History of the Peninsula War, Volume V (of 6)

While Lord Wellington detained in Portugal the most numerous of the French armies, defied their strength and baffled their combinations, events of great importance, both military and civil, were taking place in Spain.

The command in Catalonia had devolved upon Camp-Marshal Juan Manuel de Villena, during the time that O’Donell was invalided by his wound. He had to oppose in Marshal Macdonald a general of higher reputation and of a better stamp than Augereau. Augereau had passed through the revolutionary war without obtaining any worse character than that of rapacity; but in Catalonia he manifested a ferocious and cruel temper, of which he had not before been suspected. Every armed Catalan who fell alive into his hand was sent to the gibbet: the people were not slow at reprisals, and war became truly dreadful when cruelty appeared on both sides to be only the exercise of vindictive justice: it was made so hateful to the better part of the German soldiers, and to the younger French also, whose hearts had not yet been seared, that they sought eagerly for every opportunity of fighting, in the hope of receiving wounds ♦Von Staff, 296.♦ which should entitle them to their dismission, or, at the worst, of speedily terminating a life which was rendered odious by the service wherein they were engaged.

The force under Macdonald’s command consisted of 21,000 men, including 2000 cavalry, and of 16,500 employed in garrisons and in the points of communication; the army of Aragon also, which Suchet commanded, was under his direction. They could not in Catalonia, as they had done in other parts of Spain, press forward, and leave defensible towns behind them: it was necessary to take every place that could be defended by a resolute people, and to secure it when taken. After Lerida had been villanously betrayed by Garcia Conde, Tortosa became the next point of importance for the French to gain, for while that city was held by the Spaniards, the communication between Valencia and Catalonia could not be cut off. Tarragona and Valencia were then successively to be attacked, but Mequinenza was to be taken before Tortosa was besieged. This town, which was called Octogesa when the Romans became masters of Spain, which by the corrupted name of Ictosa was the seat of a bishop’s see under the Wisigoths, and which obtained its present appellation from the Moors, was at the present juncture a point of considerable importance, because it commanded the navigation of the Ebro, being situated where that river receives the Segre. It was now a decayed town with a fortified castle: the works never had been strong, and since the Succession-war had received only such hasty repairs as had been made, at the urgent representations of General Doyle, during the second siege of Zaragoza. These preparations had enabled it to repulse the enemy in three several attempts after the fall of that city. It had now, by Doyle s exertions, been well supplied with provisions, but every thing else was wanting; the garrison consisted of 700 men, upon whose discipline or subordination the commander, D. Manuel Carbon, could but ill rely. He himself was disposed to do his duty, and was well supported by some of his officers.

Six days after the betrayal of Lerida the French Colonel Robert was sent with three battalions to commence operations against this poor fortress; he tried to force the passage of a bridge over the Cinca, which was so well defended, that it cost him 400 men. Between that river and the Ebro, Mousnier’s division approached so as to straiten the place, and a bridge of boats was thrown across the Ebro, and a tête-du-pont constructed to cut off the besieged from succour on that side. The operations were conducted with little skill or success, till at the expiration of a fortnight Colonel Rogniat came to direct them. Carbon then found it necessary to abandon the place, and retire into the Castle; to this he was compelled less by the efforts of the enemy than by distrust of his own men, who now becoming hopeless of relief, took every opportunity of deserting. His only armourer had fled, so had his masons, his carpenters, and his medical staff, the latter taking with them their stores. Four of the iron guns had burst, ... two brazen ones were rendered useless; and the Castle, which the people looked upon as impregnable, was not only weak in itself, but incapable of long resistance, had it been stronger, for want of water: there was none within the works; it was to be brought from a distance, and by a difficult ♦June.♦ road. The governor represented to the captain-general that his situation was truly miserable; that the best thing he could do, were it possible, would be to bring off the remains of the garrison; but they were between the Ebro and the Segre, and the banks of both rivers were occupied by the enemy. A force of at least 3000 men would be required to relieve him ... whereas 500 might have sufficed if they had been sent from Tortosa in time.

This dispatch was brought to Villena by a peasant who succeeded in swimming the Segre with it; and an attempt accordingly was made to relieve the Castle, but it was made too late. General Doyle, whom the Junta of Tortosa had addressed entreating him to continue his services to Mequinenza, asked and obtained the command of the succours, and was on the way with them, when they were met by tidings that the garrison ♦June 8.♦ had surrendered. The course of the Ebro from Zaragoza was now open to the enemy, and they prepared immediately to besiege Tortosa. If Suchet had known the state of the city at this time, he might have won it by a coup-de-main. The suspicions of the people had been re-inflamed by the betrayal of Lerida; the fall of Mequinenza excited their fears; ♦Lili appointed to the command in Tortosa.
Vol. i. 731–735.♦ and an insurrection was apprehended, to prevent which Villena requested Doyle to hasten thither, and act as governor till the Conde de Alache, D. Miguel de Lili y Idiaquez, should arrive. This nobleman had displayed such skill and enterprise in the painful but fortunate retreat which he made with a handful of men after the wreck of the central army at Tudela, that it was thought no man could be more adequate to the important service for which he was now chosen.

Tortosa stands upon the left bank of the Ebro, about four leagues from the sea; it is on the high road by which Catalonia communicates with the south of Spain. Before the Roman conquest the Ilercaones had their chief settlement here, and the place was called after the tribe Ilercaonia; Dartosa was its Roman name, which either under the Goths or Moors passed into the present appellation. It was taken from the Moors1 by Louis le Debonnaire, during the life of his father Charlemagne, after a remarkable siege, in which all the military engines of that age seem to have been employed. The governor whom he left there revolted, called in the Moors to his support, and they took it for themselves. It was conquered from them by Ramon Berenguer, Count of Barcelona, in the middle of the twelfth century; and in the year following was saved from the Moors by the women, who took arms when the men were almost overpowered, rallied them, and animated them so that they repulsed the entering enemy: in honour of this event a military order was instituted, and it was enacted that the women of Tortosa should have precedence of the men in all public ceremonies. During that revolt of the Catalans which was one of the many and great evils brought upon Spain by the iniquitous administration of Olivares, Tortosa declared early for the provincial cause; but it was reduced to obedience soon and without violence, and the city, which then contained 2000 inhabitants, was secured against any sudden attack. Marshal de la Mothe besieged it in 1642, and effected a breach in its weak works: he was repulsed in an assault with considerable loss, and deemed it necessary to raise the siege. Six years afterwards the French, with Schomberg for their general, took it by storm, ... the bishop and most of the clergy falling in the breach. It was retaken in 1650. In the Succession-war this place was gladly given up to the allies by the people, as soon as the capture of Barcelona by Lord Peterborough enabled them to declare their sentiments. The Duke of Orleans took it in 1708 by a vigorous siege, and through the want of firmness in the governor; had it held out two days longer, the besieging army must have retired for want of supplies. Staremberg almost succeeded in recovering it by surprise a few months afterwards; and in 1711 he failed in a second attempt. From that time the city had flourished during nearly an hundred years of internal peace; the population had increased to 16,000; the chief export was potash; the chief trade in wheat, which was either imported hither or exported hence, according as the harvest had proved in the two provinces of Catalonia and Aragon. But during this long interval of tranquillity, while the city and its neighbourhood partook the prosperity of the most industrious province in Spain, the fortifications, like every thing upon which the strength and security of the state depended, had been neglected, and were falling to decay.

This place, which could only have opposed a tumultuous resistance if the French had immediately pursued their success, was soon secured against any sudden attack by Doyle’s exertions. He had given up his pay in the Spanish service to the use of this province, and the confidence which was placed in him by the people and the local authorities, as well as by the generals, gave him influence and authority wherever he went. Every effort was made for storing and strengthening the city, while the enemy on their part made preparations for besieging it in form. Mequinenza was their depôt for the siege: from thence the artillery was conveyed to Xerta, a little town two leagues above Tortosa on the Ebro, which they fortified, and where they established a tête-du-pont: another was formed at Mora, half way between Mequinenza and Tortosa; the navigation of the river was thus secured. The roads upon either bank being only mountain paths, which were practicable but for beasts of burthen, a military road was constructed from Caspe, following in many parts the line of that which the Duke of Orleans had formed in the preceding century. A corps of 5000 infantry and 500 horse was to invest the city on the right bank, while another corps of the same strength watched the movements of the Catalan army. One division Suchet had left in Aragon, where the regular force opposed to it had almost disappeared in the incapable hands of D. Francisco Palafox. He had as little to apprehend on the side of Valencia; neither men nor means were wanting in that populous and wealthy province, but there prevailed a narrow provincial spirit, and General Caro remained inactive when an opportunity was presented of compelling the French, who were on the right bank, to retire, or of cutting them off. The other part of the besieging army was not left in like manner unmolested, for O’Donell had by this time recovered from his wound, and resumed the command.

On the 4th of July the enemy appeared on the right bank, and occupied the suburbs of Jesus and Las Roquetas; they took possession also of the country-houses which were near the city on that side, but not without resistance. On the 8th they attacked the tête-du-pont, expecting to carry it by a sudden and vigorous attempt; they were repulsed, renewed the attempt at midnight, were again repulsed, and a few hours afterwards failed in a third attack. They were now satisfied that Tortosa was not to be won without the time and labour of a regular siege. They had seen also a manifestation of that same spirit which had been so virtuously displayed at Zaragoza and Gerona. For the Tortosan women had passed and repassed the bridge during the heat of action, regardless of danger, bearing refreshments and stores to the soldiers; two who were wounded in this service were rewarded with medals and with a pension. They enrolled themselves in companies to attend upon the wounded, whether in the hospitals or in private houses. There was one woman who during the whole siege carried water and cordials to the troops at the points of attack, and frequently went out with them in their sallies; the people called her La Titaya, and she was made a serjeant for her services. The men also formed themselves into companies, and it was evident what might be expected from the inhabitants, if their governor should prove worthy of the charge committed to him. Velasco, who held the command till the Conde de Alache should arrive, was incapacitated by illness for any exertion. The garrison, encouraged by their success in repelling the enemy, made a sally on the 10th with more courage than prudence, and lost about 100 men; the next day the French began their regular approaches.

O’Donell’s first care upon resuming the command of the army was to strengthen Tortosa and provide it against the siege, which if he could not prevent he would use every exertion to impede and frustrate. Lili arrived there in the middle of July, and a convoy of provisions with him: Velasco then left the place, and retired to Tarragona, broken in health. Stores and men were introduced till the magazines were fully replenished, and the garrison amounted to 8000 effective men. On the night of the 21st the enemy made another attack upon the tête-du-pont, as unsuccessfully as before. Some days afterwards O’Donell came there to inspect the place; he thanked the inhabitants for the good-will which they were manifesting, and the readiness with which they had cut down their fruit-trees and demolished their villas in the adjoining country, sacrificing every thing cheerfully to the national cause. He directed also a sally, which was made with good effect, ♦Aug. 3.♦ some of the enemy’s works being destroyed: Lili was present in this affair, and was wounded. Having seen that every thing was in order here, and promised well, the general returned to his army.

But O’Donell deriving no support from either of the neighbouring provinces, had on the one hand to impede Suchet’s operations, and on the other to act against Macdonald. Before that Marshal could take any measures in aid of the besieging army, he had to introduce a convoy ♦Macdonald enters the plains of Tarragona.♦ into Barcelona. Having effected this object, and baffled the force which endeavoured to prevent it, he moved upon the Ebro; by this movement O’Donell was compelled to withdraw the division which kept in check the French corps upon the left bank; and Suchet, seizing the opportunity, passed that corps across the river, and advanced against the Valencian army, with which Caro had at last taken the field, ... only to make a precipitate retreat when it was thus attacked, and leave the enemy without any interruption from that side. Macdonald meantime easily overcoming the little resistance that could be interposed entered the plain of Tarragona, and took a position at Reus, with his whole disposable force, raising contributions in money and every kind of stores upon that unhappy town, while his troops pillaged the surrounding country. Tarragona was at this time but weakly garrisoned, and some apprehension was entertained that it might be his intention to lay siege to it. Campoverde’s division, therefore, was immediately removed thither from Falset, and O’Donell himself entered the place, and occupied the height of Oliva and the village of La Canonja, endeavouring by activity and display to make the most of his insufficient force. Before daybreak this latter post was attacked by the French in ♦Aug. 21.
Affair near Tarragona.♦ strength, ... the Spaniards fell back till O’Donell came to their support; he supposed the enemy’s object was to reconnoitre the place, and this he was desirous to prevent. Captain Buller, in the Volontaire frigate, was near enough distinctly to hear and see the firing; immediately he sent his launch and barge with some carronades in shore, and anchored the ship with springs in four fathoms water, to support the boats, and act as circumstances might require. These boats acted with great effect upon the right flank of the French; and the frigate bringing its guns to bear upon the enemy’s cavalry, which was forming upon a rising ground, dislodged them; so that they retreated to their position with the loss of about an hundred and fifty men. On the same day Captain Fane, in the Cambrian frigate, and some Spanish boats, performed a like service at Salou, driving from thence, with the loss of some forty men, a detachment of the enemy who had gone thither to plunder the place. ♦Macdonald retires.
Aug. 25.♦ On the fourth day after this affair the French retreated, leaving 700 sick and wounded in the hospital at Reus, and 200 at Valls. Their rearguard was overtaken in the town of Momblanch, and the plunder which they had collected there was recovered: but a Spanish general was put under arrest for not having improved the advantage which he had gained. They suffered also a considerable loss by desertion. Nearly 300 Italians deserted from Reus, and 400 more during the expedition.

Suchet with 3000 men had moved down upon Momblanch, to cover a retreat which was not made without danger. This movement left Tortosa for a while free of access, and large supplies were promptly introduced. Macdonald now took a position near Cervera, as a central point, from whence he could cover the besieging army before Tortosa, and threaten the rear of the Spaniards upon the Llobregat, and where he could occupy an extent of country capable of supplying him with provisions. But ♦O’Donnell surprises the enemy at La Bisbal.♦ this afforded opportunity to O’Donell for renewing that system of warfare which he had carried on successfully against Augereau. He embarked a small detachment at Tarragona, provided with artillery, which sailed under convoy of a small Spanish squadron and of the Cambrian frigate. On the 6th of September he put himself at the head of a division at Villafranca, having directed the movements of his troops so as to make the French infer that it was his intention to interpose between them and ♦September.♦ Barcelona. Leaving Campoverde to throw up works near La Baguda, and secure that pass, he proceeded to Esparraguera: from thence he reconnoitred El Bruch and Casamasanes, and leaving Eroles to guard that position, ordered Brigadier Georget to take post at Mombuy, close by Igualada, and Camp-Marshal Obispo to advance by a forced march from Momblanch, and place himself upon the heights to the right and left of Martorell. This was on the 9th: that same night he ordered Campoverde to march the following morning and join him at S. Culgat del Valles, sending a battalion to reinforce Georget, but letting no one know his destination. The whole division reached Mataro on the 10th, Pineda on the following day; from thence a party under the Colonel of Engineers, D. Honorato de Fleyres, was dispatched to take post at the Ermida of S. Grau, while O’Donell proceeded to Tordera. Before he left Pineda he received intelligence that the squadron had commenced its operations auspiciously. Doyle had landed at Bagur, taken forty-two prisoners there, and with the assistance of the Cambrian’s boats destroyed the battery and carried off the guns. Being now about to leave the garrison of Hostalrich in his rear, O’Donell sent off a detachment towards that fort, and another toward Gerona, that they might lead the French in both places to suppose he was reconnoitring with a view to invest them. On the 13th he reached the village of Vidreras, falling in on the way thither with an howitzer and a field-piece which had been landed for him at Calella. At Vidreras the two last detachments which he had sent off rejoined him, having performed their service with great success, the one party bringing off nine prisoners from the suburbs of Hostalrich, whom they had taken in the houses there, the other eleven from under the walls of Gerona.

This long movement had been undertaken in the hope of cutting off the French who occupied S. Feliu de Guixols, Palamos, and La Bisbal. The larger force was at La Bisbal under General Schwartz; and that he might have no opportunity to reinforce the two weaker points, it was O’Donell’s intention to attack him there, at the same time that Fleyres, dividing his detachment, should attack both the other garrisons. From Vidreras to La Bisbal is a distance which in that country, where distances are measured by time, is computed at eight hours, the foot-pace of an able-bodied man averaging usually four miles in the hour; but at this time much depended on celerity. At daybreak on the 14th he renewed his march with the cavalry regiment of Numancia, sixty hussars, and an hundred volunteer infantry, who thought themselves capable of keeping up with the horse. The regiment of Iliberia followed at a less exhausting pace; and the rest of the division, under Campoverde, went by way of Llagostera to post itself in the valley of Aro, as a body of reserve, and cut off the enemy in case they should retire from the points which they occupied. O’Donell proceeded so rapidly that he performed the usual journey of eight hours in little more than four, the infantry keeping up with the horse at a brisk trot the whole time. As soon as they reached La Bisbal, Brigadier Sanjuan, with the cavalry, occupied all the avenues of the town, to prevent the enemy, who upon their appearance had retired into an old castle, from escaping; some cuirassiers who were patrolling were made prisoners; the Spanish infantry took possession of the houses near the castle, and from thence and from the church tower fired upon it. They rung the Somaten, and the peasants who were within hearing came to join them. O’Donell perceiving that musketry was of little avail, and that Schwartz did not surrender at his summons, resolved to set fire to the gates; but in reconnoitring the castle with this object, he received a musket-ball in the leg, the sixteenth which had struck him in the course of this war. Just at this time a detachment of an hundred foot, with two-and-thirty cuirassiers, came from the side of Torruella to aid the garrison. Sanjuan charged them with his reserve; the cuirassiers fled toward Gerona, all the infantry were taken, and a convoy of provisions with its escort fell into the hands of the Spaniards. The regiment of Iliberia, quickening its march when it heard the firing, now came up; at nightfall the enemy were a second time summoned, and Schwartz, seeing no means of escape, was then glad to have the honours of war granted him, upon surrendering with his whole party, consisting of 650 men and 42 officers.

Fleyres meantime leaving S. Grau at two on the morning of the same day, divided his force, and directed Lieutenant-Colonel D. Tadeo Aldea, with 300 foot and 20 horse, against Palamos, while he with the same number of horse and 250 foot proceeded against S. Feliu de Guixols; 150 men being left as a reserve for both parties upon the heights on the road to Zeroles. Both were successful. The Spaniards were not discovered as they approached S. Feliu till they were within pistol-shot of the sentinel; and the enemy, after a brisk but short resistance, surrendered when they were offered honourable treatment in O’Donell’s name. Thirty-six were killed and wounded here; 270 men and eight officers laid down their arms. At Palamos the enemy had batteries which they defended; but there the squadron co-operated, and after the loss of threescore men, 255, with seven officers, surrendered. Seventy more were taken on the following day in the Castle of Calonge. The result of this well-planned, and singularly fortunate expedition, which succeeded in its full extent at every point, was the capture of one general, two colonels, threescore inferior officers, more than 1200 men, seventeen pieces of artillery, magazines and stores, and the destruction of every battery, fort, or house which the enemy had fortified upon the coast as far as the Bay of Rosas. The British seamen and marines had exerted themselves with their characteristic activity and good-will on this occasion; and Captain Fane, though suffering under severe indisposition at the time, had landed with Doyle, and put himself forwards wherever most was to be done. O’Donell, to mark the sense which was entertained of their services, ordered a medal to be struck for the officers and crew, with appropriate2 inscriptions.

The Spaniards had only ten men killed and twenty-three wounded; but O’Donell was disabled by his wound, and a General who had displayed so much ability, and in whose fortune the soldiers had acquired confidence could ill be spared. The system of maritime enterprise which had been thus well commenced ♦The enemy’s batteries on the coast destroyed.♦ was actively pursued. Upon General Doyle’s representation it was resolved to attack the batteries which the enemy had erected upon the coast between Barcelona and Tarragona, and by means of which, with few men, they kept the maritime towns in subjection; they were placed always in commanding situations, ... boats with supplies lay at anchor under them all day, in safety from the cruisers, and under cover of the night crept along shore toward their destination. Doyle embarked for this service, and with the aid of Captain Buller, in the Volontaire, effectually performed it, destroying every battery, and carrying off the artillery and stores. The same service was performed a second time upon the coast between Mataro and Rosas, where the enemy had re-occupied stations; the batteries were again destroyed, their coasters taken, and the Spanish Lieutenant-Colonel O’Ronan, who embarked in the Volontaire with authority from the provincial government, collected the imposts and levied contributions upon those persons who traded with France, or were known partizans of the ♦October.♦ French. He had the boldness to enter the town of Figueras with twenty-five men, and draw rations for them in sight of the enemy’s garrison; but in this cruise the Volontaire suffered so much in a gale of wind, that it was necessary to make for Port Mahon.

The British ships rendered essential service to the Catalans at this time, and were at all times useful in keeping up their hopes, and rendering it more difficult for the enemy to obtain supplies. The spirit of the people was invincible; and under such leaders as Manso, and Rovira, and Eroles, they were so successful in desultory warfare, that a land convoy for Barcelona required an army for its escort, and the French government was informed, that precarious as the supply by sea was, they must mainly trust to it. Indeed no inconsiderable part of the provisions which were sent by sea found its way to Barcelona after it had fallen into the hands of the British squadron. The cargoes were sold by the captors at Villa Nova, where there were persons ready to purchase them at any3 price: ... these persons were agents for the enemy; and when the magazines were full, a detachment came from Barcelona and convoyed the stores safely to that city, which is not twenty miles distant. The indulgence also which was intended for the Spaniards in Barcelona, in allowing their fishing-boats to come without the mole, was turned to the advantage of the garrison. There were about 150 of these boats, and upon every opportunity they received provisions and stores4, which they carried in for some time without being suspected.

Suchet meantime could make no progress in the siege of Tortosa; though the Valencians left him undisturbed on their side, he could undertake no serious operations till the other part of his army could be brought down to complete the investment of the place, and till Macdonald should be in a situation to cover the besieging force, which that General could not do till he received reinforcements, his strength being wasted by the losses which he was continually suffering in detail, and by the numerous desertions which took place. Doyle’s address to the foreigners in the French service, in their respective languages, had produced no inconsiderable effect; copies of it were fired from the town in shells, and by that means scattered among the ♦Sept. 7.♦ besiegers. As soon as it was known that the enemy’s heavy guns had arrived at Xerta, Lili issued a proclamation to the inhabitants, requesting that all who were not able to take arms and bear an active part in its defence would withdraw, while a way was yet open: the place, he said, had no shelter for them when it should be bombarded, nor could provisions be afforded them. But the invaders, he added, deceived themselves if they supposed that his constancy was to be shaken by the fears and lamentations of old men and children and of a few women, or if they expected to find another Lerida in Catalonia; for he and his garrison had sworn, and he now repeated the vow, that Tortosa should not be yielded up till it had surpassed, if that were possible, the measure of resistance at Zaragoza and Gerona. He issued an order also that as soon as the first gun should be discharged against the place, the door of every house should be open day and night, and vessels of water kept there in readiness for extinguishing fires, ... and lights during the night.

Buonaparte’s birthday recurred about this time, and the French general sent a letter into the city, informing the governor that it would be celebrated in due form with a discharge of cannon. Lili corresponded to this courtesy by sending a similar communication on the eve of Ferdinand’s anniversary; at the same time he sent the official notice which had reached him, that the yellow fever had broken out in certain ports of the Mediterranean, and that some ships were infected with it: this information, he said, was given as humanity required, in order that the enemy might take all possible precautions against the contagion in those parts of the country which were occupied by their troops. The holiday was observed with its usual solemnities and pageants, as if there had been no hostile encampment without the walls: in the morning there was service in the churches; in the afternoon the holy girdle, a relic of which Tortosa boasted, was carried in procession, a masque of giants going before it, accompanied by persons performing a provincial sword-dance, and followed by all the corporate bodies, civil and ecclesiastical, and by the military, with music, and banners displayed. Bull-fights with young animals who were neither tortured with fireworks (as is the manner in the serious exhibitions of that execrable sport) nor slaughtered, were held in the streets, and the day concluded with a ball, a banquet, and an illumination.

The next communication of Lili to the French general was not received so courteously by Harispe, who at that time was left in command of the besieging army. The Spaniards sent him copies of the decree issued by the Regency in consequence of Soult’s infamous edict against the Spanish armies, both edicts being printed on one sheet, in parallel columns; Lili sent them with a flag of truce, saying it was his duty to put the French general and his commander-in-chief in possession of this royal decree. Harispe replied, that he should always receive the Spanish commander’s messengers with pleasure, when they were the bearers of decent and useful communications; but in the present instance he must detain them prisoners of war, inasmuch as they seemed to have no other object than that of scattering satirical writings. If this reply had not been accompanied by an act in violation of the laws of war, it would have been satisfactory to the Spaniards; for the French general could not more plainly have shown the opinion which he entertained of Marshal Soult’s decree, than by thus affecting to believe that it was spurious. The besieging army, however, had given some examples of that merciless system upon which the intrusive government required its generals to act; ... for the bodies of some peasants were taken out of the river, with many bayonet wounds about them, and their hands tied: they were interred in the city, where the circumstance and the solemnity made a strong impression upon the people. There was a Piemontese, who, having resided more than twenty years in Tortosa, went over to the French, and rendered them all the service which his knowledge of the place and the country enabled him to perform. This treason on the part of a naturalized foreigner excited a strong desire for vengeance; some peasants watched his movements, laid wait for him, surprised him, and carried him prisoner into the city, where he was tried, and condemned to be shot in the back, under the gallows; that mode and place of death being chosen as the most ignominious, there being no hangman there. The besieged were gratified by another act of vengeance. An officer in the French army, before the serious business of the siege began, amused5 himself, from a favourable station, with bringing down such individuals as came within reach of his gun. At length a deserter gave information that this unseen marksman’s stand was in a house called la Casilla Blanca, upon which the commandant of artillery, D. Francisco Arnau, went with his piece to a good station on the bank of the river, and getting aim at him while he was engaged in his murderous sport, had the satisfaction of seeing him fall.

Though the enemy had established two bridges with a tete-du-pont to each between Mequinenza and Tortosa, they had not been able to render the passage of the river secure. Their boats were sometimes intercepted and sometimes sunk; and everywhere a system of war was carried on by which the armies of Macdonald and Suchet were so harassed, that the operations of the siege were impeded during five months. ♦Successes of Eroles.♦ Some brilliant achievements were performed in the Ampurdan by Baron Eroles, an officer who rendered himself so obnoxious to the enemy by the activity and success with which he discharged his duty to his country, that there was an order in the French army to hang him as soon as he should fall into their hands. The German troops in Catalonia had at this time been reduced by deaths, captures, and desertions, to such a state of inefficiency, that the few survivors were permitted to leave Spain, and stationed on the South coast of France; there in the enjoyment of rest and a benign climate, to recruit their broken health, before they returned to their respective countries. Some troops only were left in the garrisons of Lerida and Barcelona, ... the remainder, a few hundreds only of as many thousands, gladly departed from a country in which they had committed and suffered so many evils. Their place in the Ampurdan was supplied by a reinforcement of 5000 French, under General Clement; the new general, to signalize his entrance, entered Olot with 3000 men, and got possession of the stores which were deposited there, with which, and with the spoils of the town, he departed early on the ♦Dec. 6.♦ second day, having thus far successfully effected his purpose. Eroles was at Tornadis at this time, where he had collected his troops; and they were receiving their rations when intelligence was brought him that the enemy had left Olot, and were on their way to Castellfullit. A cry arose from the Catalans that they did not want their bread and their brandy then; what they wanted was cartridges, and to kill the French. The men knew their commander, and he knew his people, for what kind of service they were fit, and how surely they might be relied on in that service. The enemy had had two hours’ start, but they were impeded with artillery and plunder, and apprehending no danger, had made no speed: the Catalans had the desire of vengeance to quicken them, and performing in less than an hour and a half what is estimated at a three hours’ journey, they came up with the rearguard at Castellfullit, attacked and routed it. The French rallied, took a position on the plain of Polligé, where they were protected by the cavalry and their guns, and thus awaited for Eroles to attack them. His dispositions, however, as soon as he had reconnoitred the ground, were made for turning both their flanks; and when to prevent this they attacked his centre, their cavalry were repulsed, the attempt wholly failed, and they retreated to another position near S. Jayme. From thence they were driven, and fell back upon a battalion which had now formed in the plain of Argalaguer, and were protected by the buildings in that village; but supposing the few horse which Eroles then brought forward to be part of a greater force, Clement withdrew his men to a near wood, on the other side of a stream. Encouraged by success, the Catalans attacked them there also, drove them successively from thence and from Besalu, and did not give up the pursuit till night closed. In this affair Clement lost more than a thousand men, the Spaniards twenty-five killed and fifty wounded: scarcely any prisoners were taken; the French were persuaded that no quarter would be given, and in that persuasion some had run upon the bayonets of the Spaniards, and some had thrown themselves down a precipice near Castellfullit. The whole detachment would have been destroyed if Eroles had had his cavalry, but they had been detached before he knew of the enemy’s movements, and the utmost exertions did not suffice to bring them up in time. The Baron observed with satisfaction, in his dispatches, that they had been favoured with this victory by the patroness of Spain, on the6festival of whose conception it had been won.

Such, indeed, was the spirit which the French found in Catalonia, and such the exasperated temper on their part which this unexpected and brave resistance had occasioned, that they said it would be necessary to exterminate one-half the Catalans in order to intimidate the other. They found a similar spirit in Aragon; but there the country had not the same natural strength, nor was there a single fortress to afford protection to the people. The army, however, under D. Joze Maria Carvajal, was again in activity; and though, owing to the incapacity of their commanders in the first years of the war, and the want of means in the utter destitution wherein it was afterwards left, it was never fortunate enough to perform any splendid or signal service, it deserved this praise, that for patience and constancy under the most trying circumstances, this of all the Spanish armies was that which during the contest deserved most highly of its country. The severest means were used to intimidate the Aragonese, but in vain. ♦Edict against the Junta of Aragon.♦ Suchet, as governor-general of that kingdom for the intrusive government, published a decree, saying, it had come to his knowledge that a set of senseless men, who had the ridiculous audacity to style themselves the Junta of Aragon, had fixed themselves in the village of Manzanera, from whence they endeavoured to disturb the tranquillity of the Aragonese, by their incendiary libels, and despotically took possession of the public revenues and stores: he gave orders, therefore, that they should be pursued, delivered over to a military tribunal, and be sentenced within twenty-four hours: that the people of Manzanera, or of any other place to which they might betake themselves, should drive them out, or, failing so to do, receive an exemplary punishment, the Ayuntamiento and the parochial priest being responsible in their goods and persons for the behaviour of the inhabitants in this point: every place which received them was to be punished irremissibly, and the authorities to suffer ignominious death by the gallows. The Junta of Aragon, to show how they regarded this decree, printed it in their own Gazette, well knowing that nothing could contribute more to keep up that feeling in the nation which it was their duty to encourage and to direct. They called attention also to the important circumstance, that this decree was issued not in the name of Joseph the Intruder, but in that of the emperor of the French, King of Italy, and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, of whose intention to include Spain, if he could, among the states subjected to him, no equivocal indication was here afforded. The intrusive government, however deceitful in its promises, was always sincere in its threats. Of this every province had abundant proofs, and none more than ♦Molina de Aragon burnt by the French.♦ that in which Suchet commanded. The city of Molina de Aragon in an especial manner provoked the vengeance of the invaders by the disposition which the inhabitants manifested, who, as often as the French entered it, took refuge in the woods ♦Nov. 1.♦ and mountains: the enemy at length set fire to it on all sides, and three parts of the city were consumed. But acts of this kind, which proved the intention of the invaders to reduce Spain to a desert rather than leave it unsubdued, served only to confirm the Spaniards in that resolution which rendered their subjugation impossible.

While Carvajal impeded Suchet’s operations from the side of Aragon, some efforts were made from Valencia; a province where, with ample means, little exertion had been found, and less ability to direct it. The Regency relied upon the unexhausted resources which existed there, believing that if the Valencian force were well employed, even though it should not undertake any grand operations, Tortosa could not be taken by less than 30,000 men. But when Bassecourt arrived to take the command there, he found the army in a miserable condition both as to equipments and discipline, which might have made him hopeless of success in any other warfare than that desultory one, wherein inexperienced troops may be trusted, and in which nothing is lost if they find or fancy it necessary to disperse and provide every man for his own safety. Some field-pieces had been sent from Valencia to the army of Aragon: the French obtained intelligence of this, and a strong detachment ♦Oct. 31.♦ under the Polish General Chlopisky entered Teruel to intercept this artillery, when General Villacampa, for whom it was intended, was at Alfambra, six hours distant: ... the officer in charge of the guns endeavoured to retreat with them, but was pursued and overtaken at Alventosa, and the whole fell into the enemy’s hands. After this success Chlopisky sought to inflict another blow upon Villacampa’s division, and an affair took place between Villel and La Fuensanta, which the Spaniards considered as a victory on their part, because, though compelled to retire from the ground, they had not been pursued, nor had any dispersion taken place. Somewhat better fortune attended ♦Nov. 12.♦ a maritime expedition from Peñiscola, which was planned by General Doyle and executed by his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant-Colonel San Martin; by this force the strong tower of S. Juan, which commanded the Puerto de los Alfaques, was surprised, and immediately garrisoned and stored; and thus the enemy were deprived of a port in which their corsairs and coasters found protection. A land expedition, undertaken at the same time in the hope of cutting off a French detachment at Trayguera, failed altogether; the French had withdrawn in time, and receiving a timely reinforcement, compelled the Spaniards ♦Defeat of the Valencians at Ulldecona.♦ in their turn to retreat. No loss was sustained in this attempt. General Bassecourt was less fortunate in an enterprise of greater moment; he projected an attack upon Suchet’s army, which if it succeeded, should have the effect of breaking up the siege; ... this general had not yet learnt how little either his men or officers were to be relied on in any combined or extensive operations; in full expectation7 that every thing would be executed as exactly as ♦Nov. 26.♦ it had been planned, he left Peñiscola at night, put himself at the head of his central division, and reaching the bridge over the Servol, beyond Vinaroz, halted there to give time for the movements of his right, under Brigadier Porta, which took the road of Alcanar. Having, as he supposed, allowed a sufficient interval for this, he proceeded towards Ulldecona, and halted a little before five in the morning at a place called Hereu. Here he inspected his troops, and promised them a speedy triumph, when a messenger arrived from Porta, requesting that the signal for attack might be delayed, inasmuch as his division had not been able to get forward with the speed which they had calculated on. Bassecourt waited impatiently a full hour till day began to break; then, as success depended in great measure upon surprising the enemy, he sent his advanced parties forward to attack the French outposts, and directed his cavalry to gallop into the town as soon as the gun should be fired and the rocket discharged that were the signal for attack. General Musnier’s division was quartered here; Bassecourt’s made three attempts to force its position, but not hearing any firing either to the right or left, he perceived that on both sides his combinations had failed, and deemed it therefore necessary to retreat. He succeeded in reaching Vinaroz, ... there Porta joined him with the right column; there he halted to give the harassed troops some rest, and to obtain some intelligence of his left; ... and there the enemy surprised him. The men instantly took to flight, and all that his personal exertions could effect, was to keep a few of the better soldiers together, and, under protection of his cavalry, reach Peñiscola with them.

The disgrace of this affair was greater than the loss, which the French estimated at 3000 men. They were more elated by an advantage which they obtained shortly afterwards against an enemy over whom it was seldom that they had any real success to boast. The boats of the English squadron ♦Dec. 13.♦ attacked a convoy of eleven vessels laden with provisions for Barcelona, and lying in Palamos Bay, the French having re-occupied that town. The batteries which protected them were destroyed, the magazines blown up, two of the vessels brought out, and the rest burnt, ... and our men, having completely effected their object, were retiring carelessly, when two Dutchmen, who were in the British service, went over to the enemy, and told them that the sailors had but three rounds of ammunition left. The French were at this time joined by a party from S. Feliu, and the English, instead of retreating to the beach, where the ships might have covered their embarkation, took their way toward the mole, through the town, not knowing that it had been re-occupied. The boats made instantly to their assistance, and suffered severely in bringing them off, the loss amounting to thirty-three killed, eighty-nine wounded, and eighty-six prisoners, Captain Fane among the latter. The enemy behaved with great inhumanity in this affair; they butchered some poor fellows who had stopped in the town and made themselves defenceless by drunkenness; ... and they continued to fire upon a boat after all its oars were shot away, in which a midshipman was hoisting a white handkerchief upon his sword, as the only signal that could be made of surrendering, till of one-and-twenty persons who could neither fight8 nor fly, all but two were wounded, ... when another boat came to their assistance, and towed them off.

Macdonald now, whose army had been reinforced, took a position at Perillo and at Mora, to cover the siege against any interruption on the side of Tarragona, the only quarter from whence an effort in aid of Tortosa could be apprehended; and Suchet, secure from all farther attempts either from Valencia or Aragon, passed twelve battalions across the river at Xerta to the left bank, and in one day completed the investment of the place. The besiegers had great difficulties to overcome, the soil being everywhere rocky, ... so that the engineers were obliged to form parapets and sacks of earth, and in many places to work their way in the trenches by means of gunpowder. The trenches were opened on the night of December 20; and the siege from that hour was carried on with an alacrity and skill in which the French are never wanting. On the twelfth night the enemy had established themselves at the bottom of the ditch; they had then bombarded the city for four days, ... two days they had been engaged in mining, and there were three breaches in the body of the place: but there were nearly 8000 troops within the walls; there was a brave and willing people, and there were the examples of Zaragoza and Gerona. They were in no danger of famine, for the place had been abundantly provided; there was no want of military stores, and the besieging army did not exceed 10,000 men.

Meantime O’Donell had concerted a bold and hopeful enterprise for its relief. He knew that there were provisions and ammunition sufficient for two months’ consumption in the city; he had full reliance upon the disposition of the people, and the whole conduct both of the garrison and the governor from the time that the enemy appeared before the walls had given him reason to confide in both. With his own force he was aware that nothing could be done against the besieging army, covered as it was by Macdonald; but he proposed that Bassecourt should supply 3000 foot and 500 horse from the Valencian army; that the central army should detach 4000 foot and 200 horse; that these should unite under Carvajal with such forces as Aragon could furnish, make demonstration upon the Ebro as if their intention was to succour Tortosa, but there turn off from the most convenient point, and by forced marches proceed to Zaragoza, whither O’Donell would at the same time detach 4000 foot and 400 horse by way of Barbastro. It was believed that the French at this juncture had not more than 4000 men in the whole of Aragon, and the garrison of Zaragoza consisted almost wholly of convalescents and invalids. Bassecourt assented heartily to this well-devised plan; from the central army a refusal was returned, ... perhaps it could not then have mustered even the small force that was required from it; but upon receiving this reply Bassecourt dispatched an officer to the Empecinado, and that intrepid and excellent partisan cheerfully engaged to co-operate. Carvajal held himself in readiness; and at no moment during the war was it so probable that a great success might be obtained with little hazard. For it was not doubted that Suchet would precipitately break up the siege of Tortosa, rather than allow the Spaniards time to strengthen themselves in Zaragoza; that they could enter it was certain, ... and no other possible event could have diffused such joy throughout all Spain. All arrangements having been concluded between the Empecinado, Carvajal, and Bassecourt, O’Donell’s aid-de-camp, who waited for this at Valencia, set off instantly for ♦Tortosa surrendered.
1811. Jan. 2.♦ Tarragona by sea; contrary winds delayed him a little while on the passage, ... and he arrived a few hours after the commander-in-chief had received intelligence that Lili had surrendered at discretion.

There was no treason here, as there had been at Lerida, but there was a want of honour, of principle, and of virtue. Seven thousand eight hundred men, not pressed by famine, not debilitated by disease, with a brave and willing population to have supported them, laid down their arms and surrendered at discretion to ten thousand French. The enemy indeed affirmed that the garrison could not have continued the defence an hour longer without being put to the sword: the people of Spain thought otherwise; they remembered Palafox and Alvarez; they remembered that at Gerona a French army, not inferior to this of Suchet’s in number, lay ten whole weeks in sight of an open breach which they did not venture to assault a second time, though it was defended only by half-starved men, who would have come from the hospitals to take their stand there. They remembered this, and therefore they thought that the governor who under such circumstances had hung out the white flag, ought himself to have been hung over the walls. Accordingly sentence of death was pronounced in Tarragona against the Conde de Alache for having, it was said, infamously surrendered a city which he ought to have defended to the last extremity; and his effigy was beheaded there in the market-place.

The fortress at Col de Balaguer, which commanded a strong pass about half-way between Tortosa and Tarragona, was yielded a few days after Lili’s surrender, by the treachery or cowardice of the men entrusted with its defence. Tarragona was now the only strong place that remained to the Catalans; it had been the seat of government since the fall of Mequinenza, the Provincial Congress, which was to have assembled at Solsona, having then been summoned thither, as the only place of safety; now its land communication with Valencia and the rest of Spain was cut off; and Suchet immediately prepared to follow up his success by investing it, with less apprehension of any obstruction from the Catalan army, because the wound which O’Donell had received at La Bisbal compelled him at this time to retire to Majorca. The Marquis de Campoverde, being second in command, succeeded him. In O’Donell the Catalans lost a commander who had raised himself by his services, and whose conduct had justified the public opinion, in deference to which he had been promoted. But the spirit of the people was not shaken: they relied upon the strength of their country, even though the fortresses were lost, ... upon their cause, and their own invincible resolution; and they lived in continual hope that some effectual assistance would be afforded by England to a province which so well deserved it. The little which had been given had been gratefully received, and it had shown also how much might and ought to have been done.

Maritime co-operation of a similar kind had been carried into effect on the northern coast of Spain. About midsummer Commodore Mends of the Arethusa frigate consulted with the Junta of Asturias, who engaged to put what they called the armies of that province, and of the Montañas de Santander, in motion, if he would take Porlier and 500 men on board his squadron and beat up the enemy’s sea-quarters. This it was deemed would draw the French troops towards the ports in their possession, calling them from the frontiers of Galicia, which they were then threatening, give the mountaineers opportunity to act with advantage, and favour the Guerrillas in Castille, whom the French were endeavouring to hunt down. The Commodore had no instructions for an expedition of this kind, but he saw that it offered a reasonable prospect of advantage; for if the Junta should fail in their part of the undertaking, or be disappointed in their hopes, he might nevertheless destroy the enemy’s sea-defences, and cut off the supplies which they received coast-ways. Accordingly Porlier with his men embarked, and the squadron sailed from Ribadeo. The wind serving for Santona, they landed on the beach to the westward of that place. The garrison there, some 120 in number, retired with the loss of about thirty men; and the French commander at S. Sebastian feared that it was their intention to establish themselves there, in a post which might easily have been rendered defensible, and would afford good anchorage during the prevalence of the westerly gales upon that coast: the utmost efforts therefore were made to prevent this; and on the second day after the landing, from seven to eight hundred French attacked them on the isthmus. This body was repulsed with considerable loss; but finding that the enemy were collecting in greater force, the Commodore re-embarked his men on the following day, having destroyed the fortifications. Pursuing his object, he demolished all the batteries upon the coast between S. Sebastian’s and Santander (those at Castro alone excepted), carried off or threw into the sea above a hundred pieces of heavy cannon, and laid that whole extent of coast bare of defence, without the loss of a single man; and having made about two hundred prisoners and taken on board three hundred volunteers, all for whom room could be found, the squadron returned to Coruña.

The injury which had thus been done to the enemy was not easily remedied, because artillery could be carried only by sea to these places, the roads being so bad, and the country so mountainous, as to render the land carriage of heavy guns almost impossible. The people of the country were encouraged by the sight of their allies, and by hearing of a success which was reported everywhere, and everywhere exaggerated: and to profit by their disposition Porlier, who was one of the ablest partisans that this wild species of warfare produced, was again landed from the British squadron. The bay of Cuevas, between Llanes and Rivadesella, was chosen for the disembarkation, and arms and stores were landed with him, in large supply, and safely deposited, before he entered upon his operations. While this true Spaniard moved with rapidity from place to place, disappointing all the efforts of Bonnet to overpower him, surprising the enemy where they were weak, and eluding them where they were strong, it was determined by the Spanish government to avail themselves once more of the British squadron, and occupy Santona; and Renovales, who had now the rank of Camp-Marshal, was sent from Cadiz to Coruña, to command the force appointed for this service. It consisted of 1200 Spanish and 800 English troops, four English frigates and one Spanish, three smaller ships of war, with twenty-eight transports of all sizes. Part of the plan was, that he should co-operate with Porlier in an attack upon the French at Gijon, 600 in number. Porlier and Brigadier ♦Oct. 16.♦ Castañon collected their forces at Cezoso, and were on the heights in sight of Gijon when the squadron appeared; the enemy, after some skirmishing, withdrew from the town when they saw that Renovales was disembarking; the plunder which they endeavoured to carry with them was taken in their flight, the stores from the arsenal were put on board the Spanish transports, and the guns thrown into the sea. Before General Bonnet could collect a force to bring against the Spaniards the object had been effected; and when he arrived, and thought to have surprised Porlier by a night attack, the Asturians had retreated to Cezoso, and he found only the fires which they had kindled in their encampment for the purpose of deceiving him.

The weather which had delayed the ships on their way to Gijon became more unfavourable after their departure from that place; and though they reached Santona, and remained five days at anchor there, it was impossible to land; the Spanish gun-boats suffered so much that it was necessary to take out the crews and destroy the vessels. To remain there was impossible, and it was ♦Nov. 2.♦ deemed a fortunate deliverance when the expedition got into the port of Vivero. While they were laying there the wind recommenced, a heavy sea from the N.N.E. drove right into this insecure harbour, and in the violence of the storm the Spanish frigate parted from its cable and driving on board the Narcissus frigate completely dismasted it. The masts of the Spanish ship were left standing, so that it was driven clear; otherwise both must have perished, not having any other anchors to let go. Owing to the darkness and the tempest, it was impossible to afford any relief: the Spanish frigate was thrown upon the sand at the head of the harbour; when day broke, the beach appeared strewed with the wreck, and of nearly 500 souls on ♦The Magdalena wrecked.♦ board, there were but two survivors. This was the fate of the Magdalena: the Spanish brig Palomo was wrecked at the same time, only the captain and nine men escaped out of two hundred; and some of the other vessels also were lost during the same dreadful night. The Estrago gun-boat had parted some little time before from an English brig which had taken it in tow, and with great difficulty made the coast of Bermeo. Seeing that the French were there, the Commander, Lieutenant Aguiar y Mella, preferred all hazards to the evil of falling into their hands, and proceeded along the coast to Mundaca, where a like danger awaited him. Standing off again, he took a desperate course, among shoals and islets; and escaping from shipwreck in a manner which excited his own wonder, anchored in the bay of Lanchove; where one of the crew swam to shore, and brought off a little boat, by means of which the men were just landed before their vessel went to pieces. Not knowing which way to bend their course, they passed the night upon the mountains; and on the morrow, having been directed by a peasant, when they reached Sornoza, they learnt that forty of the enemy’s cavalry were in pursuit of them. They kept together, however, and, choosing the most unfrequented ways, travelled by night, in that inclement season, by Uncaya and the mountains of Leon, Santander, and Burgos; till, at the end of five weeks, the Lieutenant brought his whole party safe to Ferrol, and presented himself, with them, to the Commandant of the marine; giving thus an example of fidelity and resolution, for which they were rewarded with a gratuity by the Government, and an honourable mention in the Regency Gazette.

This expedition was frustrated by circumstances against which no human prudence could have provided. ♦Expedition under Lord Blayney.♦ An enterprise of greater moment, on the south coast, was attempted about the same time, and failed from other causes, but mainly because the information upon which it was undertaken proved to be fallacious. The French had experienced less resistance in Andalusia than in any other part of Spain. They ♦Mountains of Ronda.♦ were, however, far from being unmolested there, and in the mountains of Ronda the national character was well displayed, by the incessant hostilities which the people carried on against their invaders. The man who struck the spark there had been Professor of ♦Ortiz de Zarate.♦ Mathematics at Alicant; Don Andres Ortiz de Zarate was his name. In the early days of this dreadful revolution, he had taken an active part in the national cause, and afterwards was employed in service that required no slight degree of ability, by General Doyle; but perceiving from the mismanagement which prevailed in every department, civil or military, that the south of Spain would be overrun, as the north had been, he removed his family to Gibraltar, where, as a professional teacher, he could have supported them respectably, if he had not regarded the deliverance of his country more than his own concerns. But no sooner had the French taken possession of the kingdoms of Andalusia, than he obtained a supply of arms from the Governor of Gibraltar; and going among the villages, hamlets, and huts in the mountains of Ronda, roused a people who required only some moving spirit to put them in action: in the course of a fortnight 6000 men placed themselves under his orders. For himself he sought neither honours nor emolument; and when General Jacome y Ricardos, who was at that time Commandant at the camp of St. Roque, would have obtained rank for him from the Government, he declined it, saying, it would be time enough to receive the reward of his services when the country should be free. He soon became so popular among these mountaineers, that when he entered a town or village he was received with military honours, and the streets were decorated with hangings by day, and illuminated at night, as at the greatest festivals. This popularity might not have been obtained, if it had been necessary for him to levy contributions upon the people; but he commenced his operation in happy time, when the enemy had collected their first harvest of exactions, most or all of which fell into his hands, and was by him delivered over to the public service. The enemy, who had expected no such warfare, suffered severely in it; they lost some thousands, and El Pastor, as, for some unexplained reason, Ortiz de Zarate was then called, had become a celebrated name, when his career was impeded by some of those intrigues and jealousies which so frequently injured the national cause. He retired, in consequence, to Gibraltar, leaving General Valdenebro to command a people who were now no longer unanimous in any thing except their unabated hatred of the invaders. A deputation followed him there, accompanied by three hundred persons, and the Commandant of St. Roque’s prevailed upon him to return; but he would only go in the capacity of secretary to a military officer. Finding then that things were going ill, and that half the force which he had raised and organized was dispersed, he repaired to Cadiz, to inform the Government of the state of affairs, and require the repayment of what he had expended in the service, which was the whole of his own means, and some allowance for the prizes which he had taken from the enemy. His personal enemies had been embarked with him, and no sooner had he entered that city than he was arrested, put in irons, and thrown into a dungeon. The Spaniards had so long been accustomed, not to an absolute merely, but to an arbitrary Government, that even those authorities whose intentions were truly equitable were continually committing unjust and arbitrary acts. After twelve months’ imprisonment, Ortiz de Zarate, who had thus been treated as a criminal, was acquitted of all the charges which had been preferred against him; his honour, loyalty, and patriotism, were fully acknowledged, and he received payment of his claims in part. It was of importance to encourage the mountaineers whom he had put in action, and a plan therefore was formed for getting possession of Frangerola, a castle on the coast, between Marbella and Malaga, about twenty miles from the latter place. The castle was understood to be a place which might easily be taken by a coup-de-main; its capture would open a communication with the inhabitants of the Sierra, and hopes were entertained that it might lead also to the expulsion of the enemy from Malaga, where they were represented as being in no strength: the guns on the mole there were said to have been removed, and the citadel to be in a

♦Ld. Blayney sails from Gibraltar.♦ defenceless state. In consequence of these representations, an expedition sailed from Gibraltar, under the command of Major-General Lord Blayney: it consisted of four British companies (amounting to 300 men), and 500 German, Polish, and Italian deserters. They proceeded to Ceuta, and there took on board the Spanish regiment of Toledo. This regiment was said to be perfectly equipped; but upon examination it was found that there was a deficiency of 148 firelocks, and that they had been embarked without a single ♦Oct. 14.♦ round of ammunition. These deficiencies were supplied; the squadron soon anchored in a small bay, called Cala de Moral, and there the troops landed on a sandy beach, without any to oppose them.

It had been proposed to Lord Blayney that he should disembark near Malaga, and that while he called off the enemy’s attention on the land side, the squadron should alarm the city from the eastward, and the boats push for the mole, and land a party to assist the inhabitants, who, it was confidently expected, would take the opportunity of rising against their oppressors. But Lord Blayney properly distrusted the information upon which this advice was founded, and he had little confidence in the motley assemblage under his command; being not without apprehension that the confusion of their tongues might affect their movements in the hour of action. He chose to begin, therefore, with the castle of Frangerola, which is about two leagues east of the bay in which he landed. Upon arriving before it, he found it to be a large square fort, occupying the whole hillock on which it stands, strongly built, commanding every part of the beach where boats could land, and in a state of defence very unlike what he had been led to expect. When he sent in a summons to surrender, a resolute refusal was returned; the fort opened its fire upon the gun-boats, sunk one, and occasioned some loss in others. Lord Blayney advanced close to the works, for the purpose of drawing the enemy’s attention from the water: here he was contending with musquetry against grape-shot and stone walls. Major Grant was mortally wounded in this unequal engagement, and several men killed; but the riflemen did their part well; the enemy’s guns were for a time silenced, the boats took their stations, and he withdrew the troops. He now directed the Spaniards to the summit of a hill, with a ravine in front, which would have been a sufficient protection from any sudden attack; but the Spanish Colonel objected that it was Sunday, and that it was not the custom of his countrymen to fight upon that day. These Spaniards were not in good humour with their allies, nor perhaps with the service, for which they had been taken from their comfortable quarters at Ceuta: by a misarrangement arising from mere inattention, they had been served in the transport with meat on a meagre day; and they were discontented also because there was no priest embarked with them. Lord Blayney, however, prevailed upon the Commandant to detach four companies, for the purpose of occupying a pass near Mijas, and preventing the enemy in that town from sending assistance to the fort. A hundred Germans were added to this detachment; the English officer who conducted this service was persuaded by the Spaniards to attack the town, though his orders were to act on the defensive; the consequence was, that he was repulsed, and obliged rapidly to fall back on the main body.

During the night, the men were exposed, without shelter, to a continual heavy rain, such as is common at that season in those countries, and is never seen in our climate, except sometimes during the short duration of a thunder-storm. It was accompanied with thunder now. But the night was actively employed in landing artillery; which could not be done by day, because the guns of the castle completely commanded the beach. Soldiers and sailors exerted themselves heartily; and before daybreak a battery for one thirty-two pound carronade was completed on the shore, and another for two twelve-pounders and a howitzer, on a rocky hill, 350 yards from the castle. Though ♦Oct. 15.♦ the artillery could not make impression upon the solid old masonry of the walls, it destroyed part of the parapet, and the musquetry did such execution, that Lord Blayney entertained good hope of success; when, to his surprise, he learnt that the garrison had been reinforced before his arrival, that it was in sufficient strength for him to expect that a sortie would be made, and that Sebastiani was on the way from Malaga with 4700 foot, 800 horse, and sixteen pieces of artillery; ... his own force amounted only to 1400 men, and the four guns which had been landed. These he could not re-embark under the fire of the castle, and he would not abandon; and at this time, just as he was about to strengthen his position, by occupying a ruined tower, the Rodney, and a Spanish line-of-battle ship, appeared off the coast, with the eighty-second regiment, 1000 strong, to reinforce him. Boats were sent off to assist in landing them, and Lord Blayney was about to station gun-boats so as to rake the beach; but before either object could be effected, some 600 infantry, and sixty horse, sallied from the castle. It was a complete surprise; the British troops were in front, taking provisions; the enemy made their attack on the Spaniards and the foreigners on the left: these men took to flight, and abandoned the battery. At this moment the troops had pushed off from the ships, and Lord Blayney, trusting in them and in the strength of his position, formed the few British soldiers who were with him, and retook the guns by the bayonet, but not before part of the ammunition had been blown up. A doubt was now entertained whether some troops who were moving toward them upon the left were friends or foes; some said they were Spaniards; the German deserters declared them to be French. The hesitation and delay which this doubt occasioned enabled the enemy (for enemies they were) to approach without opposition; and when Lord Blayney, having ascertained the ♦Lord Blayney and the British troops taken.♦ truth too late, charged them, the conflict ended in his being made prisoner, with about 200 men, some forty having been killed. This was the fate of the English soldiers; most of the deserters went over to the enemy. The men who were in the boats had then no course left but to return to the ships, fortunate in having thus seen the termination of an ill-planned expedition, without being farther engaged in it.

It had not been supposed that Sebastiani could bring together so large a body of men as he had put in motion on this occasion. Some movement was expected from the inhabitants of Malaga, but with little reason; for the individuals who had exerted themselves most in resisting the entrance of the enemy into that city were, such of them as escaped from the slaughter, at this time in prison, with their leader, Colonel Avallo, upon some of those vague charges which, in Spain, under any of its Governments, were deemed sufficient grounds for throwing men into a dungeon, and leaving them there. It had been intended also that Sebastiani’s attention should have been called off in a different direction, by Blake, with the central army. That army was too slow in its movements to produce any effect in favour of Lord Blayney’s attempt; its head-quarters at this time were at Murcia, and its advance at Velez el Rubio. It was not till a fortnight after the failure at Frangerola, that the French thought it necessary to take any measures against this ill-disciplined, ill-appointed, ill-constituted body. The enemy’s troops were so distributed, that a considerable force could be assembled, within twenty-four hours, at any point where their presence was required; but before Sebastiani could ♦Nov. 3.♦ reach Baza, General Rey, with one regiment of dragoons, a regiment of Polish lancers, and a detachment of infantry, had routed an army which was exposed in a place without protection, and was completely broken at the first charge9. Between 1000 and 2000 were killed, and some 1200 taken; the officers here behaved better than the men, for the latter threw down their arms, and cried for quarter; while, of the former, all who were made prisoners had received sabre wounds. The prisoners were in a miserable condition, appearing half starved and half naked; a large portion of them consisted of old men and boys, and those who could not keep pace with their escort were shot upon the way.

Not discouraged by these repeated losses and multiplied disgraces the Spaniards continued to pursue that system of hostility which was carried on wherever the French were nominally masters of the country; a mode ♦Irregular war.♦ of war destructive to the invaders against whom it was directed, but dreadful also in its effect upon the people by whom it was waged. The Junta ♦See vol. i.♦ of Seville had, from the beginning of the struggle, perceived that the strength of Spain lay in her people, and not in her armies. The Central Junta also had early acknowledged the importance of that irregular and universal warfare for which the temper of the Spaniards and the character of the country were equally adapted; and they attempted to regulate it by a long edict, giving directions for forming Partidas of volunteers, and Quadrillas, which were to consist of smugglers, appointing them pay, enacting rules for them, and subjecting them to military law; but it is manifest that these restrictions would only be observed where the Government had sufficient authority to enforce them, which was only where they had armies on foot, and that when thus restricted, little was to be done by it. They spoke with a clear understanding of the circumstances in which Spain was placed when they proclaimed a Moorish war10, and bade the Spaniards remember in what manner their fathers had exterminated a former race of invaders. The country, they said, was to be saved by killing the enemies daily, just as they would rid themselves of a plague of locusts; a work which was slow, but sure, and in its progress would bring the nation to the martial pitch of those times, when it was a pastime to go forth and seek the Hagarenes. They reminded them of the old Castilian names, for skirmishes11, ambushments, assaults, and stratagems, the necessary resources of domestic warfare, and told them that the nature of the country and of the inhabitants rendered Spain invincible.

This character, on the part of the Spaniards, the war had now assumed in all parts of Spain. The French were no sooner masters of the field, than they found themselves engaged in a wearing, wasting contest, wherein discipline was of no avail, and by which, in a country of such extent and natural strength, any military power, however great, must ultimately be consumed. In any other part of Europe, they would have considered the conquest complete after such victories as they had obtained; but in Spain, where army after army had been routed, and city after city taken, ... when Joseph reigned at Madrid, and Soult commanded in Seville, ... when Victor was in sight of Cadiz, and Massena almost in sight of Lisbon, ... when Buonaparte had put all his other enemies under his feet, and in the height of his fortune, and plenitude of his power, had no other object than to effect the subjugation of the Peninsula, ... the generals and the men whom he employed there were made to feel that the cause in which they were engaged was as hopeless as it was unjust. They were never safe except when in large bodies, or in some fortified place. Every day some of their posts were surprised, some escort or convoy cut off, some detachment put to death; dispatches were intercepted, plunder was recovered, and what excited the Spaniards more than any, or all other considerations, vengeance was taken by a most vindictive people for insupportable wrongs. In every part of Spain, where the enemy called themselves masters, leaders started up, who collected about them the most determined spirits; followers enough were ready to join them; and both among chiefs and men, the best and the worst characters were to be found: some were mere ruffians, who if the country had been in peace would have lived in defiance of the laws, as they now defied the force of the intrusive Government; others were attracted by the wildness and continual excitement attendant upon a life of outlawry and adventure, to which, in the present circumstances of the nation, honour, instead of obloquy, was attached; but many were influenced by the deepest feelings and strongest passions which act upon the heart of man; love of their country, which their faith elevated and strengthened; and hope which that love and that faith rendered inextinguishable; and burning hatred, seeking revenge for the most wanton and most poignant injuries that can be inflicted upon humanity.

These parties began to be formed immediately after Buonaparte swept the land before him to Madrid, and from that time they continued to increase in numbers and activity, as the regular armies declined in reputation and in strength. The enemy made a great effort to put them down after the battle of Ocaña, and boasted of having completely succeeded, because the guerrillas disappeared before them, dispersing whenever they were in danger of being attacked by a superior force. There was nothing in their dress to distinguish them from the peasantry; every one was ready to give them intelligence or shelter; they knew the country perfectly; each man shifted for himself in time of need; and when they re-assembled at the appointed rallying place, so far were they from being dispirited by the dispersion, that the ease with which they had eluded the enemy became a new source of confidence. They became more numerous and more enterprising after it had been seen how little loss they sustained, when, for a time, the intrusive Government made it its chief object to extirpate them; their escapes, as well as their exploits, were detailed both in the official and provincial Gazettes; and the leaders became known in all parts, not of Spain only, but of Europe, by their own names, or the popular appellations which had been given them indicative of their former profession or personal appearance. El Manco, the man with a maimed arm, commanded one band; the Old Man of Sereña another. There was el Frayle, the Friar; el Cura, the Priest; el Medico, the Doctor; el Cantarero, the Potter; el Cocinero, the Cook; el Pastor, the Shepherd; el Abuelo, the grand-father. One chief was called el Chaleco, from the fashion of his waistcoat; he won for himself a better reputation than might have been expected from such an appellation: another obtained the name of Chambergo, from his slouched hat. Names of worse import appear among them; there was the Malalma, the Bad Soul, de Aibar, and the Ladron, the Robber, de Lumbier.

A large portion of the men who engaged under these leaders were soldiers, who had escaped in some of the miserable defeats to which the rashness of the Government and the incapacity of their generals had exposed them; or who had deserted from the regular army to this more inviting service. Smugglers also, a numerous and formidable class of men, now that their old occupation was destroyed, took to the guerrilla life, and brought to it the requisites of local knowledge, hardiness and audacity, and the quick sense of sight and hearing which they had acquired in carrying on their dangerous trade by night. But the greater number were men who, if circumstances had permitted, would have passed their life usefully and contentedly in the humble stations to which they were born; labourers, whom there were now none to employ, ... retainers, who partook the ruin of the great families to which they and their ancestors had been attached; ... owners or occupiers of land, whose fields had been laid waste, and whose olive-yards destroyed; and the whole class of provincial tradesmen, whose means of subsistence were cut off, happy if they had only their own ruin and their country’s quarrel to revenge, and not those deeper injuries of which dreadful cases were continually occurring wherever the enemy were masters. Monks, also, and friars, frocked and unfrocked, were among them: wherever the convents were suppressed, and their members forbidden to wear the habit on pain of death, which was done in all the provinces that the French overran, the young took arms, the old employed themselves in keeping up the spirit of the people; and the intrusive Government paid dearly for the church property, when those who had been previously supported by it exchanged a life of idleness for one of active exertion in the national cause, some to preach a crusade against the invaders, others to serve in it. These whom oppression had driven out from the cloister were not the only religioners who took arms. Not a few in the parts of the country which were still free took the opportunity, precious to them, of escaping from the servitude to which they were bound, disgusted with the follies of their profession, sick of its impostures, or impatient of its restraints. Public opinion encouraged them in this course; the multitude ascribing their conduct to a religious zeal for their country, while those who wished for the reformation of the abuses which had prepared the way for all this evil, were glad to see this disposition manifest itself in a class of men whom they justly regarded as one of the pests of Spain. The General of the Franciscans applied to Mendizabal to deliver up a friar who had enlisted in his army; but the application was so little in accord with the spirit of the times, that Mendizabal’s answer was read with universal approbation by the Spaniards. “The head of the Franciscans,” said that commander, “must have forgotten what Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros did when he commanded the army which took Oran. If that prelate in those days thought of nothing but destroying the Koran, and substituting the Gospel in its stead, what would he do now, when the religion of our fathers and our mother country is in danger? I have taken a lesson from his Eminency. Let the present head of the order send me a list of all the brethren capable of bearing arms, not forgetting himself, if he is fit for service, and we will march together and free our religion and our country. Inspire then your friars, that they may be agents in this noble work, putting away all kind of sloth; and let no other cry be heard than that of ‘War against the tyrant, freedom for our religion, our country, and our beloved Ferdinand.’” While this course was taken by the monks and friars, it is related of the nuns in the subjected parts of the country, that they passed ♦Rocca. 240.♦ the nights in praying for the success and deliverance of their countrymen, and the days in preparing medicines and bandages for the sick and wounded French.

Fewer guerrilla parties appeared in Andalusia than in any other province, although more had been expected there, from the fierier character of the people, and the local circumstances; the land being divided between the cathedrals, a few convents, and a few great proprietors, and the greater part of the inhabitants day-labourers, who were likely to be tempted ♦Andalusia.♦ by the prospect of a predatory life. But Andalusia seemed as if its generous blood had been exhausted in the first years of the war; and at this time the mountaineers of Ronda were the only part of its population who opposed a determined resistance to the intrusive Government. Their general, Valdenebro, tendered his resignation because the Regency had made him subordinate to the Marques de Portago, who commanded at the Campo de S. Roque; he had performed good service there; and it was stated in the Cortes as an example for imitation, that one or two patriots, and one or two priests who possessed local knowledge, and were of ordinary rank, but of extraordinary courage, composed his adjutants, his aides-de-camp, and his whole staff. The orator did not bear in mind that Valdenebro was at the head, not of an army, but of an irregular force. Forest-flies these mountaineers were called, to express the ♦Mountains of Ronda.♦ pertinacity with which they annoyed the enemy, and the facility with which they eluded him. Ready themselves to endure all privations, to encounter all dangers, to make any sacrifices in the national cause, they regarded submission in such a cause, when it proceeded from weakness, as little less odious than the conduct of those traitors who accepted office under the intrusive Government; and because the city of Ronda had made no resistance to the French, they looked upon the name as disgraced, and called their mountainous region the Serrania de Fernando VII., to mark their indignation against the conduct of its capital. If the spirit of such a people could have been subdued, the enemy were neither wanting in activity nor in inhumanity for effecting their purpose. They had light pieces of artillery for mountain service, two of which were carried by a mule, one on each side, balancing each other; the carriages and ammunition-boxes were made portable in the same way: and their attacks were so frequent, that in the course of two years there was one village which they entered forcibly fifty times. Sebastiani, in whose military command this district was comprised, was a person who betrayed no compunction in carrying the abominable edict of M. Soult into effect; and scarcely a day passed in which several prisoners were not put to death in Granada in conformity to that decree. Among the instances of heroic virtue which were displayed here during the continuance of this tyranny, there are two which were gratefully acknowledged by the national Government. Lorenzo Teyxeyro, an inhabitant of Granada, who had performed the dangerous service of communicating intelligence to the nearest Spanish general, was discovered, and might have saved his life if he would have named the persons through whom the communication was carried on; but he was true to them as he had been to his country, and suffered death contentedly. The other instance was attended with more tragic circumstances. Captain Vicente Moreno, who was serving with the mountaineers of Ronda, was made prisoner, carried to Granada, and there had the alternative proposed to him of suffering by the hangman, or entering into the intruder’s service. Sebastiani showed much solicitude to prevail upon this officer, having, it may be believed, some feeling of humanity, if not some fore-feeling of the opprobrium which such acts of wickedness draw after them in this world, and of the account which is to be rendered for them in the next. Moreno’s wife and four children were therefore, by the General’s orders, brought to him when he was upon the scaffold, to see if their entreaties would shake his resolution; but Moreno, with the courage of a martyr, bade her withdraw, and teach her sons to remember the example which he was about to give them, and to serve their country, as he had done, honourably and dutifully to the last. This murder provoked a public retaliation which the Spaniards seldom exercised, but ... when they did ... upon a tremendous scale. Gonzalez, who was member in the Cortes for Jaen, had served with Moreno, and loved him as such a man deserved to be loved; and by his orders seventy French prisoners were put to death at Marbella.

So wicked a system as that which Buonaparte’s generals unrelentingly pursued could nowhere have been exercised with so little prospect of success, and such sure effect of calling forth a dreadful vengeance, as among the Spaniards. Against such enemies they considered all means lawful; this was the feeling not here alone, but throughout the body of the nation; the treacherous commencement of the war on the part of the French, and the systematic cruelty with which it had been carried on, discharged them, they thought, from all observances of good faith or humanity towards them; and upon this principle they acted to its full extent. The labourer at his work in the fields or gardens had a musket concealed at hand, with which to mark the Frenchman whom ill fortune might bring within his reach. Boys, too young to be suspected of any treachery, would lead a party of the invaders into some fatal ambuscade; women were stationed to give the signal for beginning the slaughter, and that signal was sometimes ♦Rocca, 225, 226. 212.♦ the hymn to the Virgin! Not fewer than 8000 French are said to have been cut off in the mountains of Ronda.

There, however, it was more properly a national than a guerrilla warfare; the work of destruction being carried on less by roving parties than by the settled inhabitants, who watched for every opportunity of vengeance. There were more bands in Extremadura than in Andalusia, but ♦Estrdemadura.♦ there were not many; for Extremadura was not in the line for convoys, which always offered the ♦D. Toribio Bustamente.♦ most inviting prey. The most noted leader in the province was D. Toribio Bustamente, known by the name of Caracol, who had been master of the post-office at Medina del Rio Seco; among the other horrors which were committed in that unhappy town after Cuesta and Blake were defeated by M. Bessieres, the wife of this man had been violated and murdered, and his son also, a mere child, had been butchered. From that hour he devoted himself to the pursuit of vengeance, and many were the enemies who suffered under his hand for the crimes of their countrymen, till, after a career of two years, he fell at the pass of Miravete with the satisfaction of a man who, in the performance of what he believed to be his sacred duty, had found the death which he desired. Bustamente’s men acquired a good character, as well for their behaviour to the inhabitants, as for the courage and success with which they harassed the enemy: but there were other parties in Extremadura, who inflicted more injury upon their countrymen than upon the French. This was the case in La Mancha also; the Government, with a vigour which it seldom exerted, arrested some of the banditti leaders, and brought them to justice; but such examples were too few to deter other ruffians from pursuing the same course, while the authority of either Government, national or intrusive, was so ill-established, that there was no other law than that of the strongest. One adventurer, however, in this province raised himself to respectability and rank by his services, though known by the unpromising appellation ♦Francisco Abad, the Chaleco.♦ of El Chaleco. Francisco Abad Moreno was his name: he began his career as a common soldier, and escaping from some rout, joined company with two fugitives of his own regiment, and began war upon his own account. Their first exploit was to kill an enemy’s courier and his escort; and shortly afterwards having added two recruits to his number, he presented to the Marques of Villafranca, at Murcia, five carts laden with tobacco, quicksilver, and plate, which he had taken from the French, and the ears12 of thirteen Frenchmen who had fallen by their hands! His party increased as his name became known; and he cut off great numbers of the enemy, sometimes in Murcia, sometimes in La Mancha, intercepting their convoys and detachments. Showing as little mercy as he looked for, and expecting as little as he showed, he faced with desperate or ferocious courage the danger from which there was no escape by flight, swimming rivers when swoln by rain, or employing any means that might give him the victory. On one occasion he broke a troop of the French by discharging a blunderbuss loaded with five-and-thirty bullets; it brought down nine of the enemy, according to his own account, and he received so severe a contusion on the shoulder from the recoil, that it entirely disabled him for a time; but the party was kept together under his second in command, Juan de Bacas, and its reputation enhanced by greater exploits.

One service which Bacas performed diffused a general feeling of vindictive joy through La Mancha and the adjacent ♦Ciria, the Nero of La Mancha.♦ provinces. D. Benito Maria Ciria acted for the intrusive Government as governor and corregidor of La Mancha. He was a man of information and singular activity, who might have obtained for himself an honourable remembrance, if he had displayed the same zeal in the cause of his country which he exerted for its oppressors. From the beginning he was suspected of favouring the Intruder, and had been apprehended on that suspicion before the French forced the passes of the Sierra Morena; the military Junta of La Carolina spared him, and upon the first appearance of the enemy, he proved that his intentions had not been mistaken, by joining them. From that time Ciria served them with the rancorous alacrity of a true traitor, insomuch that he was called the Nero of La Mancha. This evil celebrity drew on him its proper punishment. Bacas was on the watch for a favourable opportunity, and as soon as it occurred, he entered Almagro at the head of his guerrillas, and seized him in the streets of that city: the people called out for his punishment upon the spot, but Bacas felt that the solemnity of a judicial sentence would make the example more impressive; he carried his prisoner therefore to Valencia de Alcantara, and delivered him there to the arm of the law, under which he suffered as a traitor. A victory could not have occasioned greater exultation throughout La Mancha; if Bacas and his party, it was said, had performed no other service than that of bringing this offender to justice, they would have deserved well of their country for that alone.

It would have been well for humanity, and honourable for Spain, if those who were engaged with right feelings in their country’s cause had always shown this regard to order and the course of law; but the Spaniards had, under long misrule, become a lawless nation; the great trampled upon the laws, and by the people murder was scarcely regarded as a crime; in their vindictive feelings they were unrestrained by any religious awe, or any apprehension of earthly punishment. A squadron of the La Manchan Crusaders entered this very city of Almagro; they sacked the house of the traitor who collected the revenues for the Intruder; and because his wife in her rage reviled them, professed her attachment to King Joseph, and threatened them with vengeance in his name, they killed her; and Ureña, a priest, who commanded the party, related the circumstance with perfect complacency in his official dispatch. The heart of the nation was already hard, and the little which might have been done by the legitimate Government for correcting the national inhumanity, and inducing, or at least endeavouring to induce, a more christian, a more civilized, a more humane spirit, was neglected.

New Castille swarmed with guerrillas, among whom were some of the most distinguished chiefs. D. Ventura Ximenez made himself formidable in the parts about Toledo, till one day in action his horse carried him into the enemy’s ranks; his people rescued him, but not till he had received two sabre wounds and a pistol-shot. They carried him to Navalucillos, where he died. A price had been set upon his head; his body therefore was disinterred by the French, and the head carried to Toledo, that the dragoon who had shot him might receive the reward. In this province there were some of the vilest depredators who under the name of guerrillas infested Spain. ♦Guerrilla banditti.♦ For as in times of pestilence or earthquake, wretches are found obdurate enough in wickedness to make the visitation a cover for their guilt, and enrich themselves by plunder; so now, in the anarchy of Spain, they whose evil disposition had been restrained, if not by efficient laws, yet in some degree by the influence of settled society, abandoned themselves, when that control was withdrawn, to the impulses of their own evil hearts. These banditti plundered and murdered indiscriminately all who fell into their hands. The guerrilla chief, D. Juan Abril, caught a band of seven, who made Castille the scene of their depredations; and he found in their possession gold and silver bars, and other property, to the amount of half a million reales. A ruffian belonging to one of these bands was taken by the French, and in order to save his life, offered to show them the place where his comrades had secreted their booty; accordingly a commissioner from the criminal Junta of Madrid, with two alguazils, and an escort of forty horse, was appointed to go with him. The deposit was in the wood of Villa Viciosa, eight leagues from the capital, and there they found effects to the value of more than 700,000 reales. But D. Juan Palarea, the Medico, from whose party the bandit had originally deserted, had obtained intelligence of their movements, and intercepted them on their return; five only of the escort escaped, six were made prisoners, the rest were killed; and the commissioner was put to death, as one whose office precluded him from mercy, and even from commiseration.

Of the wretches whom this dissolution of government let loose upon mankind, the banditti were the boldest, ♦Crimes of José Pedrazuela and his wife.♦ but not the worst. A more extraordinary and flagitious course was chosen by José Pedrazuela, who had been an actor at Madrid. He assumed the character of a commissioner under the legitimate Government, and being acknowledged as such in the little town of Ladrada in Extremadura, condemned and executed, under a charge of treason, any persons whom from any motive he chose to destroy: the victims were carried at night to a wood, where their graves had been made ready, and there their throats were cut, or they were shot, or beaten to death. The people supposing him to be actually invested with the authority which he assumed, submitted to him in terror, as the French had done to Collot d’Herbois and the other monsters whom this Pedrazuela was imitating. His wife, Maria Josefa Garcia della Valle, was privy to the imposture, and if possible exceeded him in cruelty. Before they could withdraw, as they probably designed to do when they had sufficiently enriched themselves, Castaños heard of their proceedings, and instantly took measures for arresting them in their career of blood. They were brought to trial at Valencia de Alcantara; thirteen of these midnight murders were proved against them: it was said that in the course of three months they had committed more than threescore. The man was hanged and quartered, the woman strangled by the garrote. The Spaniards had not brought upon themselves the guilt of revolution, but they were visited by all its horrors!

The better guerrilla chiefs maintained order where they could, and whenever any of the banditti fell into their hands, ordered them to summary execution. There was another class of criminals whom they took every opportunity of bringing under the laws of their outraged country, ... those Spaniards who took an active part in the Intruder’s service. The alcalde of Brihuega was ♦The alcalde of Brihuega.♦ notorious for his exertions against those who were suspected of corresponding with the national Government, or in any way aiding it; his wife was passionately attached to the same cause, and the Empecinado one day intercepted a dispatch from her to the nearest French commander: he entered the town, and made her and her husband prisoners. The dispatch had provoked a barbarous spirit in the men, for they cut off the woman’s hair, shaved her eyebrows, tarred and feathered her, and in that condition paraded her through the streets; after which they delivered them both to the Junta of the province for judgment. The Empecinado seems to have had an especial pleasure in pursuing traitors of this description. He had set intelligencers ♦Rigo.♦ upon one Rigo, who, having affected great zeal in the national cause, fled afterwards to the capital, obtained a considerable appointment there, and became a persecutor of all who carried on any communication with the Government or the armed Spaniards. This man was keeping his marriage-day at a house a little way from Madrid, when, during the wedding-feast, the Empecinado entered the court-yard at the head of a sufficient band, and demanded that Rigo should be delivered up, saying no injury should be offered to any other of the party. Flight or resistance were alike impossible; the miserable traitor was surrendered into his hands, and sent immediately under a trusty escort to Cadiz; the officer into whose charge he was given being enjoined not to depart from that city till he should have seen him ♦Joseph’s escape from the Empecinado.♦ put to death in the great square. Joseph himself narrowly escaped a similar fate from the same daring adventurer. He was dining at La Alameda, six miles from Madrid, on the road to Guadalaxara, with Gen. Belliard, and a festive party, when their entertainment was interrupted by an alarm that the Empecinado was approaching, and they fled hastily towards the capital, for not a moment was to be lost. The Intruder had a second escape on the road from Guadalaxara: the Empecinado knew his movements, and six days after the French had boasted of having totally defeated him, and dispersed his band of brigands, he took post at Cogolludo, and pursued Joseph so closely that more than forty of his rear-guard were cut off at Torrejon and El Molar, before they could come within protection of the garrison of Madrid. So little indeed had that garrison the command of the surrounding country, that a whole party which had been sent out from thence were one day taken and hung by the way-side, within a short distance from the walls.

In this dreadful warfare blood called for blood; cruelty produced retaliation, and retaliation was retaliated by fresh cruelties. Eight of the Empecinado’s men were taken in the Guadarrama mountains, and nailed to the trees there, for the purpose of intimidating their fellows: such a spectacle had the sure effect of exasperating them, and the same number of Frenchmen were soon nailed to the same trees, in the same spirit of inhuman vengeance.

A lieutenant of his party, Mesa by name, went over to the French, and engaged to bring them the head of this dreaded partisan; his interest was so good, and his proposals so plausible, that they gave him the rank of captain in one of the Spanish regiments which the Intruder was raising, and sent him with a company of 200 Spanish cavalry to perform his promise; when they came near Guadalaxara, the men put him to death, and joined their countrymen in arms. Such an example might have taught Joseph and his ministers how little they could depend upon the Spaniards, who by misery, or severe usage, were forced into his service. Half naked and ill-fed, kept in miserable prisons, or at the hardest work, upon the canals, where such work was at hand, winter and summer, sometimes up to the middle in water, they enlisted with the determination of making their escape. In the course of five months not less than 12,000 entered with this purpose; and on the first opportunity that offered, whole companies, including the officers, deserted, with arms and baggage. The celebrity of the Empecinado encouraged them to these attempts, and his movements in the vicinity of Madrid facilitated their escape. Like the other distinguished guerrilla leaders, he soon obtained rank from the national Government, but he looked to it neither for pay nor supplies. ♦Junta of Guadalaxara.♦ The Junta of Guadalaxara used the utmost exertions to assist him; the members of this Junta performed their duty with perfect fidelity in a situation where they were continually in extreme danger, from the vicinity of a strong enemy’s force. They were as often in the woods and wilds as in human habitations, and yet they collected stores, clothing, and money for the armies, while in this state of outlawry under the intrusive Government; and they circulated a newspaper which they printed in the mountains near the sources of the Tagus.

The Empecinado was supposed to have 500 horse under his command, and 2,200 foot; but this force was perpetually varying in number, according to the chance of war; and the guerrillas generally acted with better ♦The Medico.♦ success in small parties. The Medico’s party was estimated at 300 horse. This leader, joining with the band of D. Casimero Moraleja, fell in with 140 of the enemy’s troops, escorting a convoy from Madrid, about four leagues from Toledo, near Yuncles. Some twenty Juramentados, as the Spanish recruits were called because of the oath which was administered to them when they entered the Intruder’s service, immediately laid down their arms; the others, of whom ♦Fourscore French burnt in a chapel.♦ fourscore were French grenadiers under the Chef-d’escadron Labarthe, took possession of an Ermida, and refused to surrender when they were summoned, little apprehending the horrible alternative. The Spaniards set fire to the building on all sides; no mercy was shown to those who endeavoured ♦Naylies, 275.♦ to escape from the flames; eight persons only were happy enough to be made prisoners in time; the bodies13 of all the rest were left in the smoking ruins.

These details were published in the Regency’s Gazette; there was nothing revolting to the public mind in such horrors, because the Spaniards had been accustomed to cruelties, by the history of their American conquests (wherein the enormities of the conquerors have not been concealed), and by the Inquisition: and if the heart of the nation had not thus previously been hardened, the nature of this war must have hardened it. The decree of the intrusive Government for putting to death every Spaniard who should be taken in arms had not indeed been carried into effect; too many had been taken to render this possible in a christian country; ministers and generals, who might have braved the guilt, shrunk from the odium of enforcing such a measure; and it may be deemed certain, that if the French troops had been commanded to enforce it, they would not have obeyed. But toward the guerrillas the soldiers could entertain no feeling either of honour or humanity: they put to death all ♦Naylies, 274.♦ who were taken in arms and not in uniform; not regarding, or probably not considering, that a great proportion of the regular troops were in that condition! It was not to be expected that they should ask themselves on which side the provocation was given, and with whom the cruelty began. And yet, barbarous as Buonaparte’s predatory system of war necessarily made them, and with all the irritation which the guerrillas occasioned, they were less barbarous than those who were in authority over them: prisoners whom they spared in the field were, in obedience to rigid orders, shot if they lagged upon their march into captivity; and even after they had entered France, numbers were thus ♦Lord Blayney, i. 487.♦ put to death in cold blood. All who were regarded as brigands, who acted in the provincial Juntas, or against whom any proof appeared of acting under the Juntas, or giving intelligence or assistance to the guerrillas, were executed by the summary sentence of some arbitrary tribunal. Heads were exposed on poles, bodies left hanging upon the gallows, or the trees; and in the market-place of large towns, the wall against which the victims were shot was pierced with bullets, and the ground blackened with blood! Nowhere was this system of terror pursued more unrelentingly ♦Old Castille.♦ than in Old Castille, and yet nowhere were the guerrillas more active or more formidable. In ten parties, under known leaders, their numbers were estimated at 1,300 horse, and 2,500 foot. D. Geronimo Merino, the priest of Villabrau, known by the name of ♦The Cura.♦ El Cura, was the most remarkable of them for the ferocity with which he acted against enemies who were made ferocious by the dreadful circumstances in which they were placed. It was not to be expected that the Spaniards should make this allowance for their invaders; but they did not claim it for themselves; they proclaimed for admiration and example actions at which humanity should shudder: it became a matter of praise among them, as in the days of Pizarro and Garcia de Paredes, to possess the qualities of a ruffian; and if the appearance14 corresponded to the manners and character, the popular hero was perfect in his vocation. Yet mercy appears to have been more frequently shown by the guerrillas than extended to them. They obtained consideration with their own Government, and with the English, by bringing in prisoners, and were encouraged so to do; whereas the French soldiers knew that if an armed Spaniard were taken he would be put to death, and might consider it merciful at once to slay a fallen enemy, rather than deliver him over to execution. The guerrillas also, by conveying their prisoners to one of the Spanish fortresses, or to a part of the country where the allies were in force, obtained a respite, for the time, from that life of incessant vigilance and insecurity, exertion and exposure, which, without some such occasional relief, no bodily strength could have long supported. It was by the peasantry that the greatest cruelties were committed upon such miserable Frenchmen as fell into their hands, ♦Rocca, 145.♦ and by the women, who are said to have sometimes vied with the worst American savages in their unutterable barbarities.

There were fewer of the roving guerrillas in Aragon, because something with the name of an army was kept on foot there, and in such a state that the regular service differed little from the course of life to which the adventurers were reduced. In no other part of Spain was the intrusive Government administered with greater ability and vigilance, nor more in the spirit of remorseless oppression and rapacity. The whole yearly revenue which had been raised in that province before the invasion, amounted to from ten to twelve millions of reales: the French exacted twelve per month as the ordinary contribution; they called for extraordinary payments when they pleased; and after these official exactions, the Aragonese were not exempted from the common lot of their countrymen in being at the mercy of every plunderer. What guerrilla parties there were in this part of the country were less heard of, because on all sides there were chiefs whose reputation, founded upon repeated successes, drew to their parties the men who would otherwise have been dispersed ♦The Canterero.♦ in smaller bands. Anicio Algere, the Potter, whose scene of action was about Jaca, was the only one who obtained any degree of celebrity here. But along the great line of communication for the French armies, and especially the high road from the Bidassoa to Madrid, where it was of most importance for the enemy to secure the ways, and where most precautions were taken for securing them, there the guerrillas were most active and most daring. At the entrance of the villages houses were fortified with ditches, parapets, embrasures for field-pieces, and loop-holes for musquetry, and ditches and parapets across the roads. These stations served a double purpose; for here at every step the sick and wounded, who were on their way to France, were inspected with a vigilance so severely exercised, that it seemed as if the persons in authority, who could not escape from this hateful service, found a malignant satisfaction in disappointing others of their expected deliverance. They sometimes remanded men who had passed at several posts; and there were cases in which the wound or the malady (aggravated, perhaps, by so cruel a disappointment) proved ♦Naylies.♦ fatal at the very place where the sufferer had been refused permission to proceed, upon the plea that he was not sufficiently disabled!

Everywhere, but more especially at Irun and all the frontier places, accounts were kept for the guerrillas of the troops, who passed through, both of those who were entering the country, and of invalids on their way from it. Every artifice was used to delay the enemy when it was desired that one of these parties should have time to come up for attack, or for securing a retreat. For this purpose the priest or the alcalde would officiously prepare refreshments, while some messenger, with all the speed of earnest good will, conveyed the necessary intelligence. This would have occurred in ordinary wars; but the treachery with which they had been invaded, and the cruelties which were continually practised against them, made the Spaniards regard any vengeance, however treacherous, as an act of justice. ♦Alcalde of Mondragon.♦ An alcalde and his son were put to death at Mondragon for having at different times assassinated more than two hundred Frenchmen. When they were led to execution, they exulted in what they had done, accounting it among their good and meritorious works; and they said to their countrymen, ♦Lord Blayney.♦ that if every Spaniard had discharged his duty as well as they had done, the enemy would ere then have been exterminated, and the land been free.

It was in this part of Spain that the most noted guerrilla leaders appeared, the Empecinado only excepted; the most mountainous and rugged country being most favourable to their mode of warfare. There ♦Asturias.
Porlier.♦ were many bands in Asturias; the most numerous was that which Porlier had raised; but Porlier was a man of family, who had rank in the army, and his people had more of the feeling and character of soldiers than was commonly found in such companies. There were many also in the Montaña, where Longa obtained a good name. The French endeavoured to counteract this system of national hostility, in the province of Soria, by forcing the men into their own service: with this view they ordered a conscription, and the alcalde of Valdenebro was put to death by them in Burgo de Osma, for not having enforced it in obedience to their authority. They called for all single men from fifteen to forty years of age, and all married ones whose marriage was not of earlier date than the year on which this dreadful struggle ♦D. José Duran.♦ was begun. D. José Duran, an old officer who had grown gray in the regular service, and whom the Junta of Soria had appointed to the command there and in Rioja, impeded the execution of this scheme, ♦Nov. 20.♦ by his enterprises and his edicts: he threatened such of the inhabitants as were disposed to obey the orders of the enemy, lest their own safety might be compromised; and he interdicted the use of the word in that acceptation, saying it was their religion and their liberty which were compromised by such obedience, and that no Christian and true Spaniard could incur the guilt of such a compromise. He forbade any inhabitant of the province to enter Soria while the enemy kept a garrison there, on pain of being regarded as a traitor, whatever motive or excuse he might allege. He declared that every person obeying an order of the intrusive Government should be put to death, ... every village burnt, ... so that nothing might exist in Spain which had contributed towards its subjugation. Whenever the enemy approached a village, the inhabitants were enjoined to leave it, driving all their cattle into the mountains; and they were commanded not to leave provision of any kind in their houses, unless it were poisoned; to the end that either by want or by poison, the enemy, who were employed in destroying an unoffending people, might be themselves destroyed. The state of feeling may be understood in which such an edict could be issued by a provincial Junta who lived in hourly peril, and whose dearest connexions were the victims of foreign barbarity; but when the edict itself was sanctioned by the national Government—for sanctioned it was by being allowed to appear in the Regency’s Gazette unannulled and uncensured—it became a national disgrace.

When the guerrillas of Asturias, the Biscayan provinces, Soria, or Rioja, were closely pressed by the enemy, they usually sought refuge in Navarre, or the higher parts of Aragon: here they had their chief strength. The French, indeed, complained, in their intercepted dispatches, that these bands gave the law in Navarre, levied contributions there, and even collected the duties at the frontier custom-houses. For this ♦Xavier Mina.♦ superiority they were beholden to Xavier Mina. His career was short, but remarkable not less for the signal successes which he obtained, than for his hair-breadth escapes. On one occasion he and his little party were driven to seek refuge on a rock near Estella, where they defended the only accessible side till night-fall, and escaped during the darkness by letting themselves down the precipice by a rope. In the course of five months after his first appearance in the field, his celebrity was such that he might have raised an army from among the youth of Navarre and Upper Aragon, if there had been means to arm, and officers to discipline them: owing to the want of these, and chiefly of officers, he never had more than 1,200 under his command; greater numbers would have embarrassed him, these he was capable of directing: voluntary rations were provided for them by the villages, and for ammunition and money he looked to the enemy, calling the wood of Tafalla his powder-magazine and his mint. As a farther resource, he levied the duties of which the French complained, and he collected the rents belonging to the convents and churches, as having in this extremity reverted to the nation; and from these funds he was enabled to pay liberally and regularly for intelligence. The wisdom of his measures, not less than the chivalrous spirit of enterprise which he displayed, made him so formidable to the enemy, that his capture was considered by them as more important than a victory, when accident threw ♦Xavier Mina made prisoner.♦ him into their hands. Chance had delayed the advance of a convoy for which he was waiting: he was informed of the delay, but proposed to wait still; and went himself on horseback with only one companion, by moonlight, to reconnoitre the ground. The enemy, who would have thought no precautions necessary against a Spanish army at that time, stood in such fear of Mina, that they had formed a double line of outposts, and sent out patroles; by some of whom he and his comrade were surprised, dismounted, and taken. It is remarkable that he was not put to death as soon as identified, for he had been proscribed as a leader of banditti, and his capture as such was exultingly announced; but some person of more generosity than those who thus reviled him must have interfered; and where so little that has the character of honour or humanity can be recorded, it must be regretted that we know not to whom this redeeming act should be ascribed.

When Mina’s followers had thus lost their leader, disputes arose concerning the command; and there being no one whose personal qualifications were generally acknowledged, it was resolved to choose his uncle for his name’s sake, for in that name there was a strength. His uncle, Francisco Espoz y Mina, was born in 1781, in the village of Ydozin, upon a little farm, the sole patrimony of his family, to which he succeeded on his father’s death. His education consisted in having merely been taught to read and write; and husbandry had been his only occupation, till under the impulse of the general feeling he took arms against the oppressors of his country; and having, according to his own account, done to them all the hurt he could as long as he remained in his own house, he enlisted as a volunteer in Doyle’s battalion. Soon afterwards, using that freedom which the times allowed, he joined his nephew’s guerrilla, and on the evening after the young hero’s capture, he left the band apparently with the intention of betaking himself to some other course of life; a deputation of seven persons followed him, and urged him to take the command, which having against his will accepted, he began to exercise with a strength of character that never halted in half measures. One of his first acts was to put down those who resisted the authority which he claimed as commander-in-chief of the guerrillas of Navarre, and in which the Junta of Aragon confirmed him. A certain Echeverria had aspired to this rank; he had some 800 men in his company, consisting mostly of German deserters, who inflicted more evil upon the peasantry than upon the French. Espoz y Mina, with about half that force, surprised and arrested him, had him shot with three of his principal comrades, and incorporated the men in his own band. A gang of forty ruffians, with a woman by name Martina for their leader, infested Biscay and Alava, and committed so many murders, that the cry of the land went forth against them; he dispatched a party, who surprised half these banditti with their execrable mistress at their head, and they were sent to summary execution. Espoz y Mina himself narrowly escaped from the treachery of another adventurer, who for his evil countenance was known by the appellation of Malcarado. This man had been a shepherd, and afterwards a serjeant in Mina’s troop. He, too, intended to make war upon his own account; but finding that this would not be permitted by the new guerrilla chief, who suffered no banditti to exercise their vocation within his reach, he deemed it better to make terms with the French than be exposed to danger on both sides; feigning, therefore, to serve under Espoz y Mina, he gave general Pannetier information of his movements, ... and drew off the advanced guard from before the village of Robres, so as to give a French detachment opportunity to enter while the chief was in bed. The alarm roused him but just in time; he defended himself at the entrance of the house with the bar of the door for want of any other weapon, till his faithful follower, Luis Gaston, came to his assistance and brought a horse. Enough of his people collected to make head against the enemy, rout them, and rescue their prisoners. Immediately he pursued Malcarado, and having what was deemed sufficient evidence of his treason, ordered him to be shot, and the priest of the village and three alcaldes to be hanged, side by side, as his accomplices.

A leader who acted always thus decisively, in disregard of forms, upon the apparent justice of the case, inspired his followers with confidence, and obtained submission everywhere. Where his orders were not executed with the alacrity of good-will, they were obeyed for fear. The alcaldes of every village were required to give him immediate information whenever they received orders from the French for making any requisition: it was at the hazard of their lives to do this; but so surely as they failed to do it, they were seized in their beds and shot. The miserable people were thus continually placed between two dangers; but their hearts were with Mina; they were attached to him by self-interest as well as by national feeling, for he encouraged them to trade with France, receiving money from the rich traders for passports, by which means he was enabled both to pay his men, and to reward his spies liberally; and thus also he obtained many articles which it would otherwise have been difficult to procure. Circumstances having forced him into a way of life which he would not have chosen, he devoted himself to it with his whole heart and soul; and his strength both of constitution and character were equal to their trials. It is said that two hours’ sleep sufficed for him; when he lay down it was with his pistols in his girdle, and the few nights which he slept under a roof were passed with less sense of security than he felt in the wilds, although his first care was to secure the doors, and guard against a surprisal. He was not encumbered with baggage; the nearest house supplied the wardrobe when he changed his linen; and he and his men wore sandals that they might more easily ascend the heights in the hair-breadth adventures to which they were exposed. His powder was made in a cave among the mountains; sometimes he obtained it from Pamplona, notwithstanding the vigilance of the enemy. His hospital was in a mountain village; when the French more than once endeavoured to surprise it, timely intelligence was given, and the villagers carried the sick and wounded in litters, upon their shoulders, into the fastnesses. He kept no man in his troop who was known to be addicted to women, lest by their likeliest means he might be betrayed. No gaming was allowed among his men, nor were they permitted to plunder; when the fight was over every one might keep what he could get; but woe to him who should lay hand on the spoil before the struggle was at an end, and the success had been pursued to the utmost!

In such enterprises as those of the two Minas and the other guerrilla chiefs, the Timours, the Babers, and Khouli Khans of Eastern history, were trained; but neither men nor officers were likely to be formed in them for the operations of regular war. The restraints, the subordination, the principle of obedience which the soldier is compelled to learn, of the necessity of which his understanding is convinced, and to which, if his disposition be good, he conforms at last morally as well as mechanically, these in no slight degree counteract the demoralizing tendencies of a military life, and compensate for its heart-hardening ones. The good soldier becomes a good citizen when his occupation is over; but the guerrillas were never likely to forego the wild and lawless course in which they were engaged; and, therefore, essential as their services now were, thoughtful men looked with the gloomiest forebodings to what must be the consequence of their multiplication, whenever this dreadful struggle should be ended; they anticipated the ♦Sem. Patr. No. 82, p. 338.♦ utter ruin of Spain. The course of events, however, was not to be controlled; circumstances had produced this irregular force, and there was now no possibility of defending the country without it. Lord Wellington had felt how hopeless it was to act in concert with a Spanish army, wherein good intentions were frustrated by obstinate counsels, and courage rendered unavailing by insubordination; but he felt at this time of what importance it was to have a nation in his favour, and how materially the movements of the enemy were impeded and their difficulties increased by the guerrilla parties who acted along their whole line, from the Pyrenees to the frontiers of Beira. Massena’s situation became every day more trying; the French in Spain were so little able to feed his army, that he was obliged to have his biscuit from France, when it had to be escorted 800 miles through a hostile country! It was as difficult for him to send dispatches as to receive supplies; and the first intelligence which Buonaparte obtained of his situation after he advanced to the lines of Torres Vedras, was brought from London, by persons employed in smuggling guineas to the continent.

While the Peninsula in every part, from the Pyrenees to the Pillars of Hercules, was filled with mourning, and with all the horrors of a war carried on on both sides ♦Schemes of the intrusive Government.♦ with unexampled cruelty, the Madrid gazette spoke of public diversions, and public projects, as if the people of that metropolis, like the Parisians, were to be amused with plans of imaginary works, and entered into the affairs of the theatre and opera regardless of the miseries of their country. Needy as the intrusive Government was, it kept these places of amusement open, in the spirit of Parisian policy, taking its erroneous estimate of human nature from man in his most corrupted state: but the numbers of the audience, and the accounts of the theatres, were no longer published as in other times. Schemes of education were hinted at, and for the encouragement of literature, ... the unction which such men as Cabarrus and Urquijo laid to their souls. Canals were projected, when couriers were not safe even at the gates of the capital; and the improvement of agriculture was announced, while circulars were sent to the generals and military governors, urging them to prevent the destruction of the vines and olive trees by the troops; and promising that this ruinous course should not be continued, if the peasants would be careful always to provide fuel of their own cutting.

Spain also, like Italy, was to be despoiled of its works of art. Joseph gave orders that a selection of the best pictures should be sent to the Napoleon Museum at Paris, as a pledge of the union of the two nations. This robbery did not excite so much indignation as a decree, directing that the bones of Cortes and Cervantes, and other famous Spaniards who were buried in or near Madrid, should be translated with public solemnities to the church of St. Isidro. The Spaniards observed, that though it was known in what churches some of these illustrious men had been interred, their graves could not be ascertained; and they asked whence the money was to come for this translation, when the Intruder could pay none of his servants, and wanted funds for things of the utmost necessity? “But the decree, like many others, was intended for the gazette, and for nothing else. Nevertheless,” they continued, viewing the subject with natural and honourable feeling, “it excites our indignation that they should affect this veneration for our ancestors, who omit no means for debasing Spain, and subjecting her to the infamy of a foreign yoke.”

But the most remarkable of the Intruder’s acts, was his promise of convoking the Cortes. “It was long,” his partizans said, “since the Junta had amused the nation with vain hopes of this benefit, for which Spain was to be indebted to her new sovereign.” The object of the intrusive Government at this time, in calling a Cortes of its own, must have been, to take off the attention of the Spaniards in those parts of the country which the French occupied, from the national Cortes; and that this intention, having been thus announced, should never have been carried into effect, is proof how well the unhappy men, who were ostensibly at the head of Joseph Buonaparte’s councils, knew the insecurity of the puppet whom they served. Almost the last paper which issued from the royal press at Seville, had been an edict declaring in what manner the Cortes should be chosen. Upon this subject the central Junta had asked the advice of the Spanish universities, and public bodies. Great difficulties had been apprehended from the obscurity in which the forms of the old Cortes were involved, as well as from the difference in the different kingdoms, which had each their own. It was well remarked by the university of Seville, that these things were matters of historical research, not of practical importance; there was now neither time nor necessity for the inquiry; the present business was to convene representatives, according to the general principles of representation, and leave them, after they had saved the country, to determine the peculiar forms of the general Spanish Cortes.

The plan which the Junta adopted was formed with reference to established forms, to present circumstances, and to the future convenience of election. Cities which had sent deputies to the last Cortes, were each to send one to this, and each superior Junta one also. The provinces one for every 50,000 heads, according to the census of 1797; wherever the excess above that number amounted to one half, an additional deputy was to be chosen; any smaller excess was not accounted. The mode of election was so regulated, as to render undue influence or interference impossible. Parochial Juntas were to be formed composed of every housekeeper above the age of five-and-twenty, excepting such as had been found guilty upon any criminal charge; who had suffered any corporal punishment, or infamous sentence; bankrupts, public debtors, the insane, and the deaf and dumb. Naturalized strangers also were excluded, whatever might have been the privilege of their naturalization. The secular clergy were included. As soon as the Justicia received instructions from the corregidor, or alcalde mayor of the district (Partido), a parochial meeting was to be held, and the Sunday following appointed for the business of the primary election.

The Spanish government did well in connecting this with religious ceremonies. The business of the day was to commence with the Mass of the Holy Ghost; after which the parish priest was to preach upon the state of the country, and the importance of choosing proper representatives, upon whom so much depended. Then adjourning to the place appointed, the magistrate should first make inquiry whether any means had been used to influence the electors; any person for whom such means had been employed, being rendered ineligible and his agents or injudicious friends deprived of their vote: any person calumniating another, in hope of impeding his election, was punished with the same disabilities. The parishioners then, one by one, were to advance to the table at which the parochial officers and the priest presided, and there name an elector for the parish: the twelve persons who obtained a majority of names should go apart and fix upon one. It was not required that they should be unanimous, only that the person appointed should have more than six votes; and it was compulsory upon him to perform the duty to which he was elected. The primary election being thus completed, the parochial Junta was to return to the church in procession, their deputy walking between the alcalde and the priest; Te Deum was to be performed, and the day concluded with public rejoicings.

Within eight days afterward, the parochial electors should assemble in the principal town of the district, and form a Junta, over which the corregidor and the ecclesiastic of highest rank in the place presided. The testimonials of the electors were to be scrutinized; the same religious ceremonies to take place, and twelve persons chosen in the same manner, to appoint one or more electors for the district, according to its extent. They might choose them out of their own number: but any persons born in the district, and resident in it, were eligible. The business was to be transacted in the consistory, a record of its proceedings deposited among the archives, and a copy sent to every parish, and to the capital of the province, where the final election took place.

Here the electors of the district were to assemble. A Junta should have been previously constituted, consisting of the president of the superior Junta of the province; the archbishop or bishop, regent, intendant, and corregidor of the city, and a secretary. It was presumed that these persons would all be members of the provincial Junta; if not, they were called to this duty by virtue of their rank, and an equal number of members of the Junta added; this proviso being intended to secure for the provincial Junta that influence to which their services entitled them, for which their experience qualified them, and of which it might not have been easy to deprive them, even if it had been thought desirable. The board thus appointed, was to see that the primary and secondary elections were made throughout the province. After the same observances and scrutinies as on the former occasions, the final election was to be made. The person proposed must be a native of the province, but it was not necessary that his property should be there: nobles, plebeians, and secular priests, were equally eligible; no other qualification was required, than that he should be above five-and-twenty, of good repute, and not actually the salaried servant of any individual or body.

In this final election, the first step was to elect three persons successively. A simple majority was not sufficient here; more than half the electors must vote for the same person, and the voting be repeated till this should be the case: three having thus been chosen, their names were to be placed in an urn, and he whose lot was drawn was the deputy to the Cortes. A fourth was then to be elected, whose name, in like manner, was submitted to the lot with the two which had been left undrawn, and this was repeated till the number of deputies for the province was made up. Supplementary deputies were then to be chosen, in readiness for any vacancy by death; the supplementaries were in the proportion of one to three. The number of provincial deputies amounted to 208; that of the supplementaries to 68.

The provincial Juntas were to choose their members according to the rules of the final elections; observing also the same general principle, that the person chosen must be a native of the province. The form appointed for the city elections was, that where the regidores were proprietaries, or held their office during life by the kings appointment, the people should elect an equal number of electors, in the manner of the municipal elections. These electors, with the regidores, the syndic, and the officers who are called the Personero y Diputado del Comun, were to meet in the consistory, where the corregidor should preside, and there choose three persons out of their own body, the final decision being by lot. All the elections were to be made with open doors.

Twenty-six members were added for the Spanish possessions in America and the Philippines. But during the long interval which must elapse before these representatives could reach Europe, supplementaries for their respective provinces were to be chosen from natives resident in Spain; and a circular notice was issued, requiring that all American or Asiatic Spaniards then in the country would send in their names, ages, employments, places of birth and of abode. This being done, and lists made out accordingly, a Junta was to be formed, consisting of the members of the central Junta, who should at the time be acting as deputies for the colonies, or four ministers of the council of the Indies appointed by the Junta, and of four distinguished natives of the colonies, to be chosen by the other members; this Junta was to direct and superintend the election. Twelve electors for each province were to be chosen by lot from among the natives of that province then resident in Cadiz; but if it so happened that they did not amount to eighteen, that number was to be filled up by individuals of the other provinces. The twelve then chosen were to choose their deputies, in the manner of the final provincial election, first by nomination, and then by lot.

The archbishops, bishops, and grandees, were to meet in an upper house: it was required that the grandees should be the heads of their respective families, and above the age of 25; and those nobles and prelates who had submitted to the French government were excluded.

Such was the plan which the commission of the central Junta decided upon, and which the Junta adopted. The commission was composed of five members, the Archbishop of Laodicea, Jovellanos, Castanedo, Caro and Riquelme; but the two latter members being appointed to the executive committee, their places were supplied by the Count de Ayamans, and D. Martin de Garay. D. Manuel Abella, and D. Pedro Polo de Alcocer, were secretaries to the commission. The details were formed, and the official instructions drawn up by Garay. In their general principles the commissioners had been chiefly guided, as was expected and desired, by Jovellanos, the best and wisest of the Spaniards.

There was, however, a difference of opinion in the commission upon three points of considerable importance. Riquelme and Caro would have had only one house of assembly; Jovellanos referred to the English constitution, as the best model, and one to which in this point, the Spaniards, with sufficient conformity to their ancient customs, might assimilate their own. He proposed also, that certain qualifications of property, situation, and acquirements, should be required of the deputies. Riquelme opposed this restriction; and Jovellanos yielded to the majority of his colleagues with less repugnance, knowing how well the great body of the people had deserved of their country. Riquelme insisted that the Cortes should not assemble without deputies from the colonies; the other members would have omitted them in the first assembly, in consequence of the long and indefinite time which must elapse before they could be chosen in their respective provinces, and arrive in Spain. The plan which was adopted obviated this difficulty. The inadequate number of colonial deputies is less objectionable than it may at first appear, when the probable number of persons from whom the supplementaries were to be chosen is considered; especially as it was not pretended that the manner in which the first Cortes was convoked should be binding as a precedent. “The government,” said Jovellanos, “fearful of arrogating to itself a right which belongs to the nation alone, leaves it to the wisdom and prudence of the nation to determine in what form its will may most completely be represented in future.”

The last act of the Junta had been to consign to the Regency the charge of seeing the Cortes assembled, according to these rules. In this final decree provision was made for choosing deputies to represent the provinces occupied by the enemy; they were to be chosen in the same manner as the colonial deputies. Here also the important point of the veto was determined. If the Regency refused its assent to a measure which had passed both houses, the measure was to be re-considered; and unless re-passed by a majority of two-thirds in each house, it was lost, and could not be brought forward again in that Cortes; but if both houses, by such a majority, ratified their former determination, three days were then allowed to the Regency, and if within that time the royal sanction was not given, the law was to be promulgated without it. The Junta endeavoured to confine the Cortes within its proper limits, by declaring that the executive power appertained wholly to the Regency, and the legislative to the representative body; and lest any party should arise, who should aim at making the Cortes permanent, or unnecessarily extending its duration, “by which means,” the Junta said, “the constitution of the kingdom might be overthrown,” the Regency was empowered to fix any time for the dissolution of the assembly, provided it were not before the expiration of six months.

This decree, which developed the principles of the central Junta, and completed their labours, the Regency did not think proper to make public; one of the many acts of injustice which the Junta suffered after their compulsory resignation. The council of Castille, or rather the Consejo-reunido, in which such of its members were incorporated as had followed the legitimate Government into Andalusia, hinted, in a memorial full of calumnies against the ex-Junta, that the Cortes ought not to be convoked; their opinion was doubtless of great weight with the Regency; and as the Regents did not conceive themselves bound to follow the course which the preceding Government had marked out, they suppressed the edict, and issued in its stead an ♦Feb. 11.♦ address, breathing the same spirit as all the proclamations of the Spanish Government, but putting off the meeting of the Cortes. “The council of Regency,” they said, “could well have wished that your representatives had been at this time in Cortes assembled, and that the nation itself might thus have regulated its own destinies. The means which are necessary for our deliverance would quickly appear at its energetic and powerful voice. But this means of preservation has been too long delayed; and evils gathering upon each other, with the rapidity of a whirlwind, do not permit that it should be accomplished at the time and place appointed. The Isle of Leon, where the national congress ought to assemble, is at this time besieged by the enemy; from this isle we see their fires, we hear their artillery, we hear their insolent threats, and witness their ravages. Their rash endeavours, beyond a doubt, will fail against these intrenchments, where the watch-tower is erected which presents to all good patriots a beacon in the midst of the tempest. But the Isle of Leon, thus threatened by the enemy, cannot be at present a proper place for the celebration of our Cortes; and necessity compels us to delay it till the present crisis shall be past, and place and time suitable for so august an assembly can be assigned. Meantime, none of the measures and forms established and decreed for the convocation are to be suspended for a moment. The elections are to proceed, and the members who are chosen must hold themselves ready to perform their functions; the intention of the Government being, that the Cortes shall meet as soon as the circumstances of the war permit.”

Notwithstanding this language, it is possible that Spain was indebted for its Cortes more to the annunciation from Seville that the Intruder was about to convoke one, than to the inclination of its own rulers. The central Junta had delayed it not from intentional procrastination, but from their sense of the difficulty of the task, and from the deliberation which so peculiarly characterizes the Spaniards. They had overcome the difficulties, and framed a plan of representation, which preserved a due respect to old venerable forms, and was well adapted to the existing circumstances of the country; this having been done, as soon as it was ascertained that Cadiz might defy the enemy there ought to have been no delay. That was ascertained in February, as soon as the Isle of Leon was secured from a coup-de-main. But it was not till the middle of June that a decree was ♦Cortes convoked.♦ issued, ordering the elections to be completed as soon as possible, and requiring the deputies to assemble in the island during the month of August, that as soon as the greater part of them were met the sessions might begin. The plan which the central Junta framed was altered in one most material point, only one house being convoked. Had Jovellanos and his colleagues determined thus, they would still have summoned the privileged orders; but the Regency, departing inconsiderately from a resolution which had been the effect of long deliberation, neither summoned them to meet apart from the third estate, nor with it, nor devised any plan for representing them; so that two of the three estates were excluded as such from the national representation.

Three days of rogation were appointed previous to the opening of the Cortes, and on the 24th September they commenced their proceedings. At nine in the morning ♦Commencement of their proceedings.♦ the deputies assembled in a hall fitted up for their sittings in the palace of the Regency: the military were under arms, and they went with the Regents in procession to the parochial church of the Isle of Leon, where the Mass of the Holy Ghost was performed by Cardinal Bourbon, Archbishop of Toledo. After the gospel, the Bishop of Orense, who was president of the Regency, addressed them in a solemn discourse; and then the following oath was proposed: “Do you swear to preserve the Holy Catholic Apostolic Romish religion in these realms, without admitting any other? Do you swear to preserve the Spanish nation in its integrity, and to omit no means for delivering it from its unjust oppressors? Do you swear to preserve to our beloved sovereign, Ferdinand VII., all his dominions, and in his failure, to his legitimate successors; and to make every possible exertion for releasing him from captivity, and placing him upon the throne? Do you swear to discharge faithfully and lawfully the trust which the nation reposes in you, observing the laws of Spain, but changing, modifying, and varying such as require to be altered for the general good?” When all the deputies had made answer, “Yes, we swear,” they advanced two by two to touch the gospels; after which the bishop said, “If ye shall do this, so may God give you your reward; but if not, so may he enter into judgment with you!” The hymn Veni Sancte Spiritus, and the Te Deum, were then sung.

These ceremonies over, they returned in the same order to the hall of assembly: the Regents advanced to the throne, and occupied five seats under the canopy; the two secretaries of state, who accompanied them, took their seats at a table towards the head of the hall; and the deputies seated themselves indiscriminately as they entered, the old contest for precedency between Burgos and Toledo being no longer remembered. The bishop addressed them, briefly reminding them of the perilous state of the country, and the arduous duties which they were called upon to discharge; then desiring them to elect their president and secretaries from their own body, he and the other four members of the Regency quitted the hall, leaving a written paper upon the table.

A difficulty in point of form at the commencement of these proceedings was ended by appointing, as it were at random, two deputies to hold the offices of president and secretary, while the Cortes elected others. As soon as the election was made, the secretary read the paper which the Regents had left. “The five individuals,” it said, “who composed the Regency, received that charge, above their merits and their strength, at a time when any delay in accepting it would have been injurious to the country: but they only accepted it and swore to discharge its duties according to their capacity, till the solemn congress of the Cortes being assembled, should establish a government founded upon the general will. That moment so longed for by all good Spaniards has arrived, and the individuals of the council of Regency can do no less than state this to their fellow-citizens, that they may take it into consideration, and appoint the government which they deem most adapted to the critical circumstances of the monarchy, for which this fundamental measure was immediately necessary.”

Upon the motion of Torrero, deputy for Extremadura, the plan of a decree was then read, which had been prepared by his colleague Luxan, and which, after some discussion, was adopted to this effect. The members of the congress now assembled, and representing the nation, declared themselves legally constituted in a general and extraordinary Cortes, wherein the national sovereignty resided. Conformably to the general will, which had been declared in the most open and energetic manner, they proclaimed and swore anew, that Ferdinand VIIth, of Bourbon, was their only lawful king; and they declared null and void the cession of the crown which he was said to have made in favour of Napoleon Buonaparte, not only because of the violence which accompanied that transaction, but principally because the consent of the nation was wanting. As it was not proper that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers should remain united, they reserved to themselves the exercise of the legislative power in its full extent. They declared, that the persons to whom they should delegate the executive power, in the absence of their king, were responsible to the nation according to the laws. They authorized the Regency to continue exercising the executive power under the same title, till the Cortes should appoint a Government which they might deem more convenient. But to qualify itself for this continuance of its authority, the Regency should acknowledge the national sovereignty of the Cortes, and swear obedience to the laws and decrees which it should promulgate; for which purpose, as soon as the decree was made known to them, the members of the Regency ♦Oath required from the Regents.♦ should pass immediately into the hall of assembly, where the Cortes would remain till this was done, having declared their sitting permanent for this purpose. The form of the oath was thus prescribed: “Do you acknowledge the sovereignty of the nation, represented by its deputies in this general and extraordinary Cortes? Do you swear to obey its decrees, and the constitution which it may establish, according to the holy object for which they have assembled; to order that they shall be observed, and to see that they be executed? To preserve the independence, liberty, and integrity of the nation? the Catholic Apostolic Roman religion? the monarchial government of the kingdom? To re-establish upon the throne our beloved king D. Ferdinand VIIth, of Bourbon? and in all things to regard the public weal? As you shall observe all these things, God be your helper; and if you observe them not, you shall be responsible to the nation, in conformity with the laws.” The Cortes confirmed for the present the established tribunals, and the civil and military authorities; and they declared the persons of the deputies inviolable, and that no authority or individual might proceed against them, except according to the manner which should be appointed in future regulations, by a committee for that purpose.

Between ten and eleven at night this decree was passed. One of the members observed, that the Regents might be gone to bed, if they were not immediately apprized that their presence would be required that night; a deputation was therefore sent to them, while the ceremonial with which they were to be received was discussed. About midnight four of the Regents entered ♦The Bishop of Orense scruples to take the oath.♦ the hall and took the oath. The Bishop of Orense did not come; the unseasonableness of the hour, and the infirm state of his health, were assigned as reasons for his absence, but it was soon known that a stronger motive had withheld him. The sovereignty of the nation was a doctrine which the venerable prelate was not prepared to acknowledge, and from that hour he ceased to act as one of the Regency.

On the following day, the members resolved, as a consequence of their former decree, that the style in which they were to be addressed should be that of Majesty; highness was to be that of the executive power, during the absence of Ferdinand, and likewise of the supreme tribunals. They ordered also, that the commanders-in-chief, the captains-general of the provinces, the archbishops and bishops, tribunals, provincial Juntas, and all other authorities, civil, military, and ecclesiastic, should take the oath of obedience to the Cortes, in the same form as the Regency. By another edict, they decreed that their installation should be officially made known through all the Spanish dominions, and everywhere celebrated with Te Deums and discharges of artillery; and that prayers should be offered up during three days, imploring the divine blessing upon their councils.

The decree, by which the Regents were declared responsible, produced a memorial from them, requesting to know what were the obligations annexed to that responsibility, and what the specific powers which were given them; “unless these things,” they said, “were clearly and distinctly determined, the Regency would not know how to act, inasmuch as the ancient laws had drawn no line of distinction between the two powers; and thus they must be continually in danger, on the one hand, of exerting an authority, which, in the opinion of the Cortes, might not be included in the attributes of the executive, or, on the other, of omitting to exert the powers which it involves, and which at this time were more necessary than ever.” The reply of the Cortes proved with how little forethought they had passed their decree. “They had not limited,” they said, “the proper faculties of the executive, and the Regency was to use all the power necessary for the defence, security, and administration of the state, till the Cortes should mark out the precise bounds of its authority. The responsibility,” they added, “to which the Regents were subjected, was only meant to exclude that absolute inviolability which appertained to the sacred person of the king.” The whole of a night-session was occupied in forming this answer.

Among the many erroneous opinions which prevailed in this country respecting the affairs of Spain, the most plausible and the most general was that which expected great immediate benefit from the convocation of the Cortes; an error from which, perhaps, no person was entirely free, except the few, who, like Mr. Frere, looked to the assembly rather with apprehensions of evil than with hope. But any great immediate advantage, any rapid acceleration of the deliverance of Spain, ought not to have been expected, unless it was supposed that the Spanish deputies would proceed like the French national convention, and that a revolutionary delirium might have produced a preternatural and overpowering strength. There was as little reason to look for this, as there could be for desiring it. The Spaniards, more than any other Europeans, are attached to the laws and customs of their country. Spain is to them literally a holy land; and its history, being composed for many ages of a tissue of connected miracles, to the greater part of the people sanctifies its institutions. But unless the Cortes took the executive power into its own hands, and gave the nation a revolutionary impulse, which all circumstances forbade, it might have been known that the benefits to be expected would produce little or no immediate effect upon the operations of the war: if that assembly acted wisely they would be slow, certain, and permanent.

The mode of election secured a fair representation. Some of the members were of the French School of philosophy, and were sufficiently disposed to have followed the Brissotines, both in matters of state and church-policy. Having become converts to republicanism in their youth, and in the season of enthusiasm, they had imbibed a prejudice against England, which did not even now give way, though they hated Buonaparte and the present system of France as bitterly as the great majority of their colleagues. On this point there was but one feeling.

The first measures of the Cortes indicated a sense of their power, and a determination to assert it. Want of precedents, and of experience in the business of a deliberative assembly, were great impediments at their outset; they had hardly decreed the separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, before they confounded them in their own practice. Nevertheless this decree was important, for it was a great object to secure the judicial authority from the interference of government: that, breaking, they said, the chains with which the arbitrary power of some centuries had bound the hands of the most respectable ministers, justice might now be administered for the happiness of the people. A commission was appointed to prepare a report upon the best means of speedily terminating ♦Oct. 11.♦ criminal causes. The result was, a decree that an extraordinary visitation of all the prisoners should be made by the respective judicial authorities, and the accused brought to trial with as little delay as possible; and that for the future, the tribunals should transmit, through the Regency, to the Cortes, at intervals of two months, accounts of all the ♦Dec. 14.♦ causes pendent, and the persons in confinement. Llano, a supplementary member for Guatemala, proposed a more effectual remedy; that a committee should be appointed to frame a law to the same effect as the Habeas Corpus of the English.

The Cortes found it necessary also to interfere with the executive. The Duke of Orleans had offered his services to the Spaniards; the former government had not thought proper to accept his offer, but the Regency, a few weeks after their installation, invited him to take the command in Catalonia. A century ago their conduct might have been easily explained, when Lord Molesworth gravely asked, what could be done for generals, in such havoc as was then made of them, if there were not so many younger sons of princes in Germany, who all ran wherever there was a war, to get bread and reputation? But pedigrees and patents of nobility were not considered now as exclusive qualifications for command, and the conduct of the Regency, in this instance, was inconsiderate and hasty. When the duke first offered his services, the Spaniards were in the full tide of success; and he expected, with good reason, that as soon as the French armies were disheartened, they would readily forsake a tyrant, to whom they were not bound by any tie of duty. Affairs bore a very different aspect when the Regency informed him, that the obstacles which had formerly frustrated his desires were now removed; reminded him of the triumphs which his ancestors had won in Catalonia; and called upon him to preserve the verdure of their laurels. The duke was a man of too much honour and courage not to fulfil the offer which he had made in more prosperous times. Accordingly he sailed from Sicily in the beginning of June, touched at Tarragona, and having been received there with the honours due to his rank, continued his voyage to Cadiz, where he landed under a salute of artillery. The Bishop of Orense had not arrived from his diocese to take his seat in the council of Regency when the duke was invited: he therefore was not implicated in this transaction, which was in every respect exceedingly imprudent. There might have been some apparent cause for it, if the duke had been a general of great experience and celebrity, or if he could have assisted Spain either with men, money, or stores; but the Sicilian court had no means at its disposal: it had sent a present of a thousand muskets early in the year, and this was the extent of its ability. On the other hand, the presence of a prince of the Bourbon line, at the head of a Spanish army, would have certainly drawn against it a stronger French force than would otherwise have been employed, the destruction of one branch of that house being of more importance to Buonaparte than the conquest of Spain. That consideration may have had some weight with the Junta of Seville, when upon the first outburst of national feeling, Louis XVIII. wrote to the principality of Asturias, offering with his brother, his nephews, and cousins, to serve in their ranks, unite the Oriflamme with their standards, and call upon the deluded French to rally round it, and restore peace to the world. So many inconveniences were perceived in this proposal, that in conformity to Padre Gil’s advice, no reply was made to it. And though the same objections did not apply to the Duke of Orleans, there was an obvious impolicy in inviting a Frenchman to the command; the central Junta had felt this, and the Cortes also felt it; they held a private sitting upon the subject, and the result was, that the duke re-embarked for Sicily.

The Regents did not hold their power many weeks after the meeting of the Cortes. A new Regency was appointed, consisting of Blake, D. Pedro Agar, a naval captain and director-general of the academies of the royal marine guards; and D. Gabriel Ciscar, governor of Carthagena. The reason assigned for this change was, that the members of the former Regency had made known their earnest desire that the weight of the administration, which they had ♦Oct. 28.♦ supported for many months, under such critical circumstances, should be consigned to other hands. Those members were now to experience in their turn the same injustice which they had shown toward the Central Junta. Like them, they had disappointed the hopes of the people; and like them, more from the inevitable course of things than by their own misconduct. They were not, however, treated with equal ♦Nov. 28.♦ cruelty. A decree was passed, that they should give in an account of their administration to the Cortes within two months, with a view to some future process. Shortly afterwards, in consequence of a secret sitting, they were ordered to retire from the ♦Dec. 17.♦ Isle of Leon, and the place where each was to reside was appointed, after the arbitrary manner of the old court. Blake and Ciscar being absent, the Marquis del Palacio and D. Jose Maria Puig were appointed to act in their place till they should arrive. When ♦Oct. 28.♦ they were called upon to take the oath, the same difficulty was found as in the case of the Bishop of Orense. The marquis being asked if he swore ♦Palacio refuses the oath.♦ to obey the decrees, laws, and constitutions of the Cortes, replied, Yes, but without prejudice to the many oaths of fidelity which he had taken to Ferdinand VII. The president informed him, that he must take the oath simply, or refuse it. The marquis requested that he might be allowed to explain himself. Upon this it was agreed that he should be heard after his colleagues had been sworn; and that business having been completed, he entered into an explanation, saying, “he was ready to take the oath in the form prescribed, provided those deputies who were versed in theological points would assure him that he might do it without scruple. All that he meant was more to ensure the purport of the oath itself, conformably to those which he had so often taken to Ferdinand; and he had never doubted the sovereignty of the nation assembled in its Cortes.”

The Cortes manifested upon this occasion something of that precipitation, and something of that proneness to tyranny, by which the proceedings of popular assemblies have so often been disgraced. In this case, as in that of the Bishop of Orense, they might perhaps have thought that such scruples disqualified him for the office which he was called upon to accept; but those scruples ought to have been respected; and upon no principle of law or justice could they possibly be considered as a crime. But the marquis was ordered into custody, and the Cortes met again that night, to deliberate upon this unworthy business. One member said, that Palacio had lost the confidence of the public; he could not act in the Regency, because he had shown that his conscience was not such as was fit for a Regent; and his conduct ought to be investigated by judges appointed for that purpose. Capmany maintained, that the Cortes itself ought to take cognizance of the offence; and Arguelles, Oliveros, and Torrero, agreed in these exaggerated censures of an act which, even if censurable, amounted only to an error of judgment of the most venial kind. Arguelles declared, that should the Cortes retrace a single step, and not go forward with its decree, respecting the sovereignty of the nation and their own power, they would give a triumph to the enemy. It was voted, after a long discussion, that the marquis had forfeited the confidence of the nation, and that another Regent must be appointed in his place. The Marquis del Castelar was chosen. Palacio now represented, through the captain of the guard, that he was confined at this time in a damp room, to the danger of his health, without having a place to sit down. It was then ordered, that he should be confined in his own house, under a guard, who was never to lose sight of him. This discussion occupied the Cortes till midnight, and then they entered upon a secret sitting, probably upon the same subject. Three days after, it was voted that the marquis was no ♦Oct. 31.♦ longer qualified to act as captain-general of Aragon; and in three more, discovering how little conformable it was to their professed principles thus to proceed to condemnation before trial, the Cortes repealed the decree, and resolved, that both this case and that of the Bishop of Orense should be referred to judges appointed by the Regency, who were to hear the advocates of the Cortes, of the royal council, and of the marquis, and to consult with the Cortes concerning their sentence. Meantime he was to remain a prisoner at large in the Isle of Leon, upon his parole.

If the Cortes, in the tyrannical character of these proceedings, reminded those persons who remembered the commencement of the French revolution of the errors which were then committed, it reminded them also of a measure springing from a more generous feeling, but which, both in France and England, experience had shown to be an error. A self-denying ordinance ♦Self-denying ordinance.
Sept. 29.♦ was passed at the motion of Capmany, deputy for Catalonia, a man well known for his literary labours: it enacted, that no member of the Cortes should be permitted, during the exercise of his functions, nor for a year afterwards, to accept for himself, or solicit for any other person, any pension, favour, reward, honour, or distinction, from the executive power which at that time existed, nor from any other Government which might hereafter be appointed. Gutierrez de la Huerta, supplementary member for Burgos, had prepared a more rigorous bill to the same effect, which was to punish the deputy who solicited any employment for a kinsman within the fourth degree, by expelling him from the Cortes, and depriving him for four years of his elective right, and the capacity of being elected. It was carried by acclamation, that some public testimony of disinterestedness should be given. There were, however, a few members cool enough to temper the enthusiasm of their colleagues, and qualify the vote, so as to render it somewhat less unreasonable. At their suggestion, such persons were exempted from the decree, who, by rank or age, were accustomed to succeed in military, ecclesiastic, and civil bodies, according to the rules or statutes. And it was admitted, that cases were possible in which extraordinary services might deserve an extraordinary reward.

Two subjects of especial moment occupied much of the time of the Cortes. The situation of the colonies was one, which is too wide a topic to be touched on ♦Liberty of the press.♦ here: the other was the liberty of the press. Upon the motion of Arguelles, a committee was appointed to prepare a report upon this momentous point. Many curious discussions ensued. The Marquis of Vigo protested against taking the subject into consideration. ♦Oct. 15.♦ “He was ready,” he said, “to sacrifice his life, and even his reputation in the Cortes, which he regarded more than life, for his conduct on this occasion; but he would not sacrifice his conscience.” “Whatever light,” said Arguelles, “has spread itself over Europe, has sprung from the liberty of the press, and nations have risen in proportion as that liberty has been more or less complete among them. By its influence we saw the chains fall from the hands of the French nation; a sanguinary faction obtained the ascendency, and the French Government began to act in direct opposition to the principles which it had proclaimed. After having solemnly and by acclamation declared, that the French republic renounced all conquests, they gave orders for the incorporation of Savoy; and the conduct of the Republic uniformly contradicted the principles of the National Assembly, both in respect to the states which they occupied, and to their allies. If at that time we had enjoyed a well-regulated liberty of the press, Spain would not have been ignorant of what was the political situation of France, when she concluded the infamous peace of Basle. Spain then abandoned itself with blind subserviency to all the successive Governments of France; and from the convention to the empire, we followed all the vicissitudes of their revolution, always in the closest alliance, till we saw our strong places taken, and the armies of the perfidious invader in the heart of Spain. Till that moment it was not lawful for any one to speak of the French Government with less submission than of our own, and not to admire Buonaparte was one of the greatest crimes. In those miserable days the seeds were sown, and we are now reaping the bitter fruits. Look round the world! England is the only nation which we shall find free from these horrors; the energy of her Government has done much, but the liberty of the press has done more. By that means, wise and virtuous men were able to diffuse the antidote faster than the French could administer the poison, and the information which the people enjoyed made them see the danger, and taught them how to avoid it.”

Brigadier Gonzalez affirmed, that whoever opposed the freedom of the press was a bad Spaniard. This occasioned a warm reply, and one of those altercations followed, which the Cortes was not then so well regulated as to prevent or to cut short. A priest terminated it, by saying, that their first duty was to defend the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman religion, and whatever was contrary to that religion was bad. Then, citing the canons to prove that no work ought to be published without the license of a council, or of a bishop, he inferred that the liberty of the press was contrary to religion. The conclusion was perfectly legitimate, but it was met by an answer not less curious than the argument. “No person,” said Mexia, “will deny that Christianity has existed from the beginning of the world; for though our Saviour was not yet come, those moral precepts, which are the basis of his religion, and which were given by Moses, were written in the heart of man. In like manner, the liberty of the press has existed from the time of Adam; for printing is a mode of writing, and the liberty of doing it is the same, whether it be upon the leaf of a tree, or in wax, or upon paper; and this liberty all men have possessed. The art of printing, therefore, where the liberty of the press was restrained, was an injury to man, inasmuch as it deprived him of this primitive liberty.”

There was, however, a great number of members who were by no means prepared to change the opinions in which they had been bred up; and they listened with deep attention to those speakers who maintained that it was both for the interest of the writer and the public, that books should be subjected rather to a previous censure, than to an after responsibility. The result was not less characteristic than the long and animated discussions which preceded it. After declaring that all persons were at liberty to publish their sentiments without any license, the Cortes unanimously admitted an amendment which, by inserting the word political, curtailed this liberty of half its extent: and all writings upon religious matters were left subject to the previous censure of the ecclesiastic authorities, according to the decree of the Council of Trent. Anonymous publication was allowed, but the printer was to put his name and place of abode; and if, in case of an offence against the laws, he did not make known the author, he was to incur the punishment himself. For the purpose of securing the freedom of the press, and providing against its abuse, the Cortes was to appoint a supreme board of censure, composed of nine individuals, who were to reside near the Government; and a similar board of five members in every provincial capital; three of the nine, and two of the five, being secular clergy. The business of the provincial boards was to examine such works as were denounced; and upon their sentence the judges were to suppress the book, and call in the copies which might have been sold; but their sentence was not definitive. The author or printer might demand a copy of the censure, and lay it before the supreme board: the supreme board might require them to revise their sentence; but their second opinion was to be final. If the book were suppressed, as a private libel, the individual aggrieved had still his remedy at law against the libeller. Some appeal was allowed against the decision of the ordinary. He was not to refuse his license without assigning the ground of refusal, and hearing what the author, editor, or printer could allege in behalf of the work. If he then persisted in his refusal, the person interested might lay his censure before the supreme board, and refer the book to their judgment; if they found it worthy of approbation, their opinion was to be communicated to the ordinary, that he, being better informed upon the matter, might grant the license if he thought good, in order to prevent any farther appeal; but what that was to be was not stated. This was not the only point which, by a sort of compromise, was left doubtful in the decree. The article which empowered the supreme board to reverse the sentence of the provincial ones, declared, as it was originally worded, that upon their approbation the book should freely circulate, and that no tribunal should impede it. Some members upon this required that a proviso should be inserted, declaring this was not intended to intrench upon the authority of the Inquisition. To avoid such a recognition of that baleful power, Luxan proposed that the latter part of the sentence should be omitted, and this was carried by a majority of two votes. It was a victory for the liberal party to leave the question undecided. As soon as the discussion was concluded, a deputy moved that special and honourable mention of the Inquisition should be made in the decree; but the president prevented any debates upon this inflammatory subject by replying, that it might be taken into consideration at some future time.

Thus having admitted that public opinion was the proper and indispensable check upon the proceedings of Government, the Cortes instituted a board nominated by Government to be a check upon public opinion, which, if the measure had not been merely nugatory, would have virtually destroyed the freedom it pretended to establish. But they were dealing with no easy subject. ♦State of the press.♦ The press, like other prisoners, had broken loose when the old system was overthrown. It had effected the momentous service of rousing the nation, and it continued to keep up the spirit which it had excited; but as for exercising any salutary restraint upon the proceedings of the Government, this was of all things what the public writers were least competent to do, and the men in power least likely to tolerate. The danger was, that the press might now, at the same time, inflame and misdirect the public mind; a work for which eager volunteers are never wanting in such times. The Spaniards had taken arms to defend their institutions, to which with all their enormous abuses the people were devoutly attached. The best and wisest men wished to reform those abuses. Such men were few, and aiming only at what was lawful and just, they scrupled at any evil means for bringing it about. The party who were for destroying root and branch had no such principle to impede them. Despotism had made them republicans, and an abominable superstition had driven them into unbelief. They also were few, but they were more numerous than men whose opinions rested upon a safer ground; they were bold and they were indefatigable, acting like some of the early propagandists and victims of the French revolution, in the enthusiastic belief that nothing but good could result from the subversion of corrupted establishments. Even in the Cortes there were some who looked to the most dreadful stage of that revolution rather as an example than a warning. One member wished for what he called a Christian Robespierre to save the country; another, for un pequeño Robespierre, one who would carry on a system of terror ♦Diario de las Cortes, T. 2. 441. T. 4. 371.♦ with a little more moderation than had been used in France; caustics they said were called for; matters must be carried on with energy and with blood, or the country was lost; heads must be stricken off, and that speedily; it was necessary to shed more Spanish blood than French. When such language was uttered in the Cortes, and circulated in the diaries of that assembly, it was, indeed, most necessary that efficient measures should be taken for restraining the license of the press. A journal was published under the

♦El Robespierre Español.♦ title of “The Spanish Robespierre,” breathing the same spirit as these speeches. One of its numbers was suppressed: the fanatical author exclaimed against this as an outrage upon the sacred, the divine, the omnipotent liberty of the press. “I swear,” said he, “upon the altar of the country, no one is more a Spaniard than I. I more than any one abhor despotism and its vile satellites. I alone am sufficient to overthrow them, and reduce that infernal monster to nothing. My soul is more untamable than the planets, more elevated than the firmament itself, more great than the whole universe.” Even such ravings were not to be overlooked when, in the same number, it was asserted, that the minister who had suppressed his former paper had conspired against the liberty of the nation; that, therefore, he was guilty of treason, and consequently ought to be publicly hanged without the least delay. Yet the necessity of reform, ... of a change in the spirit of the Spanish Government, which under all its changes of form had remained the same, was shown in the treatment of this revolutionist. He was cast into prison, and left there, it was said in the Cortes, till he was half rotten, waiting indefinitely for the decision of his case, which they who prosecuted him were never likely to think of more!

At the motion of Perez de Castro, the Cortes voted a monument as a mark of gratitude to George III. and the British nation. They declared, at the same time, that the Spaniards would never lay down their arms till they had secured their independence, with the absolute integrity of their monarchy in both worlds, and till they had recovered their king. But though the restoration of Ferdinand was thus spoken of in this decree, there were many who perceived the evils with which his return was likely to be attended. The most cautious reformers, however loyal, knew but too well that his presence might prove a serious impediment to any reformation; the more theoretical ones could hope to effect their schemes only in his absence; and at this time it seemed probable that he might soon return, under circumstances which all true Spaniards, however widely differing upon other points, regarded with equal apprehension. The accounts which had been officially published in France of Kolli’s adventure represented Ferdinand as still soliciting to be adopted by marriage into the family of the tyrant who had betrayed him. The Spanish Government, with the timid impolicy which continued to characterize it in such things, had not permitted the statement to appear in the Spanish newspapers; the substance of it, nevertheless, was well known at Cadiz, and many things tended to accredit it. For it was well understood, that the Intruder was weary of his miserable position, that Buonaparte was not less weary of supporting him there, and that the French generals were disgusted with the odious service in which they were employed. They were said to have reported everywhere that Ferdinand, with Buonaparte’s consent, had contracted the desired marriage (according to one account, it was with an Austrian archduchess), and that Buonaparte in consequence would replace him on the throne. There was intelligence from Madrid that a Spanish army of 30,000 men was about to be raised for him. The scheme was politic enough in all its parts to be deemed probable: it would have the cordial approbation of the Intruder’s adherents; and all who regarded only their own selfish views, all who desponded, all who were impatient under privations and sufferings, all who desired repose, might be expected to concur in it. The youth, the inexperience, the defective education, the alleged simplicity of Ferdinand’s character, were to be borne in mind: as through these he had formerly been entrapped, so might he now be made the instrument of Buonaparte, who would thus seek to obtain by intrigue what he was unable to win by force. Against this it was necessary to be prepared. Long and animated discussions were held upon this matter. It was moved, that if Ferdinand should cede any portion of the Spanish dominions to France, all persons obeying his orders to that effect should be declared traitors: that any marriage which he might contract under these circumstances should be declared null, (a proposition against which some of the ecclesiastics in the Cortes exclaimed as contrary to the principles of sound theology): that if he entered Spain as Buonaparte’s ally, he must be rejected, and war carried on against him under the black flag. Now was the time to engrave with the point of the sword upon their hearts that holy Catholic religion in which they must establish their trust! To the petition in the Litany which prayed for deliverance from the deceits of the Devil, they should add, from the deceits of the French also. Rather than thus be deceived and debased, it were better that whole Spain should be made what Numantia and Saguntum had been: then might the Spaniards look down from heaven, and see whether these impious invaders would be bold enough to walk tranquilly through the silent abodes of their tremendous15 ghosts!

The Cortes faithfully represented the nation in their feelings on this subject; and accordingly they issued a decree, declaring null and of no effect all treaties or transactions of any kind which Ferdinand should authorize while he remained in duresse, whether in the enemy’s country or in Spain, so long as he was under the direct or indirect influence of the Usurper. The nation, it was proclaimed, would never consider him free, nor render him obedience, till they should see him in the midst of his true subjects, and in the bosom of the national congress: nor would they lay down their arms, nor listen to any proposal for an accommodation of any kind, till Spain had been completely evacuated by the troops which had so unjustly invaded it. At the time when this brave decree was passed, the condition of Spain appeared hopeless to those persons by whom moral causes are overlooked, and from whose philosophy all consideration of Providence is dismissed. Fortress after fortress had fallen; army after army had been destroyed, till the Spaniards had no longer anything in the field which could even pretend to the name, except the force under Romana with Lord Wellington. The enemy surrounded the bay of Cadiz, and were masters of the adjacent country, wherever they could cover it with their troops, or scour it with their cavalry. Yet in the sight of these enemies, from the neck of land which they thus beleaguered, the Cortes legislated for Spain; and its proceedings, though the Intruder and his unhappy adherents affected to despise them, were regarded with the deepest anxiety throughout the Peninsula, and wherever the Spanish language extends. There is no other example in history of so singular a position. During the three years which had elapsed since the commencement of the struggle, Buonaparte had not only increased his power, but seemed also to have consolidated and established it; while Spain had endured all the evils of revolution without acquiring a revolutionary strength; and, what appeared more surprising, none of those commanding spirits which revolutions usually bring forth had arisen there. Enlightened Spaniards had with one consent called for the Cortes, as the surest remedy for their country; and in England they who were most friendly to the Spaniards, and they who were least so, had agreed in the propriety of convoking it. Long as the Cortes had been suspended, it was still a venerable name; and its restoration gladdened the hearts of the ♦Character of the Cortes.♦ people. A fairer representation could not have been obtained if the whole kingdom had been free, nor a greater proportion of able men; the circumstances, also, in which they were placed, increased their claims to respect among a people by whom poverty has never been despised. Many of the members, having lost their whole property in the general wreck, were dependent upon friendship even for their food. For although a stipend was appointed, some of those provinces which were occupied by the enemy could find no means of paying it; and no provision for remedying this default had been yet devised. They who had professions could not support themselves by practising, because the business of the Cortes engrossed their whole attention. The self-denying ordinance, which they had passed, excluded them from offices of emolument; and there were deputies who sometimes had not wherewith to buy oil for a lamp to give them light. Under these circumstances they respected themselves, and were respected by the nation according to the true standard of their worth.

But as the Cortes faithfully represented the characteristic virtues of the nation, they represented with equal fidelity its defects. The majority were scarcely less bigoted than the most illiterate of their countrymen; and they prided themselves upon having made the assembly swear to preserve the Romish as the exclusive religion of Spain: this, they said, was one of the things which reflected most lustre upon the Cortes. Their opponents, who designated themselves as the Liberal party, assented to what they could neither with prudence nor safety have opposed; and they swore, accordingly, to maintain in its domination and intolerance a corrupt religion which they despised and hated. Disbelief is too weak a word for expressing the feelings of a generous Spaniard toward the superstition which has eaten like a cancer into the bosom of his country. And most unhappily for themselves and Spain, the men whose heart and understanding revolted against intolerance and imposture were themselves infected with the counterpoison of French philosophy, and their best purposes were too often sophisticated with the frothy notions of that superficial school. This party, though far inferior in numbers, took the lead, with the activity and zeal of men who had embraced new opinions, and were labouring to promote them. Though fatally erroneous in what is of most importance, they acted in many cases with a quick and ardent perception of what is just; and not unfrequently they were right in the general principle, even when they were wrong in its application. Through their exertions, measures were carried, as far as votes of the Cortes could effect them, which, if they had been effectual, would have conferred lasting benefit upon the people. But in many of these reforms they proceeded rashly, neither sufficiently regarding the rights of individuals, nor the opinions and habits of the nation; and in what was most required at such a crisis both parties were alike deficient. Instead of infusing into the Government that energy which had been expected, the Cortes weakened and embarrassed the executive by perpetually intermeddling with it; so that, under their control, the Regency which they had appointed became more inefficient than the central Junta. And instead of making the deliverance of the country their paramount object, they busied themselves in framing a constitution; a work, which, if it had been more needful, might well have been deferred till a more convenient season. Great part of their sittings was consumed in metaphysical discussions, arising out of the scheme of the constitution; and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people was asserted in a temper which plainly manifested how surely that sovereignty, if it were once erected, would become unendurably tyrannical. Day after day these abstractions were debated, while the enemy was besieging Cadiz. Meantime no measures were adopted for bringing the army into a better state; and the mournful truth became apparent even to those who most reluctantly acknowledged it. But if it be difficult to form an effective army where there are none who have studied the principles and profited by the practice of war, it is yet more difficult to make legislators of men whose minds are ill disciplined, even when well stored.

Early in November, the besiegers before Cadiz fired a salute in honour of Massena’s triumphant entrance into Lisbon. Such demonstrations could not deceive the inhabitants of the Isle of Leon; but might serve to depress the Spaniards, who had no such means of information; and also to encourage the French themselves, whose confidence in their fortune had by this time received some abatement, and whose hopes of bringing the contest to an end rested chiefly now upon the success of the campaign in Portugal. Massena had undertaken the conquest of that kingdom in full expectation of outnumbering16 any disciplined force which could be opposed to him, and still more certainly of outmanœuvring it; for the French Government well knew with what misplaced parsimony the military plans of the English were calculated; and they had neither reckoned upon the skill of the British general, nor the resolution of the British ministry, nor the spirit and exertions of the Portugueze people. He had been confirmed in this expectance by the cautious system which Lord Wellington had, through that parsimony, been compelled to observe during the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo: and though it was by an accident of war that Almeida had fallen into his hands, the speedy reduction of a place so important at that juncture increased the habitual confidence of one who had been accustomed to hear himself called the Child of Victory. That presumption had received a lesson at Busaco, and a check for which he was equally unprepared at the lines of Torres Vedras. Could Lord Wellington have spared a sufficient force to have occupied Santarem, as well as Abrantes; or had the orders of the Portugueze Regency for removing all provisions, been carried into full effect in that part of the country, he must soon have been compelled to retreat. The wonder, however, is that so much devoted obedience was found to a measure, as dreadful in its immediate consequences to the persons upon whom it fell, as it was indispensable for the deliverance of the country. But being allowed to take a position which was not to be forced without a greater expense of life than his antagonist could afford; having found the means of present subsistence, and possessing also that impassibility, ... that utter recklessness of the sufferings which he inflicted, ... that perfect destitution of humanity, ... which one of his fellow-marshals ♦See vol. ii.♦ had said was necessary for a commander in this atrocious war, he was enabled to wait for assistance, and for the chance of events.

He had sent General Foy to give Buonaparte the fullest account of his situation; and to supply his wants till farther orders or effectual reinforcements should be received, he ordered General Gardanne, who commanded on the Agueda, to escort a convoy of ammunition. Strong reconnoitring parties were sent out frequently, both on the Coimbra and Castello Branco roads, in the hope of meeting him; and one of these parties had at length the mortification to ascertain that he had been within three leagues of their advanced posts on the Zezere, and had then turned back, a peasant having deceived him, by declaring that the whole French army had withdrawn. Whether the man acted thus upon the impulse of the moment, or had been sent from Abrantes upon this hazardous service, he succeeded in alarming men who, from the want of other tidings, were prepared to believe the worst. Gardanne’s corps consisted of 3000 men; but they were so dispirited in their retreat, that when Colonel Grant, with a handful of the Ordenanza, fired upon them at Cardigos, they abandoned their convoy: nor did this active officer desist from the pursuit, till they had lost all their baggage and several hundred men; thus reaching the frontier in a manner which had every appearance, and all the consequences, of a precipitate and forced retreat. The Comte d’Erlon, General Drouet, who commanded the 9th corps, had meantime arrived there; and he determined to enter Portugal, and open a communication with Massena. Advancing, therefore, with 10,000 men, he left some 8000 under General Claparede, at Guarda, to drive away the Portugueze force in his rear.

Silveira commanded the force in that quarter: the other divisions, under Brigadier-General Miller, Colonels Wilson and Trant, shut in the line of the Mondego to the confluence of the Alva. Trant was in Coimbra, which he had recovered by a movement as important in its effects upon the campaign, as it was promptly conceived and ably executed. Wilson had occupied the road from Ponte de Murcella to Thomar, establishing himself at Cabaços; but when the French had occupied Thomar, they attacked him twice from thence, and at length compelled him to fall back upon Espinhal. This was precisely in the line of Drouet’s march; and he was thus placed between two fires, the enemy who had driven him from Cabaços being now strongly posted there. He therefore collected boats at Pena Cova, and crossed the Mondego, timing this movement so critically, that the next day, when the enemy had passed the Alva at Ponte de Murcella, and occupied Foz d’Arouce and the neighbouring ♦Dec. 25.♦ villages, he re-crossed with a regiment of militia and some cavalry at the same place, took post the same evening at St. Andre, and captured some of their marauders there in the act of pillage; being then so near the invading force, that several of their stragglers came dropping in during the night, thinking their comrades were in possession of the place, and did not discover their mistake till they were captured. Early on the morrow he moved on Foz d’Arouce; Drouet’s rear-guard had just quitted it; the village had been sacked, and several of its inhabitants of both sexes were lying dead in the streets, victims of those outrages and cruelties which invariably marked the movements of the French in Portugal. Wilson hung upon their flank and rear; and, cutting off their stragglers and marauding parties, which was all that could be done with so small a force, made about an hundred prisoners. Trant also marched from Coimbra with part of the garrison, in the direction of Miranda de Corvo, to harass the enemy, if he should take the Condeixa road; but Drouet, having communicated with the party at Cabaços, who expected his advance, halted at Espinhal, till he received instructions from Massena to proceed with his corps and establish himself at Leyria. Wilson then collected his division, and closed upon his rear, for the purpose of impeding him in that marauding system upon which the whole army depended for subsistence. Their detached parties were then brought in daily contact; a sort of warfare in which the Portuguese were fully equal to their invaders, and in which they had always the great advantage of sure intelligence.

Claparede meantime had moved in the direction of Lamego. Silveira, giving him the opportunity which he sought, attacked his advanced guard at Ponte d’Abbade, and was repulsed: having thus exposed the comparative weakness of his force and his own ♦Rash operations of Silveira.♦ want of skill, he was in his turn attacked at Villar de Ponte, and made a precipitate retreat upon Lamego: the enemy pursued him closely; and the Portuguese, with an honourable feeling, when they evacuated the city, carried with them 140 soldiers from the hospital, on their backs; for they had no other means of transport. Silveira then crossed the Douro. Lamego was thus left to the invaders’ mercy, and Upper Beira open to their inroads. In consequence of this rashness on Silveira’s part, Miller and Wilson were ordered toward the Doura by General Bacellar. Silveira, however, had retreated with such precipitation, that neither time nor opportunity was afforded for co-operating with him; but Bacellar took a position on the Payva, on the enemy’s left flank, and Wilson at Castrodayre, on their rear. Claparede would willingly have pursued Silveira beyond the Doura, that he might obtain the resources of a province which had not been exhausted; but these divisions were closing upon him, and menacing his communication with Almeida. He returned, therefore, to his position at Guarda.

But the country which Wilson had previously occupied and protected was thus left open to Drouet’s marauding parties; and no sooner was his removal ascertained, than they were let loose, and carried desolation along the banks of the Alva and to the very heart of the Estella. No part of the country suffered at this time more dreadfully than that which was exposed to this corps: it was in vain that the miserable inhabitants sought to conceal themselves in the depths of the great pine forest which extends over so large a portion of that sandy region; no recesses escaped the search of men who were impelled by hunger, by cruelty which seemed to have become in them a craving and insatiable desire, and by a brutal appetite which rendered them even more dreadful and more devilish than their thirst for blood. The number of inhabitants who perished in the diocese of Leyria (one of the smallest in the kingdom) during the four months that the French retained possession there, was ascertained by official inquiries to be not less than 20,000: and a great proportion of these were butchered in the Pinhal, or died there of famine, and disease, and wretchedness.

If Buonaparte had been in all other respects the hero, the philanthropist, and the philosopher, which he is represented to be by men whose understandings seem to be as impenetrable as their hearts, the history of this single campaign would nevertheless stamp his character with indelible infamy. Expecting, what indeed the event proved, that Lord Wellington had not a force with which to act offensively against Massena in the field, he calculated upon the resources of Lisbon, and made no arrangement for supplying the invading troops with provisions in case of any unexpected obstacle to their immediate and complete success. They were left as in Spain, to support themselves how they could; and in the cruelties which such a system inevitably occasioned, the evils of war received their only possible aggravation. After the battle of Busaco this army subsisted entirely upon what it could obtain by plunder. Throughout Portugal the peasantry employ oxen for draught; these fell into the enemy’s hands, wherever the orders of the Regency had not been obeyed; and though those orders had met with an obedience unexampled in its extent, from a devoted people, yet there were many who, in hope that the danger might be averted, delayed parting with what it was ruin for them to lose; and thus the French obtained a supply of cattle, which, though it would have been inconsiderable for a British army, was not so for men in whose way of preparing food nothing is wasted. But the supply was not large; because kine are nowhere numerous in that country, where there is little or no use made of their milk, and little demand for their meat; and it was not lasting, because want of bread occasioned a consumption of animal food unusual among the French; for wherever they went they found the ovens and the mills destroyed. They bruised the corn and then boiled it, and they roasted the maize, till with that alacrity and cleverness which characterise the whole nation, they had repaired the demolished mills, and in places where there were none, constructed some of their own devising, turned by an ass at the end of a lever, or by force of arm. The hand-mills which soon afterwards made part of their regimental equipments were an invention of Marmont’s, suggested probably by the inconveniences which Massena suffered at this time. If the ingenuity with which they thus remedied one of their wants is characteristic, the circumstance is not less so that finding no other fit material for mill-stones they resorted to the churches, and took for that purpose the slabs with which the graves were covered, or the vaults closed!

At first, something like discipline was observed in the marauding parties, and regular detachments with their respective officers were sent on this degrading service; but it was found that these detachments brought home little or nothing, while they who went forth without orders and purveyed for themselves, returned driving before them beasts well laden with the provisions they had discovered; they were soon left, therefore, to take their course, without the slightest attempt on the part of the generals at regulation or restraint; and a system was thus tolerated, ... not to say encouraged, ... in which it is even more dreadful to reflect upon the depravity on one side, than the unspeakable miseries which were endured on the other. French writers who were themselves engaged in this accursed expedition have told us that the whole army had at times no other food than what was obtained from hiding-places which the Portuguese who fell into their hands had been made by torture to discover; and that acts of this kind were as ordinary a topic of conversation among the soldiers as any other incidents of their campaign! In excuse for this, they observe, and truly, that the army must otherwise have perished, ... that they were like starving sailors, when as the only means of prolonging their own lives they kill and eat their comrades, in extremity of hunger. In proportion as this apology, if such it may be called, be valid, is the guilt of that tyrant by whose deliberate orders the army was detained in such a situation; and inferior only to his guilt is that of the commander by whom such orders were obeyed. Life is what every soldier must hold himself ready to lay down whenever his military duty should require the sacrifice; but woe to that soldier who acts as if life were all that he had to lose!

The same writers, who by the plea of necessity excuse a system so atrocious that even that plea cannot be admitted without doubt as well as shuddering, tell us also of supererogatory crimes committed by this army for which no motive but that of fiendish wickedness is assignable, no palliation possible. When a family was hunted out among the rocks, woods, or mountains by these hell-hounds, happy were the men who did not endure torments, the women who did not suffer violation, before they were murdered. The French officers, when any of them were made prisoners, endeavoured always to reject the opprobrium of these flagitious and undeniable deeds upon the Italians and Germans in their army: but let us be just to human nature, which has neither made the Italians and Germans more depraved than the French, nor the French than the English. The Italians, indeed, having grown up in a country where great crimes are notoriously committed with impunity, may have been accustomed to regard such crimes with less repugnance than either the Germans or the French. But French discipline had made all in its armies of whatever stock good soldiers: the first thing needful for moral improvement is to bring men under obedience, which is the root of civil virtue: military discipline had done this; had moral discipline been connected with it as it might and ought to have been, they who were made good soldiers, if they had not by the same process been made good men, would have been withheld from any open wickedness. But this was systematically disregarded in Buonaparte’s armies; the more thoroughly his servants had corrupted their feelings and hardened their hearts, the better were they fitted for the work in which they were to be employed. Under like circumstances, British soldiers might have been equally wicked; but no British Government has ever been so iniquitous as to place its soldiers in such circumstances. The only offence deemed worthy of punishment in Massena’s army was insubordination towards a superior. A wretch might sometimes be apprehended in an act of atrocity so flagrant that it was not possible to let him escape; but there was no attempt to prevent such horrors, not even when there was the wish: they were known and suffered, ... by better minds in despair, by others with unconcern. In such an army, the soldiers who brought young and handsome women to the camp, as part of their booty, were considered as humane; and humane by comparison they were, though these women, ... whatever their former condition had been, ... were played for as a stake at cards, were bartered for provisions or horses, and were put up publicly to sale! It is related, that such women as survived the first horrors of their situation became reconciled to it, because of the terror in which they had previously lived, and because their lives were now secure; that they attached themselves to those who became, as it is called, their protectors; and that it was no uncommon thing for a woman to pass from one such protector to another, rising a step at every exchange, till she became at last the mistress of a general!

The skill which some of these marauders acquired in their search for food, resembled the sagacity with which savages track their prey. That they should detect with unerring certainty any place of concealment in a dwelling or an out-house, might have been expected from the habits of plunder which they had been indulged in in former campaigns; but when they were questing in woods, or among rocks, or in the open country, a new sense seemed to be developed in them. There were men in every company who could discover a depôt of provisions by scent far off. Such resources, however, could ill suffice for such an army; and the reinforcements which they received bringing with them no supplies, added as much to their difficulties as to their strength. Wine, which was found in abundance at first, was lavishly consumed while it lasted. Bread failed entirely; and in many corps the rations of maize were reduced first to a half, then to a third. A third of the whole army was at last employed in thus purveying from a wasted country, and their comrades are described as stationing videttes to watch for their coming, and communicate by signals the joyful intelligence if they came with supplies; for little now was brought back by the most successful marauders, and sometimes the whole produce of such an excursion was consumed before they returned to their quarters. They had found when they entered the kingdom whole towns and villages deserted at their approach; more appalling spectacles were presented now in the recesses to which they penetrated; whole families were seen there lying dead; or in a state worse than death: and those who were not suffering from famine or disease seemed to be bewildered in mind as well as rendered wild in appearance, by perpetual terror and exposure.

The helpless and the most devoted were they who suffered thus, ... old men, women, and children; and they who remaining to protect wives, children, sisters, and parents, or to perish with them, forewent for the performance of that duty the pursuit of vengeance. Meantime, the greater part of the effective population were actively employed. Everywhere in the rear of the enemy parties of the militia and ordenanza were on the alert: and when General Foy, returning from Paris, entered Portugal with an escort of 3000 men to rejoin the invading army, Lieutenant-Colonel Grant, with eighty of the ordenanza, took possession of a height which commanded a pass near the village of Enxabarda, and kept up a fire upon them for two hours, as long as daylight served. Above 200 of their dead were counted within the distance of four leagues, the inclemency of the weather having killed many of the wounded. The invaders were not prepared to encounter such severe cold as is sometimes felt among these mountains. About three hundred men of Drouet’s corps were frozen to ♦Feldzug von Portugal, p. 66.♦ death during a night march between Castello Branco and Thomar. There was a peasant belonging to the latter district of great bodily strength, and answerable hardihood, who, being deprived of his former peaceful occupations, took up in its stead that of destroying Frenchmen, that he might live by spoiling them as they did by spoiling others; this man is said to have killed more than thirty of the enemy, during the month of February, with his own hand, and to have recovered from them about fifty horses and mules, which, with other booty, he carried to Abrantes for sale. He continued to carry on this single-handed war as long as they remained in the country; and became so well known by his exploits that the French set a large price upon his head; but he was in no danger of being betrayed by his countrymen, and too wary to be entrapped. A cave in the mountains was his usual abode. Some of the wretched inhabitants from the adjacent parts took refuge near him, and felt themselves comparatively secure under his protection.

Small parties from Abrantes cut off some 300 of the enemy during the two first months of the year. In one of these desultory affairs, which were all that occurred, while the two armies were waiting anxiously, each with its own views, Captain Fenwick, a most enterprising young officer, who commanded at Obidos, and had been engaged more than twenty times with the French foraging parties, received a mortal wound near Alcobaça: he was pursuing with some Portugueze recruits a party of fourscore French, when one of them, as he was within a few yards, turned round and shot him through the body. He had so won the confidence and good will of the peasantry, many of whom he had armed with French musquets, that they not only brought him the best information, but were ready under his command to face any danger. No man could have been more regretted for the excellent military qualities which he had displayed, and the expectations which were formed of him. The only other affair deserving of notice occurred at Rio Mayor. General Junot made a reconnoisance thither from Alcanhede in considerable force, having learned that there were stores of wine and corn in the town. The piquet which was stationed there retired. Junot rashly galloped into the town, and a soldier of the German hussars waited for him and brought him down. But though this robber left some of his blood upon that earth which had long been crying for it, the wound was not fatal, the ball having lodged between the nose and the cheek bone. A box of topazes which he designed as a present for Marie Louise, was intercepted by a party of the Spanish army in Extremadura, who with rare disinterestedness, foregoing all right to the prize, delivered it to the government. There were seventy-three stones, valued at 3250 dollars: as it was not possible in such times to discover from what churches or what family they had been plundered, the Spanish government disposed of them by raffle, and appropriated the produce to the relief of faithful Spaniards in the province of Burgos and La Mancha.

Had Ney’s advice been followed, the French, as soon as they had ascertained that it was hopeless to attack the lines of Torres Vedras, would have retreated immediately to the frontier. Well had it been for the credit of that army, and well for humanity, if this counsel had been taken. But he and Massena were upon ill terms; Massena, by his defence of Genoa, had acquired a character for endurance which was supposed to influence him at this time and Buonaparte, in whose calculations human sufferings were never regarded, undoubtedly expected that there would be a change of ministry in England, and that the first measure of the Whigs when in power would be to withdraw the army from Portugal and leave Lisbon open to him. That party deceived him by their hopes as much as they deceived themselves; and they in return were duped by the falsehoods which the French Government published for the purpose of deluding the French people. The only statements which were allowed to be made public in France admitted, indeed, that the English force, and still more the nature of the ground, rendered the lines of Torres Vedras a strong position; but they affirmed that within those lines there was so severe a famine, that people lay dead and dying in the streets of Lisbon, while the French in their quarters were abundantly supplied. But at this very time it was felt by the invading army as no slight aggravation of their sufferings, that while they were in want of every thing, there was plenty beyond that near demarcation which they were unable to force, with all their courage and their excellent skill in war. Throughout the tract which they occupied, the towns of Torres Novas and Thomar were the only places where the inhabitants had generally remained in their houses; but now, when they who had erroneously chosen this as the least of two evils found that the food was taken from them and their ♦State of the people within the lines.♦ children, they began to retire within the British lines, ... almost in a starving state. Lisbon, notwithstanding the great military force which it then had to support, and though 200,000 fugitives had taken shelter there, was constantly and plentifully supplied; and the distress for food which was felt there, arose only from want of means wherewith to purchase what was in the market. This was relieved by the Government and by the religious houses, who in feeding the poor at this time rendered unequivocal service to the community. Private charity also was never more nobly manifested than in this exigency; among the British officers, a weekly subscription was regularly raised in aid of the destitute; and it is believed that not less than 80,000 of the persons thus suddenly thrown upon the mercy of their fellow-creatures were housed, fed, and clothed at the private cost of those who in their own circumstances had very materially suffered from the interruption which the war had occasioned to their trade, from the pressure of war taxes, and of other requisitions rendered necessary by the exigencies of a state which was struggling for existence. There had been more danger from disease than from dearth, for no sooner had the army retreated upon the lines than the military hospitals were filled, and various other public and private buildings in or near the capital, which were appropriated to the same use. The hospital stores of every kind had been consumed, or carried off by Junot’s army, and had not yet been re-supplied. Recourse was immediately had to the benevolent feelings of the people, and clothing and other things needful for the sick were liberally contributed. But during the time that the armies remained in their respective positions, the fever in the hospitals proved more destructive than the sword of the enemy. Meantime the condition of the Portugueze who remained without the lines, though within the protection of the allies, became every day more dreadful; they were not within reach of that eleemosynary distribution by which their less miserable countrymen were supported; any thing which the country could afford was only to be obtained by rescuing it from the enemy, or by marauding in those parts which were open to his ravages; and when the men of the family perished in this pursuit, or were rendered by over-exertion and disease incapable of following it, there was no other resource for the women and children and the men thus rendered helpless, than the scanty aid which the troops stationed there could bestow. The British officers at Caldas da Rainha formed a hospital for these unhappy persons, anxiety and inanition having produced a fever: in that little, but then crowded town, the average of burials was from twenty-five to thirty a day: a trench was dug, and the dead laid along the side of it, till a Priest came once a day, and with one funeral service consigned them to the common grave. Orphaned children were wandering about with none to care for them, or give them food: and frightful as the mortality was, it would have been far greater but for a distribution of soup and maize bread, made once a day by the British officers.

It was also asserted in France that the discontent of the Portugueze, under the privations which their allies compelled them to endure, was at its height; that Marshal Beresford had ordered every inhabitant to be shot without process, who did not abandon his house upon the enemy’s approach; that Trant and Silveira had been destroyed; and that not a day passed in which English deserters did not come over. Germans and Portugueze, it was said, were not accounted deserters, because they only returned to their duty in joining the army of Napoleon. Such representations obtained more credit among factious Englishmen than in France, and Massena looked with far less hope to the result of his operation than was expressed by these despondents. With that confident ignorance which always characterised their speculations, they gave him an additional army of more than 20,000 men, which was to join him under Bessieres, and they called Sebastiani from Malaga to co-operate in the united attack. “The whole effort,” said they, “will be directed against Lord Wellington: the whole force is collecting and marching to the different points of attack, with the knowledge of the allies, but without their having any means of warding off the blow. The battle must be fought at the time, and in the way we have always foretold: and he must have firm nerves who can contemplate the probable issue with composure.” “The crisis in Portugal,” said another self-constituted director of public opinion, “may now be expected daily; and then let the calumniators of Sir John Moore do justice to the memory of that injured officer, who was goaded to commit his errors, and then abused for being defeated! He had not interest enough to have his errors christened exploits, and his flight victory.” Another demagogue, after representing that it was England which caused the calamities of Portugal, and the English, whom the Portugueze ought to hate and execrate as the authors of their sufferings, asked triumphantly, “Who is there mad enough to expect that we shall be able to put the French out of the Peninsula, either by arms, or by negotiation? Where is the man, in his senses, who believes, or will say that he believes, that we shall be able to accomplish this? Suppose peace were to become the subject of discussion, does any one believe that Napoleon would enter into negotiations about Spain and Portugal? Does any one believe that we must not leave them to their fate? This is bringing the matter to the test. And if the reader is persuaded that we should not be able to stipulate for the independence of the Peninsula, the question is settled, and the result of the war is in reality ascertained!”

An immediate retreat, such as Ney advised, would have been attended with a loss of reputation, which if Massena had been willing to incur, would have been ill ♦Schemes of co-operation from the side of Andalusia.♦ brooked by Buonaparte. But in the position which the French had taken, if they could by any means subsist there, they might look for assistance from Soult, and so waiting, facilitate his operations, by occupying the chief attention of the British army. The Spaniards had nowhere displayed so little spirit as in Andalusia. The people of Cadiz, contented with the security for which they were beholden to their situation, seemed not inclined to make any effort against their besiegers; Soult, therefore, might spare a sufficient force for besieging Badajoz. His means for the siege were ample, and the place must fall unless it were relieved by an army capable of meeting the besiegers in the field; but such a force could be drawn only from the lines of Torres Vedras. If the allies were thus weakened, their position might be attacked; or should this still be thought too hazardous, the passage of the Tagus might probably be effected. This would put great part of Alemtejo in their power, and open the communication with Seville and Madrid. If, on the other hand, Badajoz were suffered to fall without an attempt at relieving it, the same advantage would follow from the advance of the victorious army. Masters of Badajoz, and the other less important fortresses, they might leave Elvas behind them; and if they could win the heights opposite Lisbon, they might from thence bombard the capital and destroy the shipping. With these views, Massena made preparations for crossing the Tagus. The British troops which were detached to the south bank, for the purpose of defeating this intention, were cantoned in the villages there, and suffered very much from ague in that low and unwholesome country. Opposite Santarem the river is sometimes fordable; and once the enemy took possession of an island, called Ilha dos Ingleses, whence they carried off a guard of the ordenanza, and some cattle. The possession of this islet might have greatly facilitated their passage, but they were speedily dislodged by a company of ♦January.♦ the 34th, which remained there for that time. To provide, however, against the possibility of their effecting this movement, and also against the advance of a force from the Alentejo frontier, measures had been taken for fortifying a line from the Tagus opposite Lisbon to Setubal; orders were issued for clearing and evacuating the country on their approach; and the inhabitants (well knowing by Loison’s campaign what atrocities were to be expected from such invaders) were required to retire within this line.

Soult and Mortier accordingly, as had been foreseen, advanced from Seville in the latter end of December. Ballasteros, with his ill-equipped and ill-disciplined, but indefatigable troops, was driven out of the field; and Mendizabal, who, with 6000 foot and 2500 Portugueze and Spanish cavalry, had advanced to Llerena, and forced Girard to retire from thence, was now himself compelled to fall back upon Almendralejo and Merida, and finally upon Badajoz, throwing 3000 men into Olivença, a place which had been of great importance in the Acclamation and Succession wars, but which it would at this time have been more prudent to dismantle than to defend. Taking immediate advantage of this error, Soult sent Girard against it with the artillery of the advanced guard. The trenches were opened on the 12th of January. The commander, Don Manuel Herk, communicated with Mendizabal on the 21st, assuring him of his determination and ability to hold out: but a division of besieging artillery had arrived; it was planted in battery that night; and in the morning as soon as it opened, Herk surrendered at discretion. Mortier then immediately invested Badajoz.

The city of Badajoz, which in the age of Moorish anarchy was sometimes the capital of a short-lived kingdom, stands on the left bank of the Guadiana, near to the spot where it receives the Gevora, and about a league from the little river Caya, which on that part of the frontier divides Spain from Portugal. Its population before the war was estimated at 16,000. Elvas is in sight, at the distance of twelve miles, standing on higher ground, and in a healthier as well as stronger situation; for endemic diseases prevail at certain seasons in the low grounds upon the Guadiana. Count La Lippe had made Elvas one of the strongest fortifications in Europe. Badajoz is a place of the third order; it has no advantage of natural strength, like its old rival; but it had been well fortified, and was protected by two strong forts, S. Christoval on the west, and Las Pardaleras on the east. The acquisition of this city was of the utmost importance to the enemy; if Massena could keep his ground till it fell, a communication would be opened for him with Andalusia; Mortier’s army would be enabled to co-operate with him and act against Abrantes; and against Lisbon itself, unless the Transtagan lines, which were in progress, should be as formidable as those of Torres Vedras: and supplies might then be drawn from Alentejo, the western part of that province being a rich corn country.

Lord Wellington had concerted his plans for the defence of this important frontier with Romana; and a position behind the Gevora had been fixed on for keeping open a communication with Badajoz. Romana’s army re-crossed the Tagus, and began their march thither; British troops were to follow, as soon as the reinforcements should arrive, which westerly winds, unusually prevalent at that season, had long delayed; ♦Jan. 23.♦ and Romana had named the following day for his own departure, when he was cut off by sudden17 death, occasioned by ossification about the heart. Due honours were paid to his remains by the Portugueze Government, as well as by the British army: his bowels were buried close to the high altar at Belem, the burial-place of the Portugueze kings, during the most splendid age of their history: his heart and body were sent to his native place, Majorca; and a monument was voted to him by the Cortes. Castaños was appointed to succeed him, and sailed from Cadiz for Lisbon accordingly; but before he could arrive, the consequences of Romana’s death had been severely felt. Under the most difficult and hopeless circumstances that noble Spaniard had still kept his army in the field, and had repeatedly annoyed the enemy and obstructed their measures, without ever exposing himself ♦Feb. 6.♦ to any considerable loss. The troops, therefore, had full confidence in him; but when Mendizabal met them at Elvas, and took the command, they had no such reliance upon their new leader. On the same day the Portugueze cavalry, under General Madden, drove the French beyond the Gevora; but being unsupported, they were driven back with some loss by General Latour Maubourg, and the whole force then entered, some into Badajoz, some into Fort Christoval. On the morrow a sortie was made, with more gallantry than good fortune, and with the loss of eighty-five officers, and 500 men killed and wounded: Don Carlos d’España was among the latter. The courage of the men in this sally was not more remarkable than the total want of arrangement in their leaders: when they had won the first battery they could not disable the guns, because they had forgotten to take spikes with them! Not discouraged by this severe loss, the troops came out on the 9th. The enemy’s cavalry retired before them across the Gevora, and they took up their intended position on the heights of S. Christoval, between the Gevora, the Caya, and the Guadiana. From thence Mendizabal communicated with Elvas and Campo Mayor, and there he fancied himself in perfect security. The position, indeed, was strong, and while it was held, Badajoz could not be taken. Lord Wellington had advised Romana to occupy it, but he had advised him to intrench it also, and the necessity of so doing had been repeatedly ♦Destruction of his army.♦ represented to Mendizabal in vain. Well understanding with what an antagonist he had to deal, Mortier would instantly have attacked him if the Gevora and Guadiana had not at this time overflowed their banks. Losing, however, no time in his operations, he carried Las Pardaleras by assault on the night of the 11th. On the 18th all things were ready for the passage of the Guadiana, and a few shells from a well-planted howitzer had the effect of making Mendizabal remove his whole army out of the protection of the fort. Thus he abandoned the main advantage of his position, and yet took no other precaution against an attack than that of destroying a bridge over the Gevora; but soldiers seldom fail to know when they are ill commanded, and Romana’s men now deserted in troops, rather than be exposed to the certain destruction which they foresaw. That very night Mortier threw a flying bridge over the Guadiana, forded the Gevora where it was waist-deep, and surprised Mendizabal on the heights. The camp was taken standing, with all the baggage and artillery: the cavalry fled, notwithstanding the efforts of their officers to rally them; 850 men were killed; more than 5000 taken; some escaped into the city; some, with better fortune, into Elvas; the rest dispersed. The loss of the French, in killed and wounded, was only 170; so cheaply was this important success obtained.

This was the first consequence of Romana’s death; far worse were to ensue. Relieved from all inquietude on that side, Mortier now pressed the siege; and yet not with that full confidence of success which the consciousness of his own strength and adequate preparations might else have given him, because he knew that the governor, Don Rafael Menacho, intended to have emulated Zaragoza in the defence which he should make. This governor was killed upon the walls by a cannon ball, when the garrison were making their last sortie to prevent the covered ♦Imaz appointed to succeed him.♦ way from being crowned. Don José de Imaz succeeded to the command: he was an officer of reputation, who had escaped with the troops from Denmark, had shared their sufferings under Blake, borne a part in their victory under the Duque del Parque, and followed their fortunes through evil and good till the present time.

In the official accounts of the French it was said that the English, according to their custom, had remained tranquil spectators of the destruction of their allies. They had, indeed, been so in the early part of the campaign, to the bitter mortification of the army and of the general, who, by the half measures of his Government, was placed in this most painful situation. The ill effects of the Walcheren expedition were felt more in the timid temporizing policy which ensued, than in the direct loss, lamentable as that had been; for the ministry having spent then where they ought to have spared, spared now where they ought to have spent. Just views, right feeling, and public opinion (which in these days is, whether right or wrong, more powerful with a British ministry than any or all other considerations) made them continue the contest; while secret apprehension of ill success, insensibly produced by the constant language of their opponents, who spoke with more than oracular confidence of defeat and total failure as the only possible event, withheld them from prosecuting it with vigour. They considered always what was the smallest force with which Lord Wellington could maintain his ground, never entrusting him with one that might render success calculable, and not yet venturing to believe that British courage would render it not less certain by land than it was by sea. Some excuse for this weak policy, which even to themselves needed excuse, they found in the prepossessions of the king, who, although upon some points of the highest importance he took clearer and juster views than the ablest of his ministers, could never in his latter days be brought to contemplate war upon the enlarged scale which the French Revolution had introduced; but looked upon an army of 20,000 men to be as great a force as it had been in the early part of his reign. Against this prepossession the ministers had always to contend while the king was capable of business; and when his fatal malady removed that impediment, Marquis Wellesley could not yet persuade his colleagues that the parsimony which protracts a war is more expensive than the liberal outlay which enables a general to prosecute it with vigour, and thereby bring it to a successful end.

Had Lord Wellington found a reinforcement of 10,000 men when he fell back upon his lines, Massena, being entirely without provisions at that time, must have retreated as precipitately as Soult had done from Porto. That they were not attacked before they took up a position for the winter, and that no operations against them were undertaken while they remained there, the French imputed either to want of enterprise, or want of skill in the British commander, undervaluing both, as much as they overrated the force at his disposal. But though they were thus unjust in their censures of Lord Wellington, the imputation which they cast upon the British Government had been to all appearance justified up to this time, except in the case of Badajoz, on which occasion it was now made. Nothing but the grossest negligence and incapacity on his own part could have exposed Mendizabal to the total discomfiture which had befallen him. After the loss of his army it was impossible for Lord Wellington to detach a force sufficient for raising the siege, while Massena continued in his position; but it was of such importance to preserve Badajoz, that the British general determined to attack him, strongly as he was posted, as soon as the long-looked for reinforcements should arrive. But the opportunity which both generals at this time desired of thus deciding the issue of the invasion was not afforded them: the winds continued to disappoint Lord Wellington in his expectations of succour; and no patience on the part of the French could enable them longer to endure the privations to which the system of their wicked Government had exposed them. They consoled themselves under those privations by thinking that no English army could have supported them; for that the sufferings which they had borne patiently would have driven Englishmen to desert. But their endurance had been forced now to its utmost extent. Reports were current, that if Massena would not engage in some decisive operations, which might deliver them from their sufferings, he should be set aside, and Ney, in whose intrepidity they had the fullest confidence, be called upon to command them. That degree of distress had been reached at which discipline itself, even in the most intelligent army, gives way; and the men, when nothing was left of which to plunder the inhabitants, began to plunder from each other, without regard of rank, the ♦Feldzug von Portugal, 30.♦ stronger from the weaker. Massena, therefore, was compelled, while it was yet possible to secure supplies for the march, to determine upon retreating to that frontier which he had passed with such boastful anticipations of triumph.

The first information of his purpose came through a channel which was entitled to so little credit, that it seems to have obtained none. On the evening of the first of March, a Portugueze boy was apprehended in Abrantes with articles of provision, which were with reason suspected to be for an enemy, because the boy was not ready with an answer when he was asked for whom he was catering. Being carried before the governor, he confessed that he was servant to the commanding officer of a French regiment, who had sent him to purchase these things, because the army was about to return to the north of Portugal. The next day, ♦March.♦ he added, Massena would review the troops on the south of the Zezere, and the retreat would commence on the evening of the fifth. That a boy in such a situation should have acquired this knowledge, is a remarkable proof of his sagacity, and of the indiscretion of the officer from whom he must have obtained it; for it was verified in all its parts.

Such a movement was, however, so probable, that it had for some days been expected. The first apparent indication of it was given by the French setting fire to their workshops, stores, and bridge-materials at Punhete, on the 3rd. They had previously been sending the heavy artillery, the baggage, and the sick to the rear. On the 4th, transports with 7000 British troops on board anchored in the Tagus; and that same day the enemy’s advanced corps withdrew from Santarem. Lieutenant Claxton, who commanded the gun-boats appointed to co-operate with the troops in Alentejo, saw them departing, as he was reconnoitring under that city. No time was lost in occupying it by the allies; and when it was seen how the natural advantages of that position had been improved by all the resources of military skill, Lord Wellington’s prudence in waiting till time and hunger had done his work was acknowledged by those who before had been inclined to censure him for inactivity and want of enterprise. The opportunity which he had so long desired, and so anxiously expected, had now arrived; and in the sure confidence of intellectual power, he saw that the deliverance of the Peninsula might be secured in that campaign, if Badajoz were defended as it might and ought to be. No sooner, therefore, had it been ascertained that the enemy was retreating, than he despatched the intelligence to Elvas, desiring the commander to communicate it to the governor of Badajoz, assuring him that he should speedily be succoured, and urging him, in reliance upon that assurance, to defend the fortress to the last extremity. That intelligence was despatched on the 6th. General Imaz received it on the 9th. The next day a breach was made, and Mortier summoned him ♦Badajoz surrendered.♦ to surrender. The garrison at this time consisted of 7500 effective men: the townsmen might have been made effective also; provisions and ammunition were in abundance; and the intelligence which Lord Wellington received from thence on the very day that Massena’s retreat was made known to Imaz, was, that the place might probably hold out a month; so well was it stored, so ably garrisoned, and so little injury had it received. The general, however, like every man who, in such a situation, is inclined to act a dishonourable part, called a council of war. The director of engineers delivered it as his opinion, that 5000 men would be required to resist an assault, and that then the surrender could only be delayed two or three days: if there was an evident probability of being succoured in that time, it would be their duty to hold out, though it should be to the last man; without such a probability, no farther sacrifice ought to be made. Twelve officers voted with him; one of them qualifying his vote with the condition, that unless the garrison were permitted to march out by the breach, and incorporate themselves with the nearest Spanish army, no terms should be accepted. Imaz delivered his opinion in these words: “Notwithstanding that our second line of defence is not formed; that we have very few guns in the batteries of Santiago, St. José, and St. Juan, and no support for withstanding the assault, I am of opinion that, by force of valour and constancy, the place be defended till death.” In this he was followed by General Don Juan José Garcia. The commandant of artillery, Don Joaquin Caamaño, gave his vote for holding out in very different terms, and with as different a spirit. “The enemy,” said he, “not having silenced the fire of the place, the flanks which command the ascent of the breach being in a state of defence, the breach being mined, the pitch barrels ready, and the entrance covered by the parapet which we formed during the night, I think we ought to stand an assault; or make our way out to join the nearest corps, or the neighbouring forts.” This opinion, which did not, like that of the governor, invalidate itself, was followed by Camp-Marshal Don Juan Mancio. It is due to those who did their duty thus to particularise their names. In the votes of an unworthy majority Imaz found all he wanted; and even in their excuse, it must be remembered that this traitorous governor did not inform them of Massena’s retreat, and the assurance which he had received of certain and speedy relief. Romana, whose fear of democracy made him everywhere at variance with the popular authorities, had ordered the Junta of Extremadura to leave Badajoz, and retire to Valencia de Alcantara. That Junta had distinguished itself by its activity and zeal, and had its members not been thus imprudently expelled, they might have given to the defence of the city that civic character which had formed the strength of Zaragoza, and Gerona, and Ciudad Rodrigo; and which, in this instance, would have proved the salvation, as well as the glory of the fortress.

On the eleventh of March, therefore, the garrison laid down their arms, and were made prisoners of war. The empty stipulation that they should march out by the breach was granted, curiously, as it proved, to the disgrace of those who proposed it, ... for so insignificant was this breach that some time was employed in enlarging it, to render it practicable for their passage! “Thus,” in Lord Wellington’s words, “Olivença and Badajoz were given up without any sufficient cause; while Marshal Soult, with a corps of troops which never was supposed to exceed 20,000 men, besides capturing these two places, made prisoners and destroyed above 22,000 Spanish troops!” 17,500 were marched as prisoners of war to France! Mortier, in his dispatches, endeavoured to gloze over the conduct of General Imaz. “The death of Menacho,” he said, “had possibly contributed to protract the siege for some days; for his successor wished to give some proof of his talents, and thereby occasioned a longer resistance.” This could deceive no one. The Regency, when they communicated to the Cortes Mendizabal’s official account of the fall of the place, informed them that they were not satisfied with the conduct of Imaz, and had given the commander-in-chief orders to institute an enquiry. But the surrender of the city was not the only part of these unhappy transactions which required investigation; and Riesco proposed that rigorous enquiry should also be made concerning the action of the 19th of February, and the consequent dispersion of Mendizabal’s army, in order that condign punishment might be inflicted on those who were found culpable. “The loss of Badajoz,” he said, “was a calamity of the greatest importance at this time: it facilitated to the enemy a free communication with Castille and Andalusia, gave them an entrance into Alentejo, and means for besieging Elvas: it would also enable them to support Massena; so that this fatal calamity might draw after it the conquest of Portugal.” Calatrava proposed that it should also be explained why so considerable a division had been shut up in Olivença, and no attempt made to succour it. “My melancholy predictions concerning Extremadura,” said he, “have been verified. The chiefs of the army of the left, instead of defending that province and preserving the capital, have at length ended in losing army, province, and capital. Well, indeed, may it be wondered at, that the governor, after having himself voted for continuing the defence, should immediately have capitulated, without sustaining an assault, ... a contradiction which can no otherwise be explained, than by supposing that the vote was given insincerely.” He concluded by proposing, that notwithstanding the conduct of the governor, the Cortes should make honourable mention of the heroic inhabitants of that place, and the brave garrison. Del Monte said, it had been remarked on this occasion, that the loss of a battle was followed always by the surrender of a place besieged. This, he properly observed, was a position not less perilous to get abroad, than it was false in itself.... Another member, with indignant feeling, demanded, that when the capitulation of Badajoz, and the votes of the council of war were published, there should be added to them a statement of the situation of Gerona when that city was surrendered. “At Badajoz,” said he, “nothing has been alleged for surrendering, but that there was an open breach; nothing was said of want ... nothing of sickness, nor of any one of those causes which might have justified the surrender. Let then the soldiers and the nation contrast with this the conduct of Gerona! Months before that city was yielded, there was not merely an open breach, but the walls were destroyed; ... the scarcity was such, that boiled wheat was sometimes the only food; and for the sick, a morsel of ass-flesh, when it could be had. In this state the governor of Gerona ordered, that no man, on pain of death, should speak of capitulation. By this path did they make their way to glory and immortality! The soldier who would step beyond the common sphere has here what to imitate. If Badajoz had resisted only four days longer, it would have been relieved.”

This was a cutting reflection. But though the loss of that city led to consequences grievously injurious to the allies, and to a dreadful cost of lives, it did not produce all the evil which Riesco apprehended; and that its evil effects did not extend thus far, was owing to the spirit of the Portugueze people, who, unlike General Imaz and his companions in infamy, had discharged their duty to the utmost. Treachery, which had done much for France in other countries, had not been found in Portugal; and popular feeling, which had done more, was there directed with all the vehemence of vindictive justice against the most unprovoked, the most perfidious, ♦Skill and barbarity of the French in their retreat.♦ and the most inhuman of invaders. But Massena’s military talents had never been more eminently shown, and nothing could exceed the skill which was now manifested in all his dispositions. His columns moved by angular lines converging to a point, upon gaining which they formed in mass, and then continued their retreat, Ney with the flower of the army covering the rear, while Massena so directed the march of the main body, as to be always ready to protect the rear guard, which whenever it was hardly pressed fell back, and brought its pursuers with it upon the main army, waiting in the most favourable position to receive them. This praise is due to M. Massena and his generals, and the troops which they commanded: but never did any general or any army insure such everlasting infamy to themselves by their outrages and abominations, committed during the whole of their tarriance in Portugal, and continued during their retreat. Lord Wellington said, their conduct was marked by a barbarity seldom equalled, and never surpassed: all circumstances considered, he might have said it had never been paralleled. For these things were not done in dark ages, nor in uncivilised countries, nor by barbarous hordes, like the armies of Timour or Nadir Shah; it was in Europe, and in the nineteenth century, that these atrocities were committed by the soldiers of the most cultivated and most enlightened part of Europe, mostly French, but in no small proportion Germans and Netherlanders. Nor was the French army, like our own, raised and recruited from the worst members of society, who enter the service in an hour of drunkenness, or of necessity, or despair: the conscription brought into its ranks men of a better description, both as to their parentage, their breeding, and their prospects in life; insomuch, that the great majority are truly described as sober, orderly, intelligent, and more or less educated. Nor is it to be believed, that, although they acted like monsters of wickedness in this campaign, they were in any degree worse than other men by nature: on the contrary, the national character of the French, Germans, and Netherlanders, authorises a presumption that they were inclined to be, and would have been good and useful members of society, if the service in which they were compulsorily engaged had not made them children of perdition. How nefarious, then, must have been the system of that Government which deliberately placed its armies in circumstances where this depravation was inevitably produced!... how deserving of everlasting infamy the individual by whose absolute will that Government was directed!... and how deep the guilt of those who were the willing and active agents of such a Government, ... the devoted servants of such a ruler! No equitable reader will suppose that any national reproach is intended in thus dwelling upon the crimes which were committed throughout the Peninsular war by the French and their allies: Englishmen under like circumstances would have been equally depraved: the reproach is not upon a brave and noble nation; it rests upon those alone on whom the guilt abides; and as we tender the welfare and improvement of the human race, let us hope that it may be perpetual!

The retreat of this abominable army was marked by havoc, conflagration, and cruelties of every kind. The towns of Torres Novas, Thomar, and Pernes, with the villages which were near the British lines, suffered least, because the enemy wished not to discover their intention of retreating. In these places some of the corps had had their head-quarters for four months, and some of the inhabitants had been induced to remain: these people had now fresh proof of their delusion, in supposing that honour or humanity were to be found in the armies of Buonaparte: the French sacked their houses, and destroyed as many as time permitted on the night of their departure; and when their movements could no longer be concealed, they burnt, by Massena’s orders, every town and village through which they passed.

The most venerable structure in Portugal was the convent of Alcobaça. Its foundation was coeval with the monarchy. It had been the burial-place of the kings of Portugal for many generations. The munificence of nobles and princes, the craft of superstition, and the industry and learning of its members in better times, had contributed to fill this splendid pile with treasures of every kind. Its gorgeous vestments, its vessels of plate and gold, and its almost matchless jewelry, excited the admiration of the vulgar; the devotee and the philosopher were equally astonished at the extraordinary articles in its Relic-room; the artist and the antiquary beheld with wonder and delight its exquisite monuments of ancient art; and its archives and library were as important to Portugueze literature, as the collections of the Museum or the Bodleian are in our own country. Orders were issued from the French head-quarters to burn this place: that the work of destruction might be complete, it was begun in time, and the mattock and hammer were employed to destroy what the flames would have spared. The tesselated pavement from the entrance to the high altar was broken up with pickaxes, and the ornaments of the pillars destroyed nearly up to the arches. The French, who at this very time inserted an article in the capitulation of Badajoz, that no stipulations were therein made respecting religion, because they were catholics like the Spaniards, mutilated here the Crucifix and the images of the Virgin, as if they studied in what manner they could most effectually shock and insult the feelings of the Portugueze. They cut the pictures which they did not burn; they broke open the tombs. Those of Pedro and Ignez de Castro were covered with historical sculptures: rich as England is in remains of this kind, we have none of equal antiquity which could be compared with them for beauty, or for their value to the antiquarian; and a story, hardly less generally known throughout Europe than the most popular parts of classical history, had in an especial manner sanctified these monuments. These, therefore, were especial objects of the enemy’s malice, and more laborious mischief was exerted in destroying them, the tombs being so well constructed as not without difficulty to be destroyed. Fire was at length put to the monastery in many parts, and troops set round it to prevent the people from making any efforts to stop the conflagration. The edifice continued burning for two-and-twenty days. Two of the Cistercian brethren were afterwards appointed commissioners to search the ruins. They found some bones of Queen Orraca and part of her clothes; the body of Queen Beatriz, in a state of good preservation, and that of Pedro still entire, with the skin and hair upon it18. A few fragments only of Ignez de Castro could be found. These remains were deposited once more in the tombs, and the monuments repaired, as far as reparation was possible. The most valuable of the books and manuscripts had happily been removed in time.

Batalha was a structure equally sacred, and more beautiful. Had King Emanuel completed the original design, it would have excelled all other Gothic buildings; even in its unfinished state, it was the admiration of all who beheld it. It was founded upon the spot where the tent of Joam I. stood on the night before that battle which, for inferiority of numbers on the part of the conqueror, may be compared with Cressy, Poictiers, and Agincourt; and which, for the permanent importance of its consequences, when considered in all their bearings, is unparalleled. Here Joam was buried, after a long and glorious reign, upon the scene of his triumph; and here his four sons were buried also, men worthy of such a father; one of them being that Prince Henry whose grave, it might have been thought, would have been equally respected by all civilised nations. The monuments of these Infantes and of their parents were in a state of correspondent beauty with the temple in which they lay, and perfectly preserved. They were broken open by the French, and the remains of the dead taken from their graves to be made the mockery of these ruffians, who kicked about the head of Joam I. as a football, and left the body in the pulpit, placed in the attitude of one preaching.

Regnier’s corps, which was the enemy’s left, had moved from Santarem upon Thomar, from thence towards Espinhal: their centre from Pernes, by Torres Novas and Cham de Maçans, and the right from Leyria. The two latter effected their junction on the 9th in the plain before Pombal. What course the enemy would take in their retreat could not be foreseen: had they intended to retire by the way which they had entered, it was thought they would have sent a larger proportion by the Espinal road. The centre of the allies had taken the same line as that of the French; the right advanced upon Thomar, the left upon Leyria. Our light troops had never lost sight of the enemy; and when the centre and right joined before Pombal, the British advanced guard, coming from Cham de Maçans, saw their junction from the heights. A ♦Affair before Pombal.♦ brisk affair took place that day before Pombal, where the enemy had eight squadrons formed in different parts of the plain, supported by their whole cavalry. The 1st hussars and the 16th light dragoons attacked the most advanced of these squadrons, defeated them one after another, and drove them all together in confusion on their support, the troops composing which were repeatedly called upon by their officers to advance, but would not move; for they were quite dispirited, and satisfied with safety, seeing the allies were not in sufficient force to pursue their advantage. Lord Wellington could not collect a sufficient body to commence an operation before the 11th, when Loison, with three corps, and Montbrun’s division of cavalry, were leaving a position in front of Pombal. Having burnt the town, they attempted to hold the old castle, which stands upon an eminence above the Arunca; they were driven from thence, they then formed on the farther side of the town, and our troops did not arrive in time to complete the dispositions for attacking them while it was day; ... but they were in time to rescue six women from the flames, whom the French had stripped naked, shut into a house, and then set the house on fire! During the night the enemy retired, and their rear took up a strong position between Pombal and Redinha, formerly a city, now a town, but bearing rather the appearance of a decayed village. They were posted at the end of a defile in front of the

♦Affair before Redinha.
March 12.♦ town, their right in a wood upon the little river Danços, their left extending to some heights upon the same stream, which has its source about two miles above the town. The light division, under Sir William Erskine, the Portugueze caçadores, under Colonel Elder, forming part, attacked their right; and Lord Wellington, bearing testimony to the merit of these allies, declared that he had never seen the French infantry driven from a wood in more gallant style. Our troops then formed in the plain beyond the defile with great celerity, and Sir Brent Spencer led them against the heights, from which the French were immediately driven; but their skill was conspicuous in every movement, and no local advantage escaped them. Their retreat was by a narrow bridge, and a ford close to it, over the Danços; our light troops passed with them in pursuit, but they commanded these passages with cannon, and gained time to form again upon the nearest heights, before troops enough could pass over to make a fresh disposition for attacking them. As soon as this was done, they fell back upon their main body at Condeixa; and there they sent out regular parties to drive into the camp all females above ten years of age, and these victims were delivered to the soldiers!

There was now every reason to fear that Coimbra would share the fate of Alcobaça, and Leyria, and Pombal, and that the enemy, getting into Upper Beira, would lay waste in their destructive course a tract of country which had hitherto been preserved from their ravages; or that Massena would endeavour to obtain possession of Porto, and defend himself there better than Soult had done. As soon as Lord Wellington had ascertained that the enemy were directing their retreat toward the Mondego, which was on the fourth day after they retired ♦March 8.♦ from Santarem, he dispatched advices to General Bacelar, whose head-quarters were at S. Pedro do Sul, directing him to send his baggage across the Douro, to secure means for passing it himself, with the troops under his command, and to take measures for defending the passage both at Lamego and at Porto. It was supposed in this dispatch that Colonel Trant would have retired from Coimbra upon the Vouga, the bridge over which river he was now ordered to destroy, and then proceed to Porto. Trant, however, had intercepted a letter from Drouet to Claparede (who was then near Guarda), which led him to expect that the French would speedily commence their retreat, and that it would be in this direction; in consequence he destroyed an arch of the bridge at Coimbra; and when the concentration of their force at Pombal and Redinha made their course no longer doubtful, he withdrew his post from Condeixa, and evacuated the suburb of S. Clara, which is on the ♦The French endeavour to get possession of Coimbra.♦ left bank: this had just been effected on the morning of the 11th, when General Montbrun entered it with a large body of cavalry. Preparations had been made for defending the passage, and happily at that time the Mondego was not fordable. The rivers in that part of the country are rendered impassable for cavalry by a few hours’ rain, the water pouring down to them from the mountains on every side; but their course is so short, that they fall as rapidly as they rise. Montbrun, having no guns with him, could not return the fire of six six-pounders, the only artillery which Trant possessed; he retired, therefore, from S. Clara to the heights above it. This movement prevented him from discovering that the river became fordable in the course of the evening, and continued so for some days following. During the night Trant received advice from Colonel Wilson, that the river had become passable at a place some ten miles above the city; and from the other hand he was informed that a few of the enemy’s dragoons had actually crossed near Montemor o Velho. Measures were immediately taken for defending both fords; and the field-pieces were fired occasionally, in the hope that they might be heard at the advanced posts of the allied army, and Lord Wellington thus be assured that Coimbra was not in the enemy’s possession; but the wind was southerly, and the intention therefore failed. Not doubting but that the French were in retreat and the allies in close pursuit, Trant had no thought of retiring from his post, when he now received dispatches from Bacelar, inclosing Lord Wellington’s instructions, wherein he was supposed already to have withdrawn, and was ordered to take upon himself the protection of Porto. These orders he obeyed, by sending off the main body of the militia, during the night of the 12th, toward Mealhada, remaining himself with a detachment at the bridge. In the morning there was no indication of an attempt upon the town; only a few dragoons were to be seen on the heights of S. Clara; he resolved, therefore, to place his division in a position, and proceeded to join it for that purpose; instructing the officer whom he left in command at the bridge, to take nothing upon himself in case of any communication from the enemy, but refer it to him, and act accordingly. An hour had hardly elapsed, before Montbrun summoned the city to surrender. The officer referred the summons to Trant: it had been merely made to keep in check the garrison which Montbrun supposed to be still there, and in force; for that general having found them ready on the 11th and 12th had advised Massena to retire by the Ponte de Murcella; and when Lord Wellington came up with the main body, who were strongly posted at Condeixa, to his great joy he perceived that they were sending off their baggage in that direction. Immediately he inferred that Coimbra was safe, and marching General Picton’s division upon their left towards this road, now the only one open for their retreat, they were instantly dislodged, leaving Condeixa in flames. The allies then communicated with Coimbra; a detachment of cavalry, returning from their demonstration against that important city, were made prisoners, and Trant and Wilson were directed to move along the right bank of the Mondego, and prevent the enemy from sending detached parties across. In the order which Massena issued for burning every town and village, Coimbra had been particularly mentioned.

On the 14th the French rear-guard were driven from a strong position at Casal Nova, where they had encamped the preceding night. The whole line of their retreat was full of advantageous positions, of which they well knew how to avail themselves; but he who pursued them was also a master in the art of war; and in his own retreat had acquired a perfect knowledge of the ground. Their outposts were driven in: they were dislodged by flank movements from the posts which they successively took in the mountains, and were flung back with considerable loss upon the main body at Miranda do Corvo, where it was well posted to receive and support them. Here Regnier, with the second corps, effected his junction, so that the whole French army was now assembled. General Nightingale, who had pursued this column, rejoined the British army the same day at Espinhal: and as it was now in the power of Lord Wellington to turn their position, they abandoned it during the night.

A thick fog on the following morning gave them time, and favoured their movements. Some deserters came in, who said that they were destroying carriages, baggage, and ammunition. About nine the day cleared up, and the troops, renewing the pursuit, passed through the smoking ruins of Miranda do Corvo. Hitherto they had only seen proofs of the cruelty of the enemy along the road; they now began to see proofs of his distress; for from this place the road was strewn with the wreck of a retreating army, broken carriages, baggage, carcasses of men and beasts, the wounded and the dying. Amid this general havoc, nothing was more shocking than the number of horses, asses, and mules, which the French, when their strength failed, had hamstrung, and left to suffer a slow death. To have killed them at once would have been mercy, but mercy was a virtue which this army seemed to have forsworn: it even appeared, by the manner in which these poor creatures were grouped, that Massena’s troops had made the cruelties which they inflicted a matter of diversion to themselves! Every day the bodies of women were seen whom they had murdered. In one place some friars were hanging, impaled by the throat upon the sharpened branches of a tree. Everywhere peasants were found in the most miserable condition; poor wretches who had fallen into the hands of the French, and been tortured to make them discover where supplies were hid, or made to serve as guides, and when their knowledge of the way ended, shot, that they might give no information to the pursuers. The indignation of our army was what it ought to be; men and officers alike exclaimed against the atrocious conduct of their detestable enemies. “This,” said Lord Wellington, “is the mode in which the promises have been performed, and the assurances fulfilled, which were held out in the proclamation of the French commander-in-chief, when he told the inhabitants of Portugal, that he was not come to make war upon them, but, with a powerful army of an hundred and ten thousand men, to drive the English into the sea! It is to be hoped that the example of what has occurred in this country will teach the people of this and of other nations, what value they ought to place on such promises and assurances; and that there is no security for life, or for any thing that renders life valuable, except in decided resistance to the enemy.”

The retreating army had no provisions except what they plundered on the spot, and could carry on their backs, and live cattle, with which they were well provided. As far as Condeixa the allied troops had been supplied by transport from Lisbon, to their own admiration, so excellent had been the previous arrangement. But as they advanced, they suffered more privations than the enemy whom they were driving out of the country, for the French left the land as a desert behind them, and the commissariat could not keep up with the rapidity of such a pursuit. The dragoons always kept sight, of the enemy; they were constantly mounted before daybreak, their horses were never unsaddled, and were obliged to carry their own sustenance, which, it may be supposed, was sufficiently scanty. In the midst of a country where the people regarded them not merely as allies, but as friends, brothers, and deliverers, that people had not even shelter to afford them, and none of the troops had tents; those which they occupied in the lines were left there. But they reaped an abundant reward in the success of their general’s well-concerted and patient plan, in the anticipated applause of their own countrymen, in the blessings of the Portugueze, and in that feeling, ... of all others the happiest which can fall to a soldier’s lot, ... that they were engaged in a good cause, and that the wickedness of the enemy rendered it as much a moral as a military duty to labour for his destruction. With these feelings they attacked them wherever they were found. Massena had taken up a formidable position on the Ceyra, which falls into the Mondego a few leagues above Coimbra, and is one of the Portugueze rivers in whose bed gold has been found; a whole corps was posted as an advanced guard in front of Foz de Arouce, on the left side of the river. Here Lord Wellington again moved his divisions upon their right and left, and attacked them in front. In this affair the French sustained a considerable loss, which was much increased by a well-managed movement of the English 95th. That regiment observed a body of the enemy moving off in two parallel columns. There was a woody cover between them, into which the 95th got, the fog and the closing evening enabling them to do so unperceived; from thence they fired on both sides, and retiring instantly that the fire was returned, left the two columns of the French to keep up a heavy fire upon each other as they passed the cover. The darkness of the night increased their confusion: many were drowned in crossing the river, ... a mountain stream swoln by the rains, ... and it is said that one column blew up the bridge while the other was upon it. Much baggage, and some ammunition carriages, here fell into the hands of the pursuers. The light division got into the enemy’s bivouac, and found not only some of their plunder there, but their dinners on the fires. A heavy fog had delayed the movements of the army, and prevented a more serious attack, from which much had been expected.

Having blown up the bridge, the enemy’s rear-guard took a position on the bank of the river, to watch the ford. The loss which they had sustained on the preceding day was betrayed in part by the bodies which they had thrown into the water to conceal it, but which were seen as the stream bore them down. Lord Wellington was obliged to halt the whole of the following day for supplies, the rains having rendered bad roads almost impassable. Here, too, the ill news from Badajoz compelled him to order toward that frontier a part of his army, which should otherwise have continued in the pursuit. During the night, the French moved off, and the pursuers forded the Ceyra on the 17th. On the 18th, they advanced toward the Ponte de Murcella; the French, who, during the whole of the retreat, made their marches by night, putting their troops in motion a few hours after dusk, had retired over this bridge and destroyed it, using the very mines which the British had constructed for the same purpose, on their retreat in the preceding autumn. They were now posted in force on the right of the Alva. Lord Wellington turned their left by the Serra de Santa Quiteria, and manœuvred in their front; this compelled them to retire upon Mouta. It was believed that they had intended to remain some days in the position from which they were thus driven, because many prisoners were taken who had been sent out in foraging parties toward the Mondego, and ordered to return to the Alva. During the night the staff corps constructed a bridge which was ready at daybreak for the infantry. The cavalry passed at a ford close by, and there was some difficulty in getting the artillery across. On the 19th, they were assembled on the Serra de Mouta, the enemy, as usual, having retired in the night. From this place they continued their retreat with the utmost rapidity. Lord Wellington kept up the pursuit with only the cavalry and the light division under Sir William Erskine, supported by two divisions of infantry, and by the militia on the right of the Mondego. The remainder of the army was obliged to halt, till the supplies, which had been sent round from the Tagus to the Mondego, should arrive; this was absolutely necessary, for nothing could be found in the country.

The peasants did not everywhere abandon their villages to the spoilers; in some places they found means to arm themselves, and their appearance deterred the enemy from making their intended attack, the pursuers being so near at hand; in others they entered the burning villages with the foremost of the allied army in time to extinguish the flames. There is a village called Avo, six-and-thirty miles from Coimbra, containing about 130 houses. The ordenanza of that district were collected there; they repelled a body of 500 French in five different attacks, and saved the village. The little town of Manteigas was less fortunate. The inhabitants of the adjoining country, confiding in the situation of a place which was, as they hoped, concealed in the heart of the Serra de Estrella, had brought their women and children thither, and their most valuable effects; but it was discovered, and in spite of a desperate defence, the town was stormed, by a force as superior in number as in arms. The officers carried off the handsomest women; the rest were given up to the mercy of men as brutal as their leaders. But everywhere the naked bodies of the straggling and wounded, which the English found upon the way, showed well what vengeance these most injured people had taken upon their unprovoked and inhuman enemies. In one place a party of them were surprised in a church digging the dead out of their graves in search of plunder.

As the French drew nearer the frontier, their foraging parties assumed more confidence, and at the same time their wants becoming more urgent, made them more daring. They passed the fords of the Mondego near Fornos, in considerable numbers, to seek supplies in a country as yet unravaged; but they were attacked by Wilson, who pursued them across the river and captured a great number of beasts of burthen, laden with plunder of every description, which they abandoned in their flight. He took several prisoners also, and in consequence of the loss which they had thus sustained a strong division was detached against him, which took a position on the left bank of the river, so as to cover the flank of the retiring columns from any further operations of this militia force, till they had passed Celorico. Lord Wellington, for want of supplies, was not able to proceed till the 26th, when he advanced to Gouvea, halted, again the next day, and on the following reached Celorico. The French were then at Guarda, which they occupied in strength, and where they apparently intended to maintain themselves. Between Celorico and that city, the inhabitants of a village, men and women alike, were found dead or dying in the street, their ears and noses cut off, and otherwise mangled in a manner not to be described. The horror and indignation of the allies were raised to the highest pitch by this dreadful sight; and the advanced guard coming up with some hundreds of the guilty troops, whose retreat had been impeded by the premature destruction of a bridge, gave them as little quarter as they deserved. But as the enemy only passed through this part of the country, it had not suffered so much as those places where they had been stationary, and consequently had had leisure to prepare19 for the work of barbarous devastation which their Generals had determined upon committing. Not having time now to destroy every thing before them, they burnt only the principal houses: poorer habitations escaped; and the peasants who had fled before the retreating army to the mountains no sooner saw the allies come up, than they returned to their dwellings, baked bread for their deliverers from the corn which they had concealed, and did every thing in their power to assist them.

Guarda stands upon a plain of the Serra de Estrella (the Mons Herminius of the Romans) near the sources of the Zezere and the Mondego, and near the highest part of that lofty range; its site is said to be higher than that of any other city in Europe; the ascent to it continues nearly four miles, by a road wide enough for two carts abreast, winding in numberless sinuations along the edge of a deep precipice, the sides of which are overspread with trees. The city indeed owes its origin to this commanding situation, having grown round a watch tower (called in those days guarda) which Sancho the First erected there in the first age of the monarchy. Lord Wellington collected his army in the neighbourhood and in the front of Celorico, with a view to dislodge the enemy from this advantageous post. The following day he moved forward in five columns, supported by a division in the valley of the Mondego; the militia under Trant and Wilson covering the movement at Alverca against any attempt which might have been made against it on that side. So well were the movements concerted, that the heads of the different columns made their appearance on the heights almost at the same moment; upon which the enemy, without firing a shot, retired upon Sabugal on the Upper Coa; for although Dumouriez, with his superficial knowledge of the country, had spoken of Guarda as the key of Portugal, and upon that authority it has been described as one of the finest military positions in the kingdom, the French Generals perceived that its apparent strength only rendered it more treacherous, and were too prudent to attempt making a stand there, against one whom they now could not but in their hearts acknowledge to be at least their equal in the art of war. Their retreat was so rapid that they had not time to execute the mischief which they intended; our troops entered in time to save the Cathedral, the door of which was on fire: the wood of its fine organ had been taken by the enemy for fuel, and the pipes for bullets. They took a strong position, their right at Ruvina guarding the ford of Rapoula de Coa, with a detachment at the bridge of Ferreiros; their left was at Sabugal, and their 8th corps at Alfayates. The right of the allied army was opposite Sabugal, their left at the bridge of Ferreiros, and Trant and Wilson were sent across the Coa below Almeida, to threaten the communication of that place with Ciudad Rodrigo and with the enemy’s army.

The river Coa rises in the Sierra de Xalma, which forms a part of the great Sierra de Gata; and entering Portugal by Folgozinho, falls into the Douro near Villa Nova de Foscoa. The whole of its course is through one of the most picturesque countries in Europe, and it is everywhere difficult of access. ♦Sabugal.♦ Sabugal stands on the right bank. This town was founded about the year 1220, by Alonso X. of Leon, who named it from the number of elder-trees (sabugos) growing about it: the place is now remarkable for some of the largest chesnut-trees that are anywhere to be seen. It was afterwards annexed to the Portugueze dominions, and its old castle still remains a monument of king Diniz, whose magnificent works are found over the ♦April.♦ whole kingdom. The enemy’s second corps were strongly posted with their right upon a height immediately above the bridge and town, and their left extending along the road to Alfayates, to a height which commanded all the approaches to Sabugal from the fords above the town. They communicated by Rendo with the sixth corps at Ruvina. It was only on the left above Sabugal that they could be approached; our troops, therefore, were put in motion on the morning ♦Action before Sabugal.♦ of the 3rd of April, to turn them in this direction, and to force the passage of the bridge of Sabugal. The light division and the cavalry, under Sir W. Erskine and Major-General Slade, were to cross the Coa by two separate fords upon the right, the cavalry upon the right of the light division; the third division, under Major-General Picton, at a ford on the left about a mile above Sabugal; the fifth division, under Major-General Dunlop, and the artillery at the bridge. The sixth division remained opposite the enemy’s corps at Ruvina, and a battalion of the seventh observed their detachment at the bridge of Ferreiros. Colonel Beckwith’s brigade of the light division was the first that crossed, with two squadrons of cavalry upon its right; the riflemen skirmished; the enemy’s picquets fell back from the river as they advanced: they forded, gained the opposite height, formed as the companies arrived, and moved forward under a heavy fire. At this time so thick a rain came on, that it was impossible to see any thing before them, and the troops pushing forward in pursuit of the picquets, came upon the left of the main body, which it was intended they should turn. The light troops were driven back upon the 43rd regiment; and Regnier, who commanded the French, perceiving, as soon as the atmosphere cleared, that the body which had advanced was not strong, attacked it in solid column, supported by artillery and horse. The allies repulsed it, and advanced in pursuit upon the position. They found a strong enclosure in the front lined with a battalion; and the enemy forming fresh and stronger bodies, attacked them with the hussars on the right, and a fresh column on the left. Our troops retired, took post behind a wall, formed again under a heavy fire of grape, canister, and musketry, again repulsed the enemy, again advanced against them, and took from them a howitzer posted in the rear of the French battalion, which was formed under cover of that in the stone enclosure: this gun had greatly annoyed the allies. They had advanced with such impetuosity that their front was somewhat scattered; a fresh column with cavalry attacked them; they retired again to their post, where the battalions of the 52nd and the 1st Caçadores joined them: these troops once more repulsed the enemy, and Colonel Beckwith’s brigade, with the first battalion of the 52nd, again advanced upon them. Another column of the French, with cavalry, charged their right: but they took post in the stone enclosure on the top of the height, from whence they could protect the howitzer which had been won, and they again drove back the enemy. Regnier had moved a column on their left to renew the attack, when part of General Picton’s division came up; the head of General Dunlop’s column forced the bridge at the same time, and ascended the heights on the right flank; the cavalry appeared on the high ground in rear of their left, and Regnier then retreated across the hills towards Rendo, leaving the howitzer in the hands of those by whom it had been so gallantly won; about 200 were left on the field, with six officers and 300 prisoners. Our loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners, amounted to 161. What that of the French was in wounded is not known. They retired in the greatest disorder, cavalry, artillery, infantry, and baggage, all mixed. A fog favoured them, otherwise a good account would have been given of half their corps. Lord Wellington described this action, though the unavoidable accidents of weather had materially interfered with the operations, and impeded their success, as one of the most glorious that British troops were ever engaged in.

Regnier joined the sixth corps at Rendo; for it had broken up from its position at Ruvina as soon as the firing began; they retreated to Alfayates, followed by our cavalry; that night they continued their retreat, and entered the Spanish frontier on the fourth. On the following day the advance of the allied army pushed on, and occupied Albergaria, the first village on the Spanish border. An inhabited village was what they had not seen before since their retreat in the autumn, those excepted which were within the lines of Torres Vedras. The villages in Spain had not been injured; it seemed as if the French wished to make the Spaniards on this frontier compare their own condition with that of the Portugueze, that they might become contented with subjection. Massena’s soldiers even paid here for bread; and arriving not only hungry, but with a longing desire for that which is to them the most necessary article of food, they paid any price for it: the peasants seeing that they were rich in plunder, and finding them in the paying mood, made their charges accordingly. This sudden transition from a devastated country to one which had been exempted from the ravages of war, where the villages were clean, and the cottages reminded Englishmen of those in their own land, was not less striking than was the passing at once from a wild mountainous region to a fine and well-wooded plain.

Some hope was entertained that the appearance of Trant and Wilson’s force before Almeida might make the French apprehend a serious attack, and induce them to evacuate it. But throughout the war they never committed any error of this kind. It rarely happened in their service that any person was appointed to a situation for which he was not well qualified; and the commander of this fortress, General Brenier, was a man of more than common qualifications. The Coa, after these divisions crossed it at Cinco Villas, rose; and the governor concerted with General Regnier an attack upon them, which, their retreat being thus cut off, must have ended in their destruction, if Lord Wellington, apprehending the danger, had not pushed forward a small corps, which arrived just in time to divert the enemy’s attention, and save them. On the eighth the last of Massena’s army crossed the Agueda, not a ♦The French cross the frontier.♦ Frenchman remaining in Portugal, except the garrison of Almeida, which Lord Wellington immediately prepared to blockade. The allies took up that position upon the Duas Casas, which General Craufurd had occupied with the advanced guard during the latter part of the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, having their advanced posts upon Galegos and the Agueda. Thus terminated the invasion of Portugal, in which Massena, with 110,000 men, had boasted that he would drive the English into the sea. A general of the highest reputation, and of abilities no ways inferior to his celebrity, at the head of the largest force which France could send against that country, was thus in all his plans baffled by a British general, and in every engagement beaten by British troops. An enemy the most presumptuous and insolent that ever disgraced the profession of arms, the most cruel that ever outraged human nature, had been humbled and exposed in the face of Europe; ... it was in vain for the French Government to call their retreat a change of position, ... however they might disguise and misrepresent the transactions in Portugal, however they might claim victories where they had sustained defeats, the map discovered here their undeniable discomfiture; and the smallest kingdom in Europe, a kingdom too which long misgovernment had reduced to the most deplorable state of disorganization, had, by the help of England and the spirit of its inhabitants, defied and defeated that tyrant before whom the whole continent was humbled. Russia had been so foiled in arms and dressed in negociation so as to become the ally of France, to co-operate in her barbarous warfare against commerce, and to recognise her extravagant usurpations. Prussia had been beaten and reduced to vassalage. Austria was still farther degraded by being compelled to give a daughter of its emperor in marriage to one whose crimes that emperor himself had proclaimed to the world. Poles and Italians, Dutch and Germans, from every part of divided and subjected Germany, filled up the armies of this barbarian; and the Portugueze, ... the poor, degraded, and despised Portugueze, ... the vilified, the injured, the insulted Portugueze, ... were the first people who drove this formidable enemy out of their country, and delivered themselves from the yoke.

While Massena was retreating, and before the intelligence arrived in England, a debate took place in both houses, upon a motion, that two millions should be granted for the Portugueze troops in British pay. The opposition did not let pass this opportunity of repeating their opinions and their ♦Mr. Ponsonby.♦ prophecies, ... in happy hour! Mr. Ponsonby said, that our success consisted in having lost almost the whole of Portugal, and having our army hemmed in between Lisbon and Cartaxo; except that intermediate space, we had abandoned all Portugal. ♦Mr. Freemantle.♦ Mr. Freemantle, after a panegyric upon Sir John Moore’s retreat, said that the present campaign left Lord Wellington incapable of quitting his intrenchments, and only waiting the result of such movements as the enemy might be disposed to make. “It rests with the enemy,” said he, “to choose his day, to make his own dispositions, to wait for his reinforcements, to choose whether he will continue to blockade you, or whether he will give you a fair opportunity of contending with him in the field. If we are to judge by the publications in France, he will decide upon the former; and in this he will judge wisely. The result of all your victories, of all your expenditure in men and money, of all your exertions, and of all your waste of the military resources of this country, is ... the position of your army at Lisbon, insulated and incapable of acting, but at the discretion of the enemy: your allies in every other part of the peninsula overwhelmed, and only manifesting partial and unavailable hostility; your own resources exhausted, and your hopes of ultimate success, to every mind which is not blinded by enthusiasm, completely annihilated! Such is the result of a system founded upon the principle of attempting to subdue Buonaparte by the force of your armies on the continent! Will any man say that this has been a wise system? Will any man, who is not determined, under any circumstances, to support the measures of a weak and misguided government, contend that it has been successful? that it has answered either the promises to your allies, or the hopes to your country? that it has either contributed to their security, or to your own benefit?”

General Tarleton also delivered it as his opinion, that we had lost the whole of the peninsula, except the spot between Cartaxo and Lisbon; that the Portugueze troops had never been of any actual service; that we could not maintain ourselves in the country, for the fatal truth must at length be told; and that when our army was to get out of it, he was afraid it would be ♦Lord Grenville.♦ found a difficult matter. Lord Grenville, in the Upper House, spoke to the same purport, affirming that the British army in Portugal did not possess more of the country than the ground which it actually occupied, and that while we were vainly draining our own resources, and hazarding our best means, we did not essentially contribute to help Portugal, or to save it. It was, he added, because he had the cause of Spain and Portugal sincerely and warmly at heart, that he felt anxious we should pause in this wild and mad career of thoughtless prodigality, look our own situation in the face, and learn the necessity of economising our resources, that we might be able, at a period more favourable than the present, to lend to the cause of the nations of the Peninsula, or to that of any other country similarly situated, that support and those exertions which, when made under all the circumstances of our present situation, must be found not only wholly unavailing to our allies, but highly injurious to ourselves.

Two days after these opinions were delivered, the telegraph announced the news of Massena’s retreat.

About the same time that the tide had thus turned in Portugal, came tidings of a victory in Spain, which, if it led to no other result, tended to raise the character of the British army, and the spirits of the nation. When Soult marched against Badajoz, hoping to co-operate with Massena in the conquest of Portugal, he made ♦Expedition from Cadiz.♦ such large drafts from the army before Cadiz, that it was thought possible, by a well-concerted attack, to raise the blockade. The plan was, that an expedition should sail from Cadiz, and force a landing between Cape Trafalgar and Cape de Plata, or at Tarifa, or at Algeciras. The Spanish force at St. Roques was then to join, and a combined attack to be made upon the rear of the enemy’s line; while, in the meantime, an attempt should be made from the Isle of Leon to open a communication with them. D. Manuel de Lapeña was appointed to the command. He had conducted the wreck of the central army during the latter part of its retreat, under circumstances in which no military skill could be displayed, but in which his patriotism and ♦Lieutenant-General Graham.♦ moderation had been fully proved. Lieutenant-General Graham, who commanded the British troops at Cadiz, consented to act under him. This officer was now in his sixty-first year. The former part of his life he had passed in the enjoyments of domestic comfort, amusing himself with rural sports, with improving his estates, and with literature: after eighteen years of happiness his wife died on the way to the south of France, and Mr. Graham, seeking for relief in change of place, and in active occupations, joined Lord Hood as a volunteer when Toulon was taken possession of in 1793. Here he distinguished himself greatly, and on his return to England obtained permission to raise a regiment, but not without great difficulty and express discouragement from the commander-in-chief. He was at Mantua with Wurmser in 1796, and escaped by cutting his way through the besiegers in a night sortie: and he bore a distinguished part at Malta when Sir Alexander Ball, under circumstances the most painful, and with means the most inadequate, by his wisdom and perseverance recovered that island from the enemy. Nevertheless the time of life at which he had entered the army, and the manner, impeded his promotion; and he would probably never have risen in rank if General Moore had not experienced great assistance from him in his retreat, and at the battle of Coruña, and sent home so strong a recommendation that it could not be neglected.

The expedition, though upon no extensive scale, was yet a great exertion for a government so poor in means as the Regency, so feeble, and with all its branches so miserably disorganised. The bustle in the roads was visible from the enemy’s lines, as well as from the city; in Cadiz the highest hopes were excited, and Marshal Victor felt no little degree of alarm. He thought that when Soult had so considerably weakened the blockading force, he ought to have placed Sebastiani’s army at his disposal, in case of need: this had not been done, and Victor, seeing the naval preparations, sent to that general, entreating him to manœuvre so as to alarm the allies upon their landing, and to endanger them; but his entreaties were of no effect, and Victor complained in his public dispatches, that this corps, though numerous, in good condition, and at leisure, had not given him the least assistance.

During the latter days of January and great part of the following month, heavy rains delayed the expedition, and rendered all the roads impracticable by which the allies could have approached the enemy. On the 20th of February, the troops were embarked, waiting a favourable opportunity to proceed into the Straits: General Graham had about 4000 British and Portugueze, the Spaniards were 7000. The British got to sea the next day, and not being able to effect a landing near Cape Trafalgar, nor at Tarifa, disembarked at Algeciras, from whence they marched to Tarifa. The roads between the two towns were impassable for carriages, and therefore the artillery, provisions, and stores, were conveyed in boats, by indefatigable exertions of the seamen, against every disadvantage of wind and weather. The Spanish transports were thrice driven back, but reached Tarifa on the evening of the 27th, and the next day they began their ♦They pass the Puerto de Facinas.♦ march to the Puerto de Facinas, a pass in that chain of mountains which, bounding the plain of Gibraltar on the west, runs to the sea from the Sierras of Ronda. To this point the road was practicable for carriages, some days’ labour having been employed in making it so: from thence it descends to those spacious plains which extend from the skirts of the chain to Medina Sidonia, Chiclana, and the river Santi Petri: and the roads below were in a dreadful state, the country being marshy, intersected with a labyrinth of streams; one of which, the Barbate, which receives the waters of the Lake of Janda, is a considerable river. At Veger, about half way between Tarifa and the Isle of Leon, the French had three companies of infantry and 180 horse. They had also a small fort with two pieces of cannon at Casas Viejas, on the road to Medina. These points it was hoped to surprise, and the troops therefore encamped on the side of the mountain, taking every precaution to conceal their movements from the enemy.

Lapeña, when the troops commenced their march, addressed a proclamation to them, which at once disclosed the extent of his object, and the confidence with which he expected to realize it. “Soldiers of the fourth army,” said he, “the moment for which you have a whole year been longing is at length arrived: a second time Andalusia is about to owe to you her liberty, and the laurels of Mengibar and Baylen will revive upon your brows. You have to combat in sight of the whole nation assembled in its Cortes; the Government will see your deeds; the inhabitants of Cadiz, who have made so many sacrifices for you, will be eye-witnesses of your heroism; they will lift up their voices in blessings and in acclamations of praise, which you will hear amid the roar of musketry and cannon. Let us go then to conquer! my cares are directed to this end; implicit obedience, firmness, and discipline, must conduct you to it: if these are wanting, in vain will you seek for fortune! and woe to him who forgets or abandons them: he shall die without remission! The gold, whose weight makes cowards of those who have plundered it from us, the bounties which a generous Government will bestow, and the endless blessings of those who will call you their deliverers, ... behold in these your reward!” At Facinas the operations were to commence; here, therefore, the order of march was arranged, and the troops formed into three divisions, the van being under General D. Jose Lardizabal, the centre under Camp-Marshal the Prince of Anglona, and the reserve under General Graham.

At night-fall on the first of March, a detachment under Colonel D. José Aymerich with two four-pounders, began its march to surprise Veger. A squadron accompanied it under the first adjutant of the staff, Major-General Wall, as far as the Fuente del Hierro, where these two parties separated, Aymerich taking the direct line for Veger, Wall going to the right across the lake of La Janda and the river Barbate, to cut off the retreat of the enemy by the roads to Medina and Chiclana. It was hardly probable that he should succeed in this attempt, for the way was not only circuitous and full of difficulties, but there was also another road, that of Conil, by which they might make their retreat, and which lay so wide of the others, that it could not be occupied: Wall’s movement, however, covered Aymerich’s, and facilitated his operations. The Barbate is navigable as far as Veger bridge, where it touches the foot of the high hill upon which Veger stands. At this bridge Aymerich arrived in the morning; it was fortified, and the French, under every advantage of situation, were preparing to defend it, when Wall’s cavalry appeared on the other side; upon this they retired by the Conil road fast enough to effect their retreat. Three of their gun-boats and three pieces of cannon were taken here; the enemy suffered no other loss, but the chief object in view was accomplished, for the possession of this post secured the flank of the allies.

Meantime the main body advanced against Casas Viejas: the distance being twelve miles, Lapeña supposed, from the information of his guides, that he should arrive some hours before daybreak. But there were so many streams to cross, and so many intervening marshes, that notwithstanding the hard labour of the pioneers, and the utmost exertions of the artillery officers, these twelve miles were a journey of twelve painful hours, so that he did not arrive in time to reconnoitre the fort before it was broad day. The enemy having fired a few shot, took post upon a hill behind the fort, on the Medina road. The German hussars in the British service, and the Spanish carbineers under General Whittingham, were ordered to wheel round upon the enemy’s right, and surround them in that direction, while Baron ♦March.♦ Carondelet, with another squadron of cavalry, forded the Barbate, and crossing a flooded marsh, where the water was up to their saddle-girths, advanced to charge them. Two battalions of infantry, the one Spanish, the other English, crossed at the same time to support him; and the enemy presently gave way, leaving about thirty killed and wounded, thirty-three prisoners, two pieces of cannon, and all their stores.

The troops from St. Roques joined this day, marching by way of Las Casas de Castaño, and leaving a small detachment in Alcala de los Gazules. This division, consisting of 1600 men, was added to the centre, whose force now amounted to 6000; that of the vanguard was 2100, that of the rear 3100, 4300 being British and Portugueze, the rest Spaniards. The cavalry were in a separate body under Whittingham. The whole force, when thus united, consisted of 11,200 foot, 800 horse20. They had twenty-four pieces of cannon. Lapeña’s plan was now to march by Veger, upon the Santi Petri, and attack the intrenchments there which formed the left of the enemy’s lines. Thus the pass of the river would be laid open, and a communication established with the Isle of Leon, from whence the army might receive provisions, which it now began to want, and might be reinforced with artillery, foot, and horse: thus too they might combine their operations with those which would be made from the Spanish line of defence, and from the bay, in such manner, that while the success appeared almost certain, the risk, even in case of defeat, would be avoided, which must be incurred upon any other plan from the nature of the ground and the want of stores. Victor did not suspect that any difficulties upon this head could influence the movements of the allies, and he seems to have expected that his position would be attacked in a more vital part. He reinforced with a battalion of voltigeurs General Cassagne, who occupied Medina Sidonia with three battalions and a regiment of chasseurs; and he took a position himself with ten battalions at the Cortijo de Guerra, the intermediate point between Medina and Chiclana, from whence he could bear upon the allies in case they should advance upon either. General Lapeña, however, had no thought of moving upon Medina: “it was strong by nature,” he said, “fortified with seven pieces of cannon, besides some in its castle, and distant only two leagues from the Cortijo.”

Camp-Marshal D. Jose de Zayas, who commanded in the Isle of Leon, meantime had well performed his part of the concerted operations. He pushed a body of troops over the Santi Petri, near the coast, on the first, threw a pontoon bridge across, and formed a tete-du-pont the following evening. The French General Villatte was immediately ordered to attack this point during the night, and, in French customary phrase, to drive the Spaniards into the sea. About midnight the enemy made their attack with three regiments, and by dint of superior numbers forced their way into the works at various points. Zayas speedily reinforced the post, and drove them out with the bayonet: it was wholly an affair of the bayonet, for the troops were too much intermingled to permit of firing. Some of the French had reached the middle of the bridge, others crossed it, probably as the best means of saving themselves when they found that they had pushed on too far; they fell in with the Spaniards who were hastening to assist their comrades, and in this manner effected their escape.

Having failed in this attempt, Victor marched towards Chiclana, and ordered Cassagne to join him from the Cortijo, rightly concluding that Lapeña meant to attack the French lines at Santi Petri, which, should he succeed, would enable him to receive reinforcements from the Isle, and then he would march upon Chiclana. The Spanish general thought to deceive him into a belief that the attack would be made by Medina, and for this purpose left a party at Casas Viejas to mount guard, and keep up fires, as if the whole force was there, while on the third they proceeded to Veger. An excess of caution seems to have been Lapeña’s failing; lest the enemy from Medina, which was about ten miles from the beaten road, should think of attacking him upon his march, he chose a by-road on the left of the Barbate, unfrequented, because there is the lake of Junda to be crossed on the way. This lake is a considerable piece of water, between the two roads from Tarifa to Medina Sidonia and to Chiclana. The bottom consists of mud; but to render it fordable, a stone causeway had been built, rather under than in the water, about six feet wide, and some 500 yards in length, bushes and poles being fixed at intervals to mark its edge, and prevent the traveller from stepping into the mud. At this time the water upon the causeway was in some places more than mid-deep. The Spaniards were some hours in passing, Lapeña exhorting them from his horse; and many of the officers made the men carry them across, while our officers were encouraging their soldiers by example, and General Graham was in the water on foot. On the evening of the 4th, they advanced from Veger, by way of Conil, towards Santi Petri. This place Lapeña hoped to reach by daybreak; but upon entering a wood about ten miles from the village, and about as much in extent, his advanced guard was suddenly attacked by some cavalry who sallied from the cover. The enemy were repelled, but the column halted while the wood was explored; and this, with the doubt and hesitation of the guides, heightened by the fears and feelings which night excited, and the local circumstances of a country where carriages seldom or never passed, caused a delay of two hours, so that they did not get out of the wood till it was broad day; and the hope which Lapeña had with little reason indulged, of surprising his vigilant enemy, was destroyed. The three divisions therefore advanced in as many columns; their movements could not possibly be concealed; the enemy did not appear to molest them, but an officer of the French staff was seen singly reconnoitring them. The operation was to commence from a height called the Cabeza del Puerco: they halted here to refresh themselves, and Lapeña harangued the van which was destined to make the attack.

The lines which were to be attacked formed the left of the French works. They were supported by the sea on one side, on the other by the channel of Alcornocal, and the fortified mill of Almansa. Villatte had about 4000 men to defend this position, but his force had been considerably weakened in his unsuccessful attempt upon the tete-du-pont. He had, however, very considerable advantage in the nature of the broken ground, a thick wood through which the assailant must advance, and the perfect knowledge, which, in the course of twelve months’ undisturbed possession, he had acquired of every path and every inequality of surface. This wood so covered the enemy, that only four of their battalions in the first line were visible; they had their right supported by the Torre Bermeja, and three guns in their centre. Lardizabal, reinforced by part of the second division, advanced to attack them: the remainder of the troops held a position upon the Cabeza del Puerco, or hill of Barrosa, the cavalry being in advance upon the right.

Villatte anticipated their movements, and fell upon both flanks of Lardizabal’s advance at the same time; at first he had the advantage, ... but the regiment of Murcia, under its Colonel D. Juan Maria Muñoz, checked his progress, Lardizabal with a battalion of the Canaries attacked his right, and the Spanish guards, and the regiment of Africa, under Brigadier D. Raymundo Ferrer, and Colonel D. Tomas Retortillo, charged with the bayonet. The enemy were routed, and the communication with the Isle of Leon was thus opened by this well-conducted and successful attack. Two battalions of the French escaped and carried off their field-pieces, the nature of the ground saving them. Lapeña’s first object was thus accomplished, and in order to maintain the important position that he had gained, which had in its front a thick pine forest, extending to Chiclana, and which he apprehended the enemy would use their utmost efforts to recover, he directed, in concert with General Graham, that the British troops should move down from Barrosa towards the Torre de Bermeja, leaving some Spanish regiments under Brigadier Begines upon the heights. The position which it was intended to occupy is formed by a narrow woody ridge, the right on the sea cliff, the left falling down to the creek of Almansa on the edge of a marsh. From the position of Barrosa to that of Bermeja, the communication is easy, along a hard sandy beach upon the west. General Graham’s division had halted on the eastern slope; his road therefore lay through the wood, and having sent cavalry patroles toward Chiclana, who saw nothing of the enemy, he began his march about noon.

General Lacy, the chief of the Spanish staff, was sent forward by Lapeña to maintain the heights of Bermeja; here it was that the danger was apprehended; and the firing had recommenced in that direction. The nature of the ground was such, that what was passing at Barrosa could not be seen at Bermeja; perhaps there was a deficiency in those arrangements, by which, in a well-organized army, information of what is passing in one part is rapidly conveyed to another; and there was certainly the want of a good intelligence between General Graham and the Spanish commander under whom he had consented to act. The British troops had proceeded about half way, and were in the middle of the wood, when they were informed that the enemy was appearing in force upon the plain, and advancing towards the heights of Barrosa. That position General Graham considered as the key to that of Santi Petri, and immediately countermarched in order to support the troops who had been left for its defence.

The heights of Barrosa extend to the shore on one side, and slope down to the plain on the other towards a lake called the Laguna del Puerco: the ridge itself was called Cabeza del Puerco by the Spaniards, but it will retain the better name which was this day acquired for it. Victor with 8000 men advanced against this point. The troops which had been left there were the regiments of Siguenza and Cantabria, a battalion of Ciudad Real, another of the Walloon guards, and a battalion of the King’s German legion. Ignorant of Graham’s movements, and knowing themselves unable to maintain the post against such very superior numbers, they thought it best to form a junction with the British, whose rear they should by this means cover, and be themselves covered on the way by the pine forest through which they were to pass. Accordingly they made this movement with perfect coolness and in perfect order, General Whittingham covering one flank, Brigadier D. Juan de la Cruz Mourgeon the other; for on both sides the enemy endeavoured to envelope them.

Graham, meantime, was marching rapidly back, but at a distance from the shore; whereas these troops kept near it, apparently to lessen the danger of being turned on that side by the enemy’s light infantry. In such intricate and difficult circumstances it was impossible to preserve order in the columns; and before the troops were quite disentangled from the wood, they saw that the detachment which they were hastening to support had left the heights; that the left wing of the French were rapidly ascending there, and their right stood upon the plain, on the edge of the wood within cannon shot. General Graham’s object in countermarching had been to support the troops in maintaining the heights; “but a retreat,” he says, “in the face of such an enemy (already within reach of the easy communication by the sea beach) must have involved the whole allied army in all the danger of being attacked during the unavoidable confusion of the different corps arriving on the narrow ridge of Bermeja nearly at the same time.” Trusting, therefore, to the courage of his men, and regardless of the numbers and position of the enemy, he resolved immediately to attack them.

Marshal Victor commanded the French; General Ruffin, whose name was well known in the history of this wicked war, commanded the left upon the hill; General Leval the right. Graham formed his troops as rapidly as the circumstances required; there was no time to restore order in his columns, which had unavoidably been broken in marching through the wood. The brigade of guards, Lieutenant-Colonel Browne’s flank battalion of the 28th, Lieutenant-Colonel Norcott’s two companies of the 2nd rifle corps, and Major Acheson, with a part of the 57th (separated from the regiment in the wood), formed on the right under Brigadier-General Dilkes. Colonel Wheatley’s brigade, with three companies of the Coldstream guards, under Lieutenant-Colonel Jackson, (separated likewise from his battalion in the wood,) and Lieutenant-Colonel Barnard’s flank battalion, formed on the left; Major Duncan, opening a powerful battery of ten guns in the centre, protected the formation of the infantry; and as soon as they were thus hastily got together, the guns were advanced to a more favourable position, and kept up a most destructive fire.

Leval’s division, notwithstanding the havoc which this battery made, continued to advance in imposing masses, opening its fire of musketry. The British left wing advanced against it, firing. The three companies of guards, and the 87th, supported by the remainder of the wing, charged them with right British bravery; Colonel Bilson with the 28th, and Lieutenant-Colonel Prevost with part of the 67th, zealously supported their attack, which was decisive in this part of the field. An eagle, the first which the British had won, was taken. It belonged to the 8th regiment of light infantry, and bore a gold collar round its neck, because that regiment had so distinguished itself as to have received the thanks of Buonaparte in person. The enemy were closely pursued across a narrow valley, and a reserve, which they had formed beyond it, was charged in like manner, and in like manner put to the rout. General Dilkes was equally successful on his side. Ruffin, confident in his numbers and in his position, met him on the ascent. A bloody contest ensued, but of no long duration, for the best troops of France have never been able to stand against the British bayonet. Ruffin was wounded and taken, and the enemy driven from the heights in confusion. In less than an hour and a half they were in full retreat, and in that short time more than 4000 men had fallen, ... for the British loss in killed and wounded amounted to 1243; not a single British soldier was taken. The French loss was more than 3000. General Bellegrade was killed, General Rousseau mortally wounded and taken; the prisoners were only 440, because there was no pursuit.

The 20th Portugueze regiment fought side by side with the British in this memorable action. One squadron of the German Legion, which had been attached to the Spanish cavalry, joined in time to make a successful charge against a squadron of French dragoons, which it completely routed. General Whittingham, with the rest of the cavalry, was engaged, meantime, in checking a corps of horse and foot who were attempting to win the height by the coast. The Walloon guards, and the battalion of Ciudad Real, which had been attached to Graham’s division, and had been left on the height, made the greatest exertions to rejoin him; but it was not possible for them to arrive before the victory was decided, and the troops were too much exhausted to think of pursuing their advantage. They had been marching for twenty hours before the battle.

The distance from Barrosa to Bermeja is about three miles; Lapeña could not see what was passing at the great scene of action, and an attack was made at the same time upon Bermeja by Villatte, who had received reinforcements from Chiclana: the enemy were vigorously resisted there, and were called off by Victor in consequence of his defeat. When the Spanish general was informed of Graham’s brilliant action, he entertained great hopes of succeeding in the farther movement which had been intended. In the dispatch which he sent that night to Cadiz, “The allied army,” he said, “had obtained a victory so much the more satisfactory as circumstances rendered it more difficult; but the valour of the British and Spanish troops, the military skill and genius of General Graham, and the gallantry of the commandant-general of the vanguard, D. Jose Lardizabal, had overcome all obstacles. I remain,” he continued, “master of the enemy’s position, which is so important to me for my subsequent operations.”

But no attempt was made to profit by the bloody victory which had been gained. General Graham remained some hours upon the heights which he had won, and as no supplies came to him, the commissariat mules having been dispersed at the beginning of the action, he left a small detachment there, and then withdrew his troops, and early the next morning crossed the Santi Petri. While he was on his march, two landings were effected by way of diversion, between Rota and Catalina, and between Catalina and Santa Maria, by the marines of the British squadron, with 200 seamen and 80 Spanish marines: they stormed two redoubts, and dismantled all the sea defences from Rota to St. Maria, except Catalina. Preparations were made to attack the tete-du-pont and the bridge of St. Maria, but the enemy advanced in force from Puerto Real, and Sir Richard Keats, knowing that General Graham had now re-entered the Isle of Leon, ordered the men to re-embark.

Such was the lame and impotent conclusion of an expedition which had been long prepared and well concerted, in which the force employed was adequate to the end proposed, and of which every part that was attempted had been successfully effected. General Graham complained loudly of Lapeña; and the people of Cadiz, the Cortes, and the government, were at first equally disposed to impute the failure to the Spanish commander. The Cortes voted an address to the Regency on the 9th, saying that the national congress, not being able longer to endure the grief and bitterness of seeing the circumstances of the expedition remain in doubt and obscurity, requested the executive government to give them, as speedily as possible, a circumstantial account of the proceedings of the Spanish army. When this account was laid before them, they declared that the conduct of the general with regard to the advantages which might have been obtained on the memorable day of the battle was not sufficiently clear; “the Cortes, therefore,” said they, “in discharge of its sovereign mission, and using the supreme inspection which it has reserved to itself over whatever may influence the salvation of the kingdom, desires that the council of Regency will immediately institute a scrupulous investigation with all the rigour of military law.”

If such was at first the prevailing opinion in Cadiz, it may well be supposed that the Spanish general would be exposed to severe censure in England. The story which obtained belief was, that Lapeña and the Spaniards had been idle spectators of the action, whereas, if they had only shown themselves upon the adjoining heights, the French would have raised the blockade, and retired in dismay to Seville; and that after the battle, while he and 12,000 Spaniards remained inactive, he sent to General Graham, whose troops were without food, and had marched sixteen hours before they came into action, desiring him to follow up the victory, for that now was the time to deliver Cadiz. A vote of thanks passed unanimously in both houses; but a few days afterwards, when the ordnance estimates were before ♦April 1.
Speech of Mr. Ward.♦ the house, the honourable J. W. Ward said, “he hoped he might now be allowed to ask for some explanation of the deplorable misconduct of our allies; for of that conduct it would be idle to affect to speak in doubtful terms, it was reprobated with equal indignation by all parties throughout the country. Was it to be endured,” said he, “that while the British troops were performing prodigies of valour in an unequal contest, that those allies for whose independence they were fighting, should stand by, cold-blooded spectators of deeds, the bare recital of which should have been enough to warm every man of them into a hero? If, indeed, they had been so many mercenaries, and had been hired to fight for a foreign power and in behalf of a foreign cause; ... if they had been so many Swiss, ... in that case their breach of duty, however culpable, would have been less unaccountable, and perhaps more excusable; but here, where they were allies bound to this country in obligations greater than ever before one nation owed to another ... our brave men lavishing those lives which their country had so much better right to claim, in defence of that cause in which those allies were principals ... in such a case, tamely to look on while the contest between numbers and bravery hung in doubtful issue, ... this did appear to him to betray an indifference, an apathy, which, if he could suppose it to prevail among the Spaniards, must render, in his mind, the cause of Spanish independence altogether hopeless.”

Mr. Perceval replied, “that Mr. Ward had expressed a stronger and more determined censure upon the Spaniards than could be justified by any evidence which had yet appeared. Had he expressed his regret that the English had been left to fight the battle alone, and had he required some explanation on the subject, such conduct would have been perfectly natural and right; but it was neither just nor generous thus upon insufficient grounds to prejudice men who were to undergo a legal investigation. General Graham’s dispatches furnished no grounds for these sweeping accusations; the Spanish troops which had been attached to his division made every effort to come back and join in the action; and when the situation of the rest of the army, posted at four miles’ distance, was taken into consideration, it required more information than they possessed at present, even to justify the passing a censure upon the whole Spanish army, or even upon any part of it.”

Mr. Whitbread now rose. “He should have been glad,” he said, “to have joined in the general expression of exultation when the vote of thanks was passed; ... he should have been glad to have added his mite to the general tribute in applause of the heroism of that day, and to have claimed the hero of that day as his much-valued friend. This he should have been glad to have done, if he could have had sufficient control over himself to have abstained from doing more. Mr. Perceval had spoken like the advocate of the Spaniards; they must be defended at all events, no matter how! And what was it that was attempted to be defended? The English army was on the point of being sacrificed ... the Spaniards were in sight of them, within twenty minutes quick march of them! and what did they? What were they? Why, just what they have been described by his honourable friend ... cold-blooded spectators of the battle! After coldly witnessing a band of heroes fighting and dying for their cause, General Lapeña tells our small army, exhausted with its unparalleled victory over numbers, that, forsooth, now was the time to push its success. What did this redoubted general mean? Was it insult, or treachery, or cowardice, ... each, or all? He did not mean to complain of the Spanish people, but of their officers. He should ever think of Barrosa as a day memorable for the glory of the Britons, and no less memorable for the infamy of the Spaniards. Was it to be endured, that our brave fellows should be so basely deserted, after an excessive night-march, the moment they entered the field, against a foe always formidable from discipline, and then doubly so from numbers? Why were the two battalions withdrawn from the heights of Barrosa? why was their position abandoned precipitately to the French? who gave this order but a Spanish officer? What! should not this excite a jealousy? Was this the first time a Spanish army had been cold-blooded spectators of British heroism? Did they want this to remind them of the stately indifference shown by Cuesta in the battle of Talavera? Was all sound in Cadiz? Was there no French party there? Were British armies never before betrayed till the battle of Barrosa? He said betrayed, for it was nothing less; the two battalions never came up till our army had repulsed the French, beaten them off, and was in hot pursuit of them as fast as our army could pursue ... as fast as their exhausted limbs could carry their noble hearts! Then what had been our allies?... At Talavera nothing ... at Barrosa nothing ... or rather at both perhaps worse than nothing. The allied force sailed from Cadiz ... the British fought ... the Spaniards looked on. The British conquered; and yet the siege was not raised. Again he asked, was all sound at Cadiz? Was it true that General Graham had been obstructed and foiled in all his plans ... that in the midst of the fight, while the British troops were doing feats which perhaps British troops alone could do, their allies were doing what, he hoped, such men alone were capable of ... plundering the British baggage? Was this true? It was not the Spanish people he complained of; he gave them every credit; but he gave their leaders none. If all this was so, or nearly so, were the British armies to be risked so worthlessly? Were they to be abandoned to treachery or cowardice? For in either or both must have originated the unnatural, ungrateful, and infamous treatment they had met with.”

Whatever error of judgment General Lapeña might have committed, the charges thus brought against him and his army were as ill-founded as they were intemperately urged. Instead of being cold-blooded spectators of the battle, the main body of the Spaniards were four miles distant; there was a thick wood between them and the scene of action, and they were themselves actually engaged at the time. And it is worthy of remark, that while invectives, which had no other tendency than to produce a breach between England and Spain, were thus lavished upon the Spaniards, by those politicians who would have had us abandon Spain and Portugal to the tyrant’s pleasure, the French were endeavouring to excite discontent between the two countries by accusations which directly contradicted these aspersions. Marshal Victor affirmed in his official account, that when he determined to attack the heights, the Spaniards under Lapeña were at the time warmly engaged; the cannonade and the fire of the musketry were extremely brisk, he said; and with that falsehood which characterised the execrable system of his government, he added, that the English, according to their custom, had wished to place the Spaniards in the post of danger, and expose themselves as little as possible.

Lapeña prayed that an immediate inquiry should be instituted, that the inquiry should be made public, and that he should be punished if he were found culpable. The inquiry was made, and the result was an honourable acquittal. The proceedings were not published; and unhappily the good opinion of the Spanish Government afforded no proof, scarcely a presumption, of the deserts of those on whom it was bestowed. At this very time they appointed Mahy, who had done nothing in Galicia, but oppress the inhabitants and paralyse the efforts of a brave and willing population, to another command; and Mendizabal, by whose misconduct their best army had been destroyed, was sent to command in the North. But though it cannot be inferred that General Lapeña was not worthy of censure, because he was pronounced free from fault, little investigation may suffice to show that the outcry raised against him was intemperate, if not altogether unjust, and that the failure of the expedition was owing to the disagreement between the British and Spanish generals, more than to any misconduct on the part of the latter. Whether prudently or not, General Graham had consented to act under Lapeña; and whether the plan of operations was well concerted or not, he had assented to it. That plan was, that the allies should open a communication with the Isle of Leon, by breaking through the left of the enemy’s line; this being done, they would receive supplies and reinforcements, and might proceed to farther successes. It had never been intended in this plan that the British should turn back to attack a part of the French army, whose numbers were, to their own, in the proportion of two to one, and who had every advantage of ground; nor that they should cripple themselves by fighting upon ground, where mere honour was all that could be gained. The memorial which Lapeña addressed to the Cortes, praying for an inquiry into his conduct, contains his justification. “He had assured General Graham,” he says, “on the evening after the battle, that the troops from the isle should come out, and that provisions should be sent to the English; and it was with extreme surprise he learned that they had retreated without his knowledge.” The cause of this movement is perfectly explicable; the Spaniards in Cadiz and the island, never very alert in their movements, were not ready with an immediate supply of provisions, and the British troops after the battle were neither in a humour, nor in a state, nor in a situation to wait patiently till it should arrive. From this moment all co-operation was at an end. When the Spanish general applied to his own Government, and to General Graham, respecting farther operations, the former told him that they had written to the British ambassador, and were waiting for his answer; the latter that he was not in a condition to come out of the isle again, but that he would cover the points of the line of defence. Lapeña thus found himself deprived of that part of the allied force upon whose skill and discipline his best hopes of success must have been founded; “had he acted for himself,” he said, “he would have pursued the enemy with the Spanish troops alone, but he was under the necessity of consulting the Government which was so close at hand.” This alone would have occasioned delay; but Lapeña was at that moment under a charge of misconduct preferred against him by the British, and echoed by the people and the Cortes; and thus in delays, formalities, and examinations, the irrecoverable hours were lost.

It must have added to the grief of the true Spaniards in Cadiz upon this occasion, when they remembered that they might at this day have had a general who had every claim to the confidence of his men, his government, and his allies, that distinguished services, unbounded sacrifices, enterprise, talents, and devoted patriotism could give. That general, the Duque de Alburquerque, whose name will ever be regarded as the most illustrious of his illustrious line, had just at this time fallen a victim to the malignity of the Junta of Cadiz. After remaining in England eight months in a state of exile, intolerable to one who was as capable as he was desirous of serving his country in the field, he printed a statement of his conduct and case, which he had withheld as long as any possible injury could be apprehended from its publication. This he sent to the Cortes; it was received as the merits of its author deserved; eulogiums never more justly merited were heard from all sides; the Cortes declared that the duke and his army had deserved well of their country, particularly for preserving the Isle of Leon and Cadiz, and they desired that the Regency would recall him from England that he might again be actively employed. In consequence of this, he was appointed to the command in Galicia. The Junta of Cadiz, however, acting as they had done in other cases, even of greater importance, in contempt of the Government, drew up a reply to his statement; it was addressed to the duke, and with insolence equal to their ingratitude, and falsehood if possible surpassing both, they called him, in direct terms, an impudent calumniator and an enemy to his country. Each of the members of this body signed it individually; it was printed as a hand-bill, and a copy of it was sent to London by some private hand, and reached Alburquerque through the twopenny post, that no possible mark of insult might be wanting to the transaction.

Alburquerque ought to have despised any attack from that quarter, and more especially one which, by its intemperance and scurrility, so plainly showed in what vile passions it had originated. But he wore his heart for daws to peck at, and his enemies knew but too well the infirmity of his nature. At first he endeavoured to repress or to conceal his feelings, and drew up a short and dignified representation to the Cortes; but this did not satisfy him; notwithstanding the earnest dissuasions of his friends, he determined upon replying to the Junta, and he devoted himself to this composition with an earnestness which made him forgetful both of food and of sleep. Three days were thus employed in a state of restless and feverish anxiety. The wound all this while was rankling, and the venom of the Junta did its work. On the fourth day a frenzy-fever seized him; he felt the approach of the disease, and was perfectly sensible of the cause, for having sent for D. J. M. Blanco White, he took from his pocket, as soon as he saw him, a strip of paper on which he had written, “como calumniador y enemigo de la patria,” ... the words which had stung him to the heart, ... and said, “When they ask why I have lost my senses, this paper will answer for me.” ... A dreadful scene ensued; fits of tears were followed by paroxysms of rage, and on the third day of his illness he expired: happily in the course of the disease the sense of his own wrongs, intolerable and fatal as it had proved, gave way to a deeper feeling: he forgot himself in thinking of his country: his repeated exclamations of vengeance upon Napoleon Buonaparte were so vehement and loud that they were distinctly heard by the passers in the street; and his last breath was spent in imprecations upon the tyrant whose wickedness had caused all the unutterable miseries of Spain. Every public honour which the British Government could bestow was paid to the remains of this illustrious man, and his body was deposited in that same vault in Henry VII.’s chapel wherein Marlborough’s had formerly been laid, till it could be sent home, to rest with his ancestors21.

GRANT AND SUBSCRIPTION FOR THE RELIEF OF THE PORTUGUEZE. OPERATIONS ON THE ALENTEJO FRONTIER. BATTLES OF FUENTES D’ONORO AND ALBUHERA. BADAJOZ UNSUCCESSFULLY BESIEGED BY THE ALLIES.