabout entrance by Lerida into Aragon.

The great mass of the Catalan and Valencian Sierras bars them out from

the main bulk of the Spanish realm. Catalonia and Valencia, wealthy and

in parts fertile as they are, are but its back premises.

The true front door of the kingdom is formed by the passes at the

other, the western, end of the Pyrenees. Here too we have three

available routes, but they differ in character from the roads at the

edge of the Mediterranean, in that they open up two completely separate

lines of advance into Spain, and do not (like the Catalan defiles)

all lead on to the same goal. All three start from Bayonne, the great

southern fortress of Gascony. The first keeps for some time close to

the seaside, and after crossing the Bidassoa, the boundary river of

France and Spain, at Irun, leaves the fortress of San Sebastian a few

miles to its right and then charges the main chain of the mountains. It

emerges at Vittoria, the most northerly town of importance in the basin

of the Ebro. A few miles further south it crosses that stream, and then

makes for Burgos and Madrid, over two successive lines of Sierras. It

opens up the heart of both Old and New Castile. The other two roads

from Bayonne strike inland at once, and do not hug the Biscayan shore

like the Irun-Vittoria route. They climb the Pyrenees, one by the pass

of Maya, the other, twenty miles further east, by the more famous pass

of Roncesvalles, where Charlemagne suffered disaster of old, and left

the great paladin, Roland, dead behind him. The Maya and Roncesvalles

roads join, after passing the mountains, at the great fortress of

Pampeluna, the capital of Navarre. From thence several lines are

available for the invader, the two chief of which are the roads into

Old Castile by Logroño and into Aragon by Tudela. Pampeluna is quite as

valuable as Vittoria as the base for an attack on Central Spain.

The whole Iberian Peninsula has been compared, not inaptly, to an

inverted soup-plate: roughly it consists of a high central plateau,

surrounded by a flat rim. But no comparison of that kind can be pressed

too hard, and we must remember that the rim is variable in width:

sometimes, as on the north coast, and in the extreme south-east of the

peninsula, it is very narrow, and much cut up by small spurs running

down to the sea. But as a rule, and especially in Central Portugal,

Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia, it is broad and fertile. Indeed if we

set aside the northern coast--Biscay, Asturias, and Galicia--we may

draw a sharp division between the rich and semi-tropical coast plain,

and the high, wind-swept, and generally barren central plateau. All

the wealth of the land lies in the outer strip: the centre is its most

thinly inhabited and worthless part. Madrid, lying in the very midst

of the plateau, is therefore not the natural centre of the land in

anything save a mathematical sense. It is a new and artificial town of

the sixteenth century, pitched upon as an administrative capital by

the Hapsburg kings; but in spite of the long residence of the court

there, it never grew into a city of the first class. Summing up its

ineligibilities, an acute observer said that Madrid combined ‘the soil

of the Sahara, the sun of Calcutta, the wind of Edinburgh, and the

cold of the North Pole.’ Though in no sense the natural capital of

the country, it has yet a certain military importance as the centre

from which the road-system of Spain radiates. There is, as a glance at

the map will show, no other point from which all the main avenues of

communication with the whole of the provinces can be controlled. An

invader, therefore, who has got possession of it can make any combined

action against himself very difficult. But he must not flatter himself

that the capture of Madrid carries with it the same effect that the

capture of Paris or Berlin or Vienna entails. The provinces have

no such feeling of dependence on the national capital as is common

in other countries. France with Paris occupied by an enemy is like

a body deprived of its head. But for Andalusians or Catalonians or

Galicians the occupation of Madrid had no such paralysing effect. No

sentimental affection for the royal residence--and Madrid was nothing

more--existed. And a government established at Seville or Cadiz, or

any other point, would be just as well (or as ill) obeyed as one that

issued its orders from the sandy banks of the Manzanares.

The main geographical, as well as the main political, characteristics

of Spain are determined by its very complicated mountain-system. It

is a land where the rivers count for little, and the hills for almost

everything, in settling military conditions. In most countries great

rivers are connecting cords of national life: their waters carry the

internal traffic of the realm: the main roads lie along their banks.

But in Spain the streams, in spite of their length and size, are

useless. They mostly flow in deep-sunk beds, far below the level of the

surrounding country-side. Their rapid current is always swirling round

rocks, or dashing over sandbanks: often they flow for mile after mile

between cliffs from which it is impossible to reach the water’s edge.

In the rainy season they are dangerous torrents: in the summer all save

the very largest dwindle down into miserable brooks. A river in Spain

is always a sundering obstacle, never a line of communication. Only for

a few scores of miles near their mouths can any one of them be utilized

for navigation: the Douro can be so employed as far as Freneda on the

frontier of Portugal, the Tagus in good seasons as far as Abrantes, the

Guadalquivir to Seville. For the rest of their long courses they are

not available even for the lightest boats.

Spanish rivers, in short, are of importance not as lines of transit,

but as obstacles. They form many fine positions for defence, but

positions generally rendered dangerous by the fact that a very few

days of drought may open many unsuspected fords, where just before

there had been deep and impassable water. Rivers as broad as the Tagus

below Talavera and the Douro at Toro were occasionally crossed by whole

armies in dry weather. It was always hazardous to trust to them as

permanent lines of defence.

It is the mountains which really require to be studied in detail from

the military point of view. Speaking generally we may describe the

Iberian system--as distinct from the Pyrenees--as consisting of one

chain running roughly from north to south, so as to separate the old

kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, while at right angles to this chain run

a number of others, whose general courses are parallel to each other

and run from east to west. There is no single name for the mountains

which separate Castile and Aragon, nor do they form one continuous

range. They are a number of separate systems, often divided from each

other by wide gaps, and sometimes broadening out into high tablelands.

The central nucleus, from which the rest run out, lies between the

provinces of New Castile and Valencia, from Guadalajara in the former

to Morella in the latter. Here there is a great ganglion of chaotic

sierras, pierced by hardly a single practicable road. Northward, in

the direction of Aragon, they sink down into the plain of the Ebro:

southward they spread out into the lofty plateau of Murcia, but rise

into higher and narrower ranges again as they get near the frontier of

Andalusia.

This block of chains and plateaus forms the central watershed of Spain,

which throws westward the sources of the Douro, Tagus, Guadiana, and

Guadalquivir, and eastward those of the Xucar and Segura. The basins

of these streams and their tributaries form three-fourths of the

Iberian Peninsula. The rest consists mainly of the great valley of the

Ebro: this hardly falls into the system, and is somewhat exceptional.

It has been described as serving as a sort of wet-ditch to the main

fortification of the peninsula. Starting in the western extension of

the Pyrenees, quite close to the Bay of Biscay, it runs diagonally

across Spain, more or less parallel to the Pyrenees, and falls into the

Mediterranean between Catalonia and Valencia. It is more low-lying than

the rest of the main valleys of Spain, is broader, and is not so much

cramped and cut up by mountains running down to it at right angles to

its course.

Behind the Ebro lie, chain after chain, the parallel sierras which

mark off the divisions of the great central plateau of Spain. Arteche

compares them to the waves of a great petrified sea, running some

higher and some lower, but all washing up into jagged crests, with deep

troughs between them.

The first and most northerly of these waves is that which we may call

the range of Old Castile, which separates the basin of the Ebro from

that of the Douro. At one end it links itself to the Pyrenean chain in

the neighbourhood of Santander: at the other it curves round to join

the more central sierras in the direction of Soria and Calatayud. It is

the lowest of the chains which bound the central plateau of Spain, and

is pierced by three practicable roads, of which the most important is

that from Vittoria to Burgos.

Between this chain on the east and the Cantabrian mountains on the

north lies the great plain of Old Castile and Leon, the heart of the

elder Spanish monarchy, in the days when Aragon was still independent

and Andalusia remained in the hands of the Moor. It is a fairly

productive corn-producing land, studded with ancient cities such as

Burgos, Palencia, Valladolid, Toro, Zamora, Salamanca. The _Tierra de

Campos_ (land of the plains), as it was called, was the granary of

Northern Spain, the most civilized part of the kingdom, and the only

one where there existed a fairly complete system of roads. For want of

the isolated mountain chains which cut up most provinces of the Iberian

Peninsula, it was hard to defend and easy to overrun. If the mountains

that divide it from the Ebro valley are once passed, there is no way of

stopping the invader till he reaches the border of Asturias, Galicia,

or New Castile. The whole plain forms the valley of the Upper Douro

and its tributaries, the Adaja, Pisuerga, Esla, Tormes, and the rest.

It narrows down towards Portugal, as the mountains of Galicia on the

one side and Estremadura on the other throw out their spurs to north

and south. Hence the Lower Douro valley, after the Portuguese frontier

has been passed, is a defile rather than a plain. Before Oporto and

the estuary are reached, there are many places where the mountains on

either side come right down to the river’s edge.

The second chain is much more important, and more strongly marked:

it divides Old from New Castile, the valley of the Douro from that

of the Tagus. In its central and western parts it is really a double

range, with two narrow valleys between its chief ridges. These valleys

are drained by the Zezere and Alagon, two tributaries of the Tagus

which flow parallel for many scores of miles to the broad river which

they feed. If we call this great system of mountains the chain of New

Castile it is only for convenience’ sake: the Spaniards and Portuguese

have no common name for them. In the east they are styled the Sierra

de Ayllon; above Madrid they are known as the Guadarrama--a name

sometimes extended to the whole chain. When they become double, west

of Madrid, the northern chain is the Sierra de Gata, the southern the

Sierra de Gredos. Finally in Portugal the extension of the Sierra de

Gata is called the Sierra da Estrella, the southern parallel ridge

the Sierra do Moradal. The whole system forms a very broad, desolate,

and lofty belt of hills between the Tagus and Douro, through which

the practicable passes are few and difficult. Those requiring notice

are (1) the Somosierra Pass, through which runs the great northern

road from Burgos to Madrid: its name is well remembered owing to the

extraordinary way in which Napoleon succeeded in forcing it (against

all the ordinary rules of war) in the winter of 1808. (2) There is

a group of three passes, all within twelve miles of each other,

across the Guadarrama, through which there debouch on to Madrid the

main roads from North-western Spain--those from (_a_) Valladolid and

Segovia, (_b_) from Astorga, Tordesillas, and Arevalo, (_c_) from

Salamanca by Avila. After this group of passes there is a long space

of impracticable hills, till we come to the chief road from north to

south, parallel to the Portuguese frontier: it comes down the valley

of the Alagon from Salamanca, by Baños and Plasencia, on to the great

Roman bridge of Alcantara, the main passage over the Middle Tagus.

This is a bad road through a desolate country, but the exigencies of

war caused it to be used continually by the French and English armies,

whenever they had to transfer themselves from the valley of the Douro

to that of the Tagus. Occasionally they employed a still worse route,

a little further west, from Ciudad Rodrigo by Perales to Alcantara.

When we get within the Portuguese frontier, we find a road parallel to

the last, from Almeida by Guarda to Abrantes, also a difficult route,

but like it in perpetual use: usually, when the French marched from

Salamanca to Alcantara, Wellington moved in a corresponding way from

near Almeida to Abrantes. This road runs along the basin of the Zezere,

though not down in the trough of the river, but high up the hillsides

above it. Spanish and Portuguese roads, as we shall see, generally

avoid the river banks and run along the slopes far above them.

The next great chain across the Peninsula is that which separates the

barren and sandy valley of the Upper Tagus from the still more desolate

and melancholy plateau of La Mancha, the basin of the Guadiana. Of

all the regions of Central Spain, this is the most thinly peopled

and uninviting. In the whole valley there are only two towns of any

size, Ciudad Real, the capital of La Mancha, and Badajoz, the frontier

fortress against Portugal. The mountains north of the Guadiana are

called first the Sierra de Toledo, then the Sierra de Guadalupe, lastly

on the Portuguese frontier the Sierra de San Mamed. Their peculiarity,

as opposed to the other cross-ranges of the Peninsula, is that at their

eastern end they do not unite directly with the mountains of Valencia,

but leave a broad gap of upland, through which the roads from Madrid to

Murcia and Madrid to Valencia take their way. When the Sierra de Toledo

once begins roads are very few. There are practically only three--(1)

Toledo by San Vincente to Merida, a most break-neck route winding among

summits for forty miles; (2) Almaraz by Truxillo to Merida, the main

path from Tagus to Guadiana, and the most used, though it is difficult

and steep; (3) Alcantara by Albuquerque to Badajoz, a bad military road

parallel to the Portuguese frontier, continuing the similar route from

Salamanca to Alcantara.

Leaving the barren basin of the Guadiana to proceed southward, we find

across our path a range of first-rate importance, the southern boundary

of the central plateaux of Spain: dropping down from its crest we are

no longer among high uplands, but in the broad low-lying semi-tropical

plain of Andalusia, the richest region of Spain. The chain between the

fertile valley of the Guadalquivir and the barren plateau of La Mancha

is known for the greater part of its course as the Sierra Morena, but

in its western section it takes the name of Sierra de Constantino. The

passes across it require special notice: the most eastern and the most

important is that of Despeña Perros, through which passes the high road

from Madrid to Cordova, Seville, and Cadiz. At its southern exit was

fought the fight of Baylen, in which the armies of Napoleon received

their first great check by the surrender of Dupont and his 20,000 men

on July 23, 1808. Higher up the defile lies another historic spot, on

which Christian and Moor fought the decisive battle for the mastery

of Spain in the early years of the thirteenth century, the well-known

fight of Las Navas de Tolosa. The Despeña Perros has two side-passes

close to its left and right: the former is that of San Estevan del

Puerto: the latter is known as the ‘King’s Gate’ (Puerto del Rey). All

these three defiles present tremendous difficulties to an assailant

from the north, yet all were carried in a single rush by the armies of

Soult and Sebastiani in 1810. The central pass of the Sierra Morena

lies ninety miles to the left, and is of much less importance, as it

starts from the most arid corner of La Mancha, and does not connect

itself with any of the great roads from the north. It leads down on to

Cordova from Hinojosa. Again sixty miles to the west three more passes

come down on to Seville, the one by Llerena, the second by Monasterio,

the third by Fregenal: they lead to Badajoz and Merida. These are

easier routes through a less rugged country: they were habitually used

by Soult in 1811 and 1812, when, from his Andalusian base at Seville,

he used to go north to besiege or to relieve the all-important fortress

of Badajoz.

Last of all the great Spanish chains is that which lies close along the

Mediterranean Sea, forming the southern edge of the fertile Andalusian

plain. It is the Sierra Nevada, which, though neither the longest nor

the broadest of the ranges of the south, contains the loftiest peaks in

Spain, Mulhaçen and La Veleta. This chain runs from behind Gibraltar

along the shore, till it joins the mountains of Murcia, leaving only a

very narrow coast-strip between its foot and the southern sea. Three

roads cut it in its western half, which, starting from Granada, Ronda,

and Antequera all come down to the shore at, or in the neighbourhood

of, the great port of Malaga. The parts of the coast-line that are far

from that city are only accessible by following difficult roads that

run close to the water’s edge.

We have still to deal with two corners of the Iberian Peninsula,

which do not fall into any of the great valleys that we have

described--Galicia and Northern Portugal in the north-west, and

Catalonia in the north-east. The geographical conditions of the former

region depend on the Cantabrian Mountains, the western continuation of

the Pyrenees. This chain, after running for many miles as a single

ridge, forks in the neighbourhood of the town of Leon. One branch

keeps on in its original direction, and runs by the coast till it

reaches the Atlantic at Cape Finisterre. The other turns south-west

and divides Spain from Portugal as far as the sea. The angle between

these forking ranges is drained by a considerable river, the Minho.

The basins of this stream and its tributary the Sil, form the greater

part of the province of Galicia. Their valleys are lofty, much cut up

by cross-spurs, and generally barren. The access to them from Central

Spain is by two openings. The main one is the high road from Madrid to

Corunna by Astorga; it does not follow the course of either the Sil or

the Minho, but charges cross-ridge after cross-ridge of the spurs of

the Galician hills, till at last it comes down to the water, and forks

into two routes leading the one to Corunna, the other to the still more

important arsenal of Ferrol. The other gate of Galicia is a little to

the south of Astorga, where a pass above the town of Puebla de Sanabria

gives access to a steep and winding road parallel to the Portuguese

frontier, which finally gets into the valley of the Minho, and turns

down to reach the port of Vigo. It will be remembered that Sir John

Moore, in his famous retreat, hesitated for some time at Astorga

between the Vigo and Corunna roads, and finally chose the latter. His

judgement was undoubtedly correct, but the best alternative was bad,

for in winter even the Madrid-Corunna road, the main artery of this

part of Spain, is distressing enough to an army. It does not follow any

well-marked valley, but cuts across four separate ranges, every one of

which in January was a nursery of torrents in its lower slopes, and

an abode of snow in its upper levels. Besides the roads with which we

have already dealt there is a third important line of communication in

Galicia, that by the narrow coast-plain of the Atlantic, from Corunna

by Santiago to Vigo, and thence into Portugal as far as Oporto. This

would be a good road but for the innumerable river-mouths, small and

great, which it has to cross: the road passes each stream just where

it ceases to be tidal, and at each is fronted at right angles by a

defensible position, which, if held by a competent enemy, is difficult

to force from the front, and still more difficult to turn by a detour

up-stream. Nevertheless it was by this route that Soult successfully

invaded Northern Portugal in the spring of 1809. It must be remembered

that he was only opposed by bands of peasants not even organized into

the loosest form of militia.

The geography of Catalonia, the last Iberian region with which we have

to deal, is more simple than that of Galicia. The land is formed by a

broad mountain belt running out from the eastern end of the Pyrenees,

parallel to the Mediterranean. From this chain the slopes run down

and form on the eastern side a coast-plain, generally rather narrow,

on the western a series of parallel valleys drained by tributaries of

the Segre, the most important affluent of the Ebro. They all unite

near Lerida, an important town and a great centre of roads. But two

considerable rivers, the Ter and the Llobregat, have small basins

of their own in the heart of the central mountain mass, which open

down into the coast-plain by defiles, the one blocked by the peak

of Montserrat, the other by the town of Gerona. During the greater

part of the Peninsular War the French held the larger share of the

shoreland, dominating it from the great fortress of Barcelona, which

they had seized by treachery ere hostilities began. In 1811 they

captured Tarragona also, the second capital of the sea coast. But they

never succeeded in holding down all the small upland plains, and the

minor passes that lead from one to the other. Hunted out of one the

Spanish army took refuge in the next, and, though it dwindled down

ultimately to a mass of guerilla bands, was never caught _en masse_

and exterminated. There were too many bolt-holes among the network

of hills, and the invaders never succeeded in stopping them all, so

that down to the end of the war the patriots always maintained a

precarious existence inland, descending occasionally to the shore to

get ammunition and stores from the English squadrons which haunted the

coast. They were supplied and reinforced from the Balearic Isles, which

Napoleon could never hope to touch, for his power (like that of the

witches of old) vanished when it came to running water. The survival

of the Catalan resistance after the French had drawn a complete cordon

around the hill-country, holding the whole coast-plain on the one hand,

and Lerida and the Segre valley on the other, is one of the incidents

of the war most creditable to Spanish constancy.

Having dealt with the physical geography of Spain, it is necessary

for us to point out the way in which the natural difficulties of the

country had influenced its main lines of communication. Roads always

take the ‘line of least resistance’ in early days, and seek for easy

passes, not for short cuts. The idea that ‘time is money,’ and that

instead of going round two sides of a triangle it may be worth

while to cut a new path across its base, in spite of all engineering

difficulties, was one very unfamiliar to the Spaniard. Nothing shows

more clearly the state of mediaeval isolation in which the kingdom

still lay in 1808 than the condition of its roads. Wherever the country

presented any serious obstacles, little or no attempt had been made to

grapple with them since the days of the Romans. The energetic Charles

III, alone among the kings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,

had done something to improve the system of intercommunication. He

had, for example, superseded the old break-neck road from the plains

of Leon into Galicia, by building the fine new _chaussée_ from Astorga

to Villafranca by Manzanal; but among the line of Hapsburg and Bourbon

sovereigns Charles was a rare exception. Under the imbecile rule

of his son (or rather of Godoy) improvements ceased, and internal

communications were as much neglected as any other branch of state

management. What roads there were, when the war of 1808 broke out, were

in a state of dreadful neglect. The Spaniard was still too prone to

go round an intolerable distance rather than attempt a serious piece

of engineering work. Let us take, for example, the northern coast of

Spain: the Cantabrian range is no doubt a most serious obstacle to

intercourse between Castile and Leon, on the one side, and the maritime

provinces of Asturias and Biscay on the other. But who would have

conceived it possible that in a length of 300 miles of mountain, there

should be no more than five roads practicable for wheeled traffic and

artillery? Yet this was so: to get down from the central plateau to

the coast there are only available these five routes--one from Leon

to Oviedo, one from Burgos to Santander, one from Burgos to Bilbao,

one from Vittoria to Bilbao, and one from Vittoria to San Sebastian

and Irun. There were many other points at which a division travelling

in light order without guns or baggage could cross the watershed--as

was shown in Blake’s flight from Reynosa and Ney’s invasion of the

Asturias. But for an army travelling with all its _impedimenta_ such

bypaths were impracticable.

Let us take another part of the Peninsula--its eastern side. The

ancient separation between Aragon and Castile is fully reflected by

the utter isolation of the two for intercommunication. To get from

Madrid to the east coast there are only three roads suitable for

wheeled traffic: one goes by the main gap in the hills by Chinchilla to

Murcia, another by Requeña to Valencia. The third passes by Calatayud

to Saragossa and ultimately to Barcelona. Between it and the Valencia

road there is a gap of no less than 120 miles unpierced by any good

practicable line of communication[69]. This being so, we begin to

understand how it was that the operations on the eastern side of Spain,

during the whole of the struggle, were a sort of independent episode

that never exercised any great influence on the main theatre of the

war, or, on the other hand, was much affected by the progress of the

strife in Castile or Portugal. Soult’s conquest of Andalusia did not

help Suchet to conquer Valencia. On the other hand, when the latter

did, in January, 1812, succeed in his attempt to subdue the eastern

coast-line, it did not much affect him that Wellington was storming

Ciudad Rodrigo and pressing back the French in the west. He was able

to hold on to Valencia till the allies, in 1813, got possession of the

upper valley of the Ebro and the great road from Madrid to Saragossa

and Lerida, after the battle of Vittoria. It was only then that his

flank was really turned, and that he was compelled to retreat and to

abandon his southern conquests.

[69] The bad cross-roads Cuenca-Teruel and Molina-Teruel hardly

count.

Summing up the general characteristics of the road-system of Spain, we

note first that the main routes are rather at right angles to the great

rivers than parallel to them. The sole exception is to be found in the

valley of the Ebro, where the only good cross-road of Northern Spain

does follow the river-bank from Logroño and Tudela on to Saragossa and

Lerida.

Just because the roads do not cling to the valleys, but strike across

them at right angles, they are always crossing watersheds by means of

difficult passes. And so there is hardly a route in the whole Peninsula

where it is possible to find fifty miles without a good defensive

position drawn across the path. Moreover, the continual passes make

the question of supplies very difficult: in crossing a plain an army

can live, more or less, on the supplies of the country-side; but among

mountains and defiles there is no population, and therefore no food

to be had. Hence an army on the move must take with it all that it

consumes, by means of a heavy wagon train, or an enormous convoy of

pack-mules. But only the best roads are suitable for wheeled traffic,

and so the lines practicable for a large host are very restricted in

number. The student is often tempted to consider the movements of the

rival generals very slow. The explanation is simply that to transfer

an army from one river-basin to another was a serious matter. It was

necessary to spend weeks in collecting at the base food and transport

sufficient to support the whole force till it reached its goal. In 1811

or 1812 the French and English were continually moving up and down the

Portuguese frontier parallel to each other, the one from Salamanca to

Badajoz, the other from Almeida or Guarda to Elvas. But to prepare for

one of these flittings was such a serious matter that by the time that

the army was able to move, the enemy had usually got wind of the plan,

and was able to follow the movement on his own side of the frontier.

There were months of preparation required before a few weeks of active

operations, and when the concentration was over and the forces massed,

they could only keep together as long as the food held out, and then

had to disperse again in order to live. This was what was meant by the

old epigram, that ‘in Spain large armies starve, and small armies get

beaten.’

Half the strategy of the campaigns of 1811-12-13 consisted in one of

the combatants secretly collecting stores, concentrating his whole

army, and then dashing at some important part of his adversary’s

line, before the other could mass his forces in a corresponding way.

If prompt, the assailant might gain a fortnight, in which he might

either try to demolish the enemy in detail before he could concentrate,

or else to take from him some important position or town. In 1811

Marmont and Dorsenne played this trick on Wellington, during the short

campaign of El Bodon and Aldea da Ponte. They relieved Ciudad Rodrigo,

and nearly caught some divisions of the English army before the rest

could join. But missing the instant blow, and allowing Wellington time

to draw in his outlying troops, they failed and went home. In 1812,

on the other hand, the British general successfully played off this

device on the French. He first concentrated in the north, and captured

Ciudad Rodrigo in eleven days, before Marmont could mass his scattered

divisions; then going hastily south he took Badajoz in exactly the same

way, storming it after only nineteen days of siege. Soult drew his army

together at the news of Wellington’s move, but had to bring troops from

such distances, and to collect so much food, that he arrived within

three marches of Badajoz only to hear that the place had just fallen.

In dealing with the main geographical facts of the war it is fair to

recollect that an invasion of Spain from France is one of the most

difficult of undertakings, because the whole river and mountain system

of the Peninsula lies _across_ the main line of advance from Bayonne

to Cadiz, which the invader must adopt. While the French conquest

must be pushed from north to south, both the streams and the Sierras

of Spain all run at right angles to this direction, i.e. from east to

west. In advancing from the Pyrenees to Madrid, and again from Madrid

to Seville and Cadiz, the invader has to cross every main river--Ebro,

Douro, Tagus, Guadiana, and Guadalquivir--and to force the passes of

every main range. Moreover, as he advances southward, he has to keep

his flanks safe against disturbance from the two mountainous regions,

Catalonia and Portugal, which lie along the eastern and western coasts

of the Peninsula. Unless the whole breadth of Spain, from the Atlantic

to the Mediterranean, be occupied step by step as the invader moves on

towards the Straits of Gibraltar, he can always be molested and have

his lines of communication with France threatened. In the end it may

be said that Napoleon’s whole scheme of conquest was shipwrecked upon

the blunder of attacking Andalusia and Cadiz while Portugal was still

unsubdued. Wellington’s constant sallies out of that country upon the

French flank, in Leon and Estremadura, detained such large forces to

protect the valleys of the Central Douro and Tagus that enough men were

never found to finish the conquest of the south and east. And finally

one crushing victory at Salamanca, in the plains of Leon, so threatened

the invader’s line of touch with France, that he had to abandon the

whole south of Spain in order to concentrate an army large enough to

force Wellington back from Burgos and the great northern road.

On the other hand, one tremendous advantage possessed by the French

in the central years of the war must be remembered. It is manifest

that Madrid is the only really important road-centre in Spain, and

that its undisturbed possession by the French in 1809-11 gave them

the advantage of being able to operate from a single point, against

enemies who lay in a vast semicircle around, with no good cross-roads

to join them and enable them to work together. The small ‘Army of the

Centre,’ which was always kept in and around Madrid, could be used as a

reserve for any other of the French armies, and transferred to join it

in a few marches, while it was infinitely more difficult to unite the

various forces lying on an outer circle at Astorga, Almeida, Abrantes,

and Cadiz, which the Spaniards and the British kept in the field. In

short, in estimating the difficulties of the two parties, the advantage

of the central position must be weighed against the disadvantage of

long and exposed lines of communication.

One of the cardinal blunders of Napoleon’s whole scheme for the

conquest of the Peninsula was that he persisted in treating it as if

it were German or Italian soil, capable of supporting an army on the

march. His troops were accustomed to live on the country-side while

crossing Central Europe, and therefore made no proper preparations

for supplying themselves by other means than plunder. But in Spain

there are only a few districts where this can be done: it may be

possible to get forward without an enormous train of convoys in

Andalusia, the coast plain of Valencia, and certain parts of the rather

fertile plateau of Leon, the wheat-bearing _Tierra de Campos_. But

over four-fifths of the Peninsula, an army that tries to feed on the

country-side will find itself at the point of starvation in a few days,

and be forced to disperse in order to live.

Till he had seen Spain with his own eyes Napoleon might perhaps

have been excused for ignoring the fact that his ordinary method of

‘making war support itself’ was not in this case possible. But even

after he had marched from Bayonne to Madrid, and then from Madrid to

Astorga, in 1808, he persisted in refusing to see facts as they were.

We find him on his way back to Paris from the campaign uttering the

extraordinary statement that ‘Spain is a much better country than he

had ever supposed, and that he had no idea what a magnificent present

he had made to his brother Joseph till he had seen it[70].’ Of his

utter failure to grasp the difficulties of the country we may get a

fair conception from his orders, given at the same time, to Marshal

Soult, who was at that moment occupied in pushing Sir John Moore

towards Corunna. He told the Duke of Dalmatia that if he reached Lugo

on January 9, and the English got away safely by sea, he was to march

on Oporto, where he ought to arrive on the first of February; after

seizing that city he was to go on to Lisbon, which he might reach on or

about February 10. As a matter of fact Soult saw the English depart,

and occupied Corunna on January 19, but his army was so utterly worn

out, and his stores so entirely exhausted, that with the best will in

the world he could not move again till February 20, only took Oporto on

March 29, and had not yet started for Lisbon when Wellesley suddenly

fell on him and drove him out of the country on May 12, 1809. The

Emperor, in short, had given Soult orders executable perhaps, according

to the distance, in Lombardy or Bavaria, but utterly absurd when

applied to a country where roads are few and bad, with a defile or a

river crossing the path at every few miles, and where food has to be

carefully collected before a move, and taken on with the army by means

of enormous convoys. Moreover the month was January, when every brook

had become a raging mountain stream, and every highland was covered

with snow! With such conceptions of the task before him, it is not

wonderful that Napoleon was continually issuing wholly impracticable

orders. The one that we have just quoted was sent out from Valladolid:

how much worse would the case be when the Emperor persisted in

directing affairs from Paris or Vienna, the last news that had reached

him from the front being now several weeks old! With all his genius he

never thoroughly succeeded in grasping the state of affairs, and to the

very last continued to send directions that would have been wise enough

in Central Europe, but happened to be inapplicable in the Iberian

Peninsula.

[70] He said this to De Pradt (_Révolutions d’Espagne_, p. 224).

It is only fair to Napoleon to add that his Spanish enemies, who ought

at least to have known the limitations of their own road-system, and

the disabilities of their half-starved armies, used habitually to

produce plans of operations far more fantastically impossible than

any that he ever drafted. They would arrange far-reaching schemes,

for the co-operation of forces based on the most remote corners of

the Peninsula, without attempting to work out the ‘logistics’ of the

movement. The invariable result was that such enterprises either ended

in disaster, or at the best came to a stop after the first few marches,

because some vital point of the calculation had already been proved to

have been made on erroneous data.

SECTION II: CHAPTER II

THE SPANISH ARMY IN 1808

When the English student begins to investigate the Peninsular War

in detail, he finds that, as regards the Spanish armies and their

behaviour, he starts with a strong hostile prejudice. The Duke of

Wellington in his dispatches, and still more in his private letters

and his table-talk, was always enlarging on the folly and arrogance

of the Spanish generals with whom he had to co-operate, and on the

untrustworthiness of their troops. Napier, the one military classic

whom most Englishmen have read, is still more emphatic and far more

impressive, since he writes in a very judicial style, and with the most

elaborate apparatus of references and authorities. When the reader

begins to work through the infinite number of Peninsular diaries of

British officers and men (for there are a very considerable number of

writers from among the rank and file) the impression left upon him is

much the same. It must be confessed that for the most part they had a

very poor opinion of our allies.

Before allowing ourselves to be carried away by the almost unanimous

verdict of our own countrymen, it is only fair to examine the state and

character of the Spanish army when the war broke out. Only when we know

its difficulties can we judge with fairness of its conduct, or decide

upon its merits and shortcomings.

The armed force which served under the banners of Charles IV in the

spring of 1808 consisted of 131,000 men, of whom 101,000 were regulars

and 30,000 embodied militia. The latter had been under arms since 1804,

and composed the greater part of the garrisons of the seaports of

Spain, all of which had to be protected against possible descents of

English expeditions[71].

[71] See Appendix, containing the state of the Spanish army in

1808.

Of the 101,000 men of the regular army, however, not all were available

for the defence of the country. While the war with Russia was still in

progress, Bonaparte had requested the Spanish government to furnish

him with a strong division for use in the North [March, 1807], and in

consequence the Marquis of La Romana had been sent to the Baltic with

15,000 men, the picked regiments of the army. There remained therefore

only 86,000 regulars within the kingdom. A very cursory glance down

the Spanish army-list of 1808 is sufficient to show that this force

was far from being in a satisfactory condition for either offensive or

defensive operations.

It is well worth while to look at the details of its composition. The

infantry consisted of three sorts of troops--the Royal Guard, the line

regiments, and the foreign corps in Spanish pay. For Spain, more than

any other European state, had kept up the old seventeenth-century

fashion of hiring foreign mercenaries on a large scale. Even in the

Royal Guard half the infantry were composed of ‘Walloon Guards,’ a

survival from the day when the Netherlands had been part of the broad

dominions of the Hapsburg kings. The men of these three battalions

were no longer mainly Walloons, for Belgium had been a group of

French departments for the last thirteen years. There were Germans

and other foreigners of all sorts in the ranks, as well as a large

number of native Spaniards. There were also six regiments of Swiss

mercenaries--over 10,000 bayonets--and in these the men in the ranks

did really come from Switzerland and Germany, though there was a

sprinkling among them of strangers from all lands who had ‘left their

country for their country’s good.’ There were also one Neapolitan and

three Irish regiments. These latter were survivals from the days of

the ‘Penal Laws,’ when young Irishmen left their homes by thousands

every year to take service with France or Spain, in the hope of getting

some day a shot at the hated redcoats. The regiments bore the names

of Hibernia, Irlanda, and Ultonia (i.e. Ulster). They were very much

under their proper establishment, for of late years Irish recruits

had begun to run short, even after the ’98: they now took service in

France and not in Spain. The three Irish corps in 1808 had only 1,900

men under arms, instead of the 5,000 which they should have produced;

and of those the large majority were not real Irish, but waifs of all

nationalities. Of late native Spaniards had been drafted in, to keep

the regiments from dying out. On the other hand we shall find that not

only the foreign regiments but the whole Spanish army was still full

of officers of Irish name and blood, the sons and grandsons of the

original emigrants of two generations back. An astounding proportion

of the officers who rose to some note during the war bore Irish names,

and were hereditary soldiers of fortune, who justified their existence

by the unwavering courage which they always showed, in a time when

obstinate perseverance was the main military virtue. We need only

mention Blake, the two O’Donnells, Lacy, Sarsfield, O’Neill, O’Daly,

Mahony, O’Donahue. If none of them showed much strategical skill, yet

their constant readiness to fight, which no series of defeats could

tame, contrasts very well with the spiritless behaviour of a good many

of the Spanish generals. No officer of Irish blood was ever found among

the cowards, and hardly one among the traitors[72].

[72] The minister O’Farrill and General Kindelan were the chief

exceptions.

The ten foreign corps furnished altogether about 13,000 men to the

Spanish regular army. The rest of the infantry was composed of

thirty-five regiments of troops of the line, of three battalions

each, and twelve single-battalion regiments of light infantry. They

were theoretically territorial, like our own infantry of to-day, and

mostly bore local names derived from the provinces--Asturias, Toledo,

Estremadura, and so forth. All the light infantry corps belonged to

the old kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre, which were therefore scantily

represented in the nomenclature of the ordinary line regiments.

There were altogether 147 battalions of Spanish infantry, excluding

the foreign troops, and if all of these had been up to the proper

establishment of 840 men, the total would have amounted to 98,000

bayonets. But the state of disorganization was such that as a matter of

fact there were only 58,000 under arms. The regiments which Napoleon

had requisitioned for service in the North had been more or less

brought up to a war-footing, and each showed on an average 2,000 men

in the ranks. But many of the corps in the interior of Spain displayed

the most lamentable figures: e.g. the three battalions of the regiment

of Estremadura had only 770 men between them, Cordova 793, and Navarre

822--showing 250 men to the battalion instead of the proper 840.

Theoretically there should have been no difficulty in keeping them

up to their proper strength, as machinery for recruiting them had

been duly provided. Voluntary enlistment was the first resource: but

when that did not suffice to keep the ranks full, there was a kind

of limited conscription called the _Quinta_[73] to fall back upon.

This consisted in balloting for men in the regimental district, under

certain rules which allowed an enormous number of exemptions--e.g. all

skilled artisans and all middle-class townsfolk were free from the

burden--so that the agricultural labourers had to supply practically

the whole contingent. Substitutes were allowed, if by any means the

conscript could afford to pay for them. The conscription therefore

should have kept the regiments up to their proper strength, and if

many of them had only a third of their complement under arms, it was

merely due to the general demoralization of the times. Under Godoy’s

administration money was always wanting, more especially since Napoleon

had begun to levy his monthly tribute of 6,000,000 francs from the

Spanish monarchy, and the gaps in the ranks probably represented

enforced economy as well as corrupt administration.

[73] So called because it was originally supposed to take the

_fifth_ man.

The 30,000 embodied militia, which formed the remainder of the Spanish

infantry, had been under arms since 1804, doing garrison duty; they

seem in many respects to have been equal to the line battalions in

efficiency. They bore names derived from the towns in whose districts

they had been raised--Badajoz, Lugo, Alcazar, and so forth. Their

officering was also strictly local, all ranks being drawn from the

leading families of their districts, and seems to have been quite

as efficient as that of the line. Moreover their ranks were, on the

average, much fuller than those of the regular regiments--only two

battalions in the total of forty-three showed less than 550 bayonets on

parade.

It is when we turn to the cavalry that we come to the weakest part of

the Spanish army. There were twelve regiments of heavy and twelve of

light horse, each with a nominal establishment of 700 sabres, which

should have given 16,800 men for the whole force. There were only about

15,000 officers and troopers embodied, but this was a small defect. A

more real weakness lay in the fact that there were only 9,000 horses

for the 15,000 men. It is difficult for even a wealthy government,

like our own, to keep its cavalry properly horsed, and that of Charles

IV was naturally unable to cope with this tiresome military problem.

The chargers were not only too few, but generally of bad quality,

especially those of the heavy cavalry: of those which were to be

found in the regimental stables a very large proportion were not fit

for service. When the five regiments which Napoleon demanded for the

expedition to Denmark had been provided with 540 horses each and sent

off, the mounts of the rest of the army were in such a deplorable

state that some corps had not the power to horse one-third of their

troopers: e.g. in June, 1808, the Queen’s Regiment, No. 2 of the

heavy cavalry, had 202 horses for 668 men; the 12th Regiment had 259

horses for 667 men; the 1st Chasseurs--more extraordinary still--only

185 horses for 577 men. It resulted from this penury of horses that

when Napoleon made a second demand for Spanish cavalry, asking for a

division of 2,000 sabres to aid Junot in invading Portugal, that force

had to be made up by putting together the mounted men of no less than

ten regiments, each contributing two or at the most three squadrons and

leaving the rest of its men dismounted at the dépôt.

Even if the cavalry had all been properly mounted, they would have been

far too few in proportion to the other arms, only 15,000 out of a total

force of 130,000--one in eight; whereas in the time of the Napoleonic

wars one in six, or even one in five, was considered the proper

complement. In the Waterloo campaign the French had the enormous number

of 21,000 cavalry to 83,000 infantry--one to four. What with original

paucity, and with want of remounts, the Spaniards took the field in

1808, when the insurrection began, with a ridiculously small number of

horsemen. At Medina de Rio Seco they had only 750 horsemen to 22,000

foot-soldiers, at Baylen only 1,200 to 16,000. Later in the war they

succeeded in filling up the ranks of the old cavalry regiments, and

in raising many new ones. But the gain in number was not in the least

accompanied by a gain in efficiency. For the whole six years of the

struggle the mounted arm was the weakest point of their hosts. Again

and again it disgraced itself by allowing itself to be beaten by half

its own numbers, or by absconding early in the fight and abandoning

its infantry. It acquired, and merited, a detestable reputation, and

it is hard to find half a dozen engagements in which it behaved even

reasonably well[74]. When Wellington was made generalissimo of the

Spanish armies in 1813 he would not bring it up to the front at all,

and though he took 40,000 Spaniards over the Pyrenees, there was

not a horseman among them. It is hard to account for the thorough

worthlessness of these squadrons, even when we make allowance for all

the difficulties of the time: Spain was notoriously deficient in decent

cavalry officers when the war began. The horses were inferior to the

French, and the equipment bad. From early disasters the troopers

contracted a demoralization which they could never shake off. But

granting all this, it is still impossible to explain the consistent

misbehaviour of these evasive squadrons. The officers, no doubt, had a

harder task in organizing their new levies than those of the infantry

and artillery, but it is curious that they should never have succeeded

in learning their business even after four or five years of war.

[74] The successful and opportune charge of the _regimiento del

Rey_ at Talavera was about the only case which ever came under

English eyes.

The artillery of the Spanish army, on the other hand, earned on the

whole a good reputation. This was not the result of proper preparation.

When the struggle began it consisted of thirty-four batteries of field

artillery, six of horse, and twenty-one garrison batteries (_compañias

fijas_), with a total of 6,500 men. Forty batteries--that is to say

240 guns or somewhat less, for in some cases there seem to have been

only four instead of six pieces in the battery--was according to the

standard of 1808 a mediocre allowance to an army of 130,000 men, only

about two-thirds of what it should have been[75]. But this was not the

worst. Deducting four fully-horsed batteries, which had been taken

off by Napoleon to Denmark, there remained in Spain four horse and

thirty-two field batteries. These were practically unable to move, for

they were almost entirely destitute of horses. For the 216 guns and

their caissons there were only in hand 400 draught animals! When the

war began, the artillery had to requisition, and more or less train,

3,000 horses or mules before they could move from their barracks! I

do not know any fact that illustrates better the state of Spanish

administration under the rule of Godoy. The raising of the great

insurrectionary armies in the summer of 1808 ought to have led to an

enormous increase to the artillery arm, but the trained men were so few

that the greatest difficulty was found in organizing new batteries.

Something was done by turning the marine artillery of the fleet into

land troops, and there were a few hundreds of the militia who had been

trained to work guns. But the officers necessary for the training and

officering of new batteries were so scarce, that for many months no

fresh forces of the artillery arm could take the field. In the autumn

of 1808, at the time of the battles of Espinosa and Tudela, if we

carefully add up the number of guns brought into action by the five

armies of Galicia, Estremadura, Aragon, the ‘Centre’ (i.e. Andalusia

and Castile), and Catalonia, we do not find a piece more than the 240

which existed at the outbreak of the war. That is to say, the Spaniards

had raised 100,000 new levies of infantry, without any corresponding

extension of the artillery arm. During the campaign the conduct of the

corps seems on the whole to have been very good, compared with that of

the other arms. This was to be expected, as they were old soldiers to a

much greater extent than either the infantry or the cavalry. They seem

to have attained a fair skill with their weapons, and to have stuck

to them very well. We often hear of gunners cut down or bayonetted

over their pieces, seldom of a general bolt to the rear. For this very

reason the personnel of the batteries suffered terribly: every defeat

meant the capture of some dozens of guns, and the cutting up of the men

who served them. It was as much as the government could do to keep up

a moderate number of batteries, by supplying new guns and amalgamating

the remnants of those which had been at the front. Each batch of lost

battles in 1808-10 entailed the loss and consequent reconstruction of

the artillery. If, in spite of this, we seldom hear complaints as to

its conduct, it must be taken as a high compliment to the arm. But

as long as Spanish generals persisted in fighting pitched battles,

and getting their armies dispersed, a solid proportion of artillery

to infantry could never be established. Its average strength may be

guessed from the fact that at Albuera the best army that Spain then

possessed put in line 16,300 men with only fourteen guns, less than

one gun per thousand men--while Napoleon (as we have already noted)

believed that five per thousand was the ideal, and often managed in

actual fact to have three. In the latter years of the war the pieces

were almost always drawn by mules, yoked tandem-fashion, and not ridden

by drivers but goaded by men walking at their side--the slowest and

most unsatisfactory form of traction that can be imagined. Hence came,

in great part, their inability to manœuvre.

[75] Napoleon had an ideal proportion of five guns per 1,000 men.

But, as we shall show in the next chapter, while dealing with the

French armies, he never succeeded in reaching anything like this

standard in the Peninsula. Yet his opponents were always worse

off.

Of engineers Spain in 1808 had 169 officers dispersed over the kingdom.

The corps had no proper rank and file. But there was a regiment of

sappers, 1,000 strong, which was officered from the engineers. There

was no army service corps, no military train, no organized commissariat

of any kind. When moving about a Spanish army depended either on

contractors who undertook to provide horses and wagons driven by

civilians, or more frequently on the casual sweeping in by requisition

of all the mules, oxen, and carts of the unhappy district in which it

was operating. In this respect, as in so many others, Spain was still

in the Middle Ages. The fact that there was no permanent arrangement

for providing for the food of the army is enough in itself to account

for many of its disasters. If, like the British, the Spaniards had

possessed money to pay for what they took, things might have worked

somewhat better. Or if, like the French, they had possessed an

organized military train, and no scruples, they might have contrived

to get along at the cost of utterly ruining the country-side. But

as things stood, depending on incapable civil commissaries and the

unwilling contributions of the local authorities, they were generally

on the edge of starvation. Sometimes they got over the edge, and then

the army, in spite of the proverbial frugality of the Spanish soldier,

simply dispersed. It is fair to the men to say that they generally

straggled back to the front sooner or later, when they had succeeded in

filling their stomachs, and got incorporated in their own or some other

regiment. It is said that by the end of the war there were soldiers who

had, in their fashion, served in as many as ten different corps during

the six years of the struggle.

Summing up the faults of the Spanish army, its depleted battalions,

its small and incompetent cavalry force, its insufficient proportion

of artillery, its utter want of commissariat, we find that its main

source of weakness was that while the wars of the French Revolution

had induced all the other states of Europe to overhaul their military

organization and learn something from the methods of the French,

Spain was still, so far as its army was concerned, in the middle of

the eighteenth century. The national temperament, with its eternal

relegation of all troublesome reforms to the morrow, was no doubt

largely to blame. But Godoy, the all-powerful favourite who had also

been commander-in-chief for the last seven years, must take the main

responsibility. If he had chosen, he possessed the power to change

everything; and in some ways he had peddled a good deal with details,

changing the uniforms, and increasing the number of battalions in each

regiment. But to make the army efficient he had done very little:

the fact was that the commander-in-chief was quite ignorant of the

military needs and tendencies of the day: all his knowledge of the army

was gained while carpet-soldiering in the ranks of the royal bodyguard.

It was natural that the kind of officers who commended themselves to

his haughty and ignorant mind should be those who were most ready to

do him homage, to wink at his peculations, to condone his jobs, and to

refrain from worrying him for the money needed for reforms and repairs.

Promotion was wholly arbitrary, and was entirely in the favourite’s

hands. Those who were prepared to bow down to him prospered: those who

showed any backbone or ventured on remonstrances were shelved. After

a few years of this system it was natural that all ranks of the army

became demoralized, since not merit but the talents of the courtier

and the flatterer were the sure road to prosperity. Hence it came to

pass that when the insurrection began, the level of military ability,

patriotism, and integrity among the higher ranks of the army was very

low. There were a few worthy men like Castaños and La Romana in offices

of trust, but a much greater proportion of Godoy’s protégés. One cannot

condone the shocking way in which, during the first days of the war,

the populace and the rank and file of the army united to murder so

many officers in high place, like Filanghieri, the Captain-General of

Galicia, Torre del Fresno, the Captain-General of Estremadura, and

Solano, who commanded at Cadiz. But the explanation of the atrocities

is simple: the multitude were resenting the results of the long

administration of Godoy’s creatures, and fell upon such of them as

refused to throw in their lot immediately with the insurrection. The

murdered men were (rightly or wrongly) suspected either of an intention

to submit to Joseph Bonaparte, or of a design to hang back, wait on

the times, and make their decision only when it should become obvious

which paid better, patriotism or servility. The people had considerable

justification in the fact that a very large proportion of Godoy’s

protégés, especially of those at Madrid, did swear homage to the

intruder in order to keep their places and pensions. They were the base

of the miserable party of _Afrancesados_ which brought so much disgrace

on Spain. The misguided cosmopolitan liberals who joined them were much

the smaller half of the traitor-faction.

Godoy and his clique, therefore, must take the main responsibility

for the state of decay and corruption in which the Spanish army was

found in 1808. What more could be expected when for so many years

an idle, venal, dissolute, ostentatious upstart had been permitted

to control the administration of military affairs, and to settle

all promotions to rank and office? ‘Like master like man’ is always

a true proverb, and the officers who begged or bought responsible

positions from Godoy naturally followed their patron’s example in

spreading jobs and peculation downwards. The undrilled and half-clothed

soldiery, the unhorsed squadrons, the empty arsenals, the idle and

ignorant subalterns, were all, in the end, the result of Godoy’s long

domination. But we do not wish to absolve from its share of blame the

purblind nation which tolerated him for so long. In another country he

would have gone the way of Gaveston or Mortimer long before.

When this was the state of the Spanish armies, it is no wonder that

the British observer, whether officer or soldier, could never get over

his prejudice against them. It was not merely because a Spanish army

was generally in rags and on the verge of starvation that he despised

it. These were accidents of war which every one had experienced in his

own person: a British battalion was often tattered and hungry. The

Spanish government was notoriously poor, its old regiments had been

refilled again and again with raw conscripts, its new levies had never

had a fair start. Hence came the things which disgusted the average

Peninsular diarist of British origin--the shambling indiscipline, the

voluntary dirt, the unmilitary habits of the Spanish troops. He could

not get over his dislike for men who kept their arms in a filthy, rusty

condition, who travelled not in orderly column of route but like a

flock of sheep straggling along a high road, who obeyed their officers

only when they pleased. And for the officers themselves the English

observer had an even greater contempt: continually we come across

observations to the effect that the faults of the rank and file might

be condoned--after all they were only half-trained peasants--but that

the officers were the source and fount of evil from their laziness,

their arrogance, their ignorance, and their refusal to learn from

experience. Here is a typical passage from the Earl of Munster’s

_Reminiscences_:--

‘We should not have been dissatisfied with our allies, _malgré_ their

appearance and their rags, if we had felt any reason to confide in

them. The men might be “capable of all that men dare,” but the

appearance of their officers at once bespoke their not being fit to

lead them in the attempt. They not only did not look like soldiers,

but even not like gentlemen, and it was difficult from their mean and

abject appearance, particularly among the infantry, to guess what class

of society they could have been taken from. Few troops will behave well

if those to whom they should look up are undeserving respect. Besides

their general inefficiency we found their moral feeling different from

what we expected. Far from evincing devotion or even common courage

in their country’s cause, they were very often guilty, individually

and collectively, of disgraceful cowardice. We hourly regretted that

the revolution had not occasioned a more complete _bouleversement_ of

society, so as to bring forward fresh and vigorous talent from all

classes. Very few of the regular military showed themselves worthy of

command. Indeed, with the exception of a few self-made soldiers among

the Guerillas, who had risen from among the farmers and peasantry, it

would be hard to point out a Spanish officer whose opinion on the most

trivial military subject was worth being asked. We saw old besotted

generals whose armies were formed on obsolete principles of the _ancien

régime_ of a decrepit government. To this was added blind pride and

vanity. No proofs of inferiority could open their eyes, and they rushed

from one error and misfortune to another, benefiting by no experience,

and disdaining to seek aid and improvement’ [pp. 194-5].

A voice from the ranks, Sergeant Surtees of the Rifle Brigade, gives

the same idea in different words.

‘Most of the Spanish officers appeared to be utterly unfit and

unable to command their men. They had all the pride, arrogance, and

self-sufficiency of the best officers in the world, with the very least

of all pretension to have a high opinion of themselves. It is true they

were not all alike, but the majority were the most haughty, and at the

same time the most contemptible creatures in the shape of officers that

ever I beheld’ [p. 109].

As a matter of fact the class of officers in Spain was filled up

in three different ways. One-third of them were, by custom, drawn

from the ranks. In an army raised by conscription from all strata

of society excellent officers can be procured in this way. But in

one mainly consisting of the least admirable part of the surplus

population, forced by want or hatred of work into enlisting, it was

hard to get even good sergeants. And the sergeants made still worse

sub-lieutenants, when the colonel was forced to promote some of them.

No wonder that the English observer thought that there were ‘Spanish

officers who did not look like gentlemen.’ This class were seldom

or never allowed to rise above the grade of captain. The remaining

two-thirds of the officers received their commissions from the war

office: in the cavalry they were supposed to show proofs of noble

descent, but this was not required in the infantry. There was a

large sprinkling, however, of men of family, and for them the best

places and the higher ranks were generally reserved--a thing feasible

because all promotion was arbitrary, neither seniority nor merit

being necessarily considered. The rest were drawn from all classes of

society: for the last fifteen years any toady of Godoy could beg or

buy as many commissions for his protégés as he pleased. But a large,

and not the worst, part of the body of officers was composed of the

descendants of soldiers of fortune--Irishmen were most numerous, but

there were also French and Italians--who had always been seen in great

numbers in the Spanish army. They held most of the upper-middle grades

in the regiments, for the promoted sergeants were kept down to the

rank of captain, while the nobles got rapid promotion and soon rose

to be colonels and generals. On the whole we cannot doubt that there

was a mass of bad officers in the Spanish army: the ignorant fellows

who had risen from the ranks, the too-rapidly promoted scions of the

noblesse, and the nominees of Godoy’s hangers-on, were none of them

very promising material with which to conduct a war _à outrance_ for

the existence of the realm.

In 1808 there was but one small military college for the training of

infantry and cavalry officers. Five existed in 1790, but Godoy cut them

down to one at Zamora, and only allowed sixty cadets there at a time,

so that five-sixths of the young men who got commissions went straight

to their battalions, there to pick up (if they chose) the rudiments of

their military education. From want of some common teaching the drill

and organization of the regiments were in a condition of chaos. Every

colonel did what he chose in the way of manual exercise and manœuvres.

A French officer says that in 1807 he saw a Spanish brigade at a

review, in which, when the brigadier gave the order ‘Ready, present,

fire!’ the different battalions carried it out in three different

times and with wholly distinct details of execution.

Not only was the Spanish army indifferently officered, but even of

such officers as it possessed there were not enough. In the old line

regiments there should have been seventy to each corps, i.e. 2,450 to

the 105 battalions of that arm. But Godoy had allowed the numbers to

sink to 1,520. When the insurrection broke out, the vacant places had

to be filled, and many regiments received at the same moment twenty

or thirty subalterns taken from civil life and completely destitute

of military training. Similarly the militia ought to have had 1,800

officers, and only possessed 1,200 when the war began. The vacancies

were filled, but with raw and often indifferent material.

Such were the officers with whom the British army had to co-operate.

There is no disguising the fact that from the first the allies could

not get on together. In the earlier years of the war there were some

incidents that happened while the troops of the two nations lay

together, which our countrymen could never forgive or forget. We

need only mention the midnight panic in Cuesta’s army on the eve of

Talavera, when 10,000 men ran away without having had a shot fired at

them, and the cowardly behaviour of La Peña in 1811, when he refused to

aid Graham at the bloody little battle of Barossa.

The strictures of Wellington, Napier, and the rest were undoubtedly

well deserved; and yet it is easy to be too hard on the Spaniards. It

chanced that our countrymen did not get a fair opportunity of observing

their allies under favourable conditions; of the old regular army

that fought at Baylen or Zornoza they never got a glimpse. It had

been practically destroyed before we came upon the field. La Romana’s

starving hordes, and Cuesta’s evasive and demoralized battalions

were the samples from which the whole Spanish army was judged. In

the Talavera campaign, the first in which English and Spanish troops

stood side by side, there can be no doubt that the latter (with few

exceptions) behaved in their very worst style. They often did much

better; but few Englishmen had the chance of watching a defence like

that of Saragossa or Gerona. Very few observers from our side saw

anything of the heroically obstinate resistance of the Catalonian

_miqueletes_ and _somatenes_. Chance threw in our way Cuesta and La

Peña and Imaz as types of Peninsular generals, and from them the

rest were judged. No one supposes that the Spaniards as a nation are

destitute of all military qualities. They made good soldiers enough

in the past, and may do so in the future: but when, after centuries

of intellectual and political torpor, they were called upon to fight

for their national existence, they were just emerging from subjection

to one of the most worthless adventurers and one of the most idiotic

kings whom history has known. Charles IV and Godoy account for an

extraordinary amount of the decrepitude of the monarchy and the

demoralization of its army.

It is more just to admire the constancy with which a nation so

handicapped persisted in the hopeless struggle, than to condemn it for

the incapacity of its generals, the ignorance of its officers, the

unsteadiness of its raw levies. If Spain had been a first-rate military

power, there would have been comparatively little merit in the six

years’ struggle which she waged against Bonaparte. When we consider her

weakness and her disorganization, we find ourselves more inclined to

wonder at her persistence than to sneer at her mishaps.