Charles Oman

“ No doubt it would sound better in the ears of the British public if the surrender or destruction of Junot’s army could be reported. But as a matter of practical expediency, the recovery of Lisbon and all its wealth unharmed was worth far more than the capture of a French army at the cost of much time, many lives, and the ruin of the Portuguese capital. The loss of 25,000 soldiers would be nothing to Napoleon, who disposed of more than half a million men: the blow to his pride would be almost as great if he lost Portugal by a convention as if he lost it by a capitulation. ”

“ It was not a very promising instrument with which to achieve the liberation of the Peninsula, or to resist the greatest general in Europe. Considered as a government of national defence, it had far too little military knowledge: a haphazard assembly of priests, politicians, and grandees is not adapted for the conduct of a war of independence. Hence came the incredible blindness which led it to refuse to appoint a single commander-in-chief, and the obstinacy with which it buried itself in constitutional debates of the most futile sort when Napoleon was thundering at the gates of Spain. ”

“ Misérables hommes que nous sommes! faiblesse et erreur, c’est notre devise. Mais tout cela peut se concilier. Que le prince de la Paix soit exilé d’Espagne, et je lui offre un refuge en France. Quant à l’abdication de Charles IV, elle a eu lieu dans un moment où mes armées couvraient les Espagnes; et, aux yeux de l’Europe et de la postérité, je paraîtrais n’avoir envoyé tant de troupes que pour précipiter du trône mon allié et mon ami. ”

“ He found, to his surprise, that there was no road suitable for wheeled traffic along the Tagus valley, but only a poor track running along the foot of the mountains to Castello Branco, the sole Portuguese town in this part of the frontier. The march from Alcantara to Abrantes proved even more trying than that from Ciudad Rodrigo to Alcantara. It was through a treeless wilderness of grey granite, seamed with countless ravines. The rain continued, the torrents were even fuller than before, the country even more desolate than the Spanish side of the border. ”

“ The real fault of the Junta lay in its readiness to fall into factions, and fight over constitutional questions that should have been relegated to times of peace. Among the thirty-five members of the Junta a clear majority were, like their president, Florida Blanca, Spaniards of the old school, whose ideas of government were those of the autocratic sort that had prevailed under Alberoni and Charles III. They looked upon all innovations as tinged with the poison of the French Revolution and savouring of Jacobinism and infidelity. ”

“ Every thinking man in Spain hated the favourite as the outward and visible sign of corruption in high places. Every patriot saw that the would-be statesman who made himself the adulator first of Barras and then of Bonaparte, and played cat’s-paw to each of them, to the ultimate [p. 13] ruin and bankruptcy of the realm, ought to be removed. Yet there was no sign of any movement against him, save obscure plots in the household of the Prince Royal. But for the interference of Napoleon in the affairs of Spain, it is possible that the Prince of the Peace might have enjoyed many years more of power. ”

“ The provinces have no such feeling of dependence on the national capital as is common in other countries. France with Paris occupied by an enemy is like a body deprived of its head. But for Andalusians or Catalonians or Galicians the occupation of Madrid had no such paralysing effect. No sentimental affection for the royal residence—and Madrid was nothing more—existed. And a government established at Seville or Cadiz, or any other point, would be just as well (or as ill) obeyed as one that issued its orders from the sandy banks of the Manzanares. ”

“ This choice was an [p. 353] obvious mistake: the central government of a country loses in dignity when it does not reside in the national capital. It seems to distrust its own power or its legality, when it exiles itself from its proper abode. At the best it casts a slur on the inhabitants of the capital by refusing to trust itself among them. Madrid, it is true, is not to Spain what Paris is to France, or London to England: it is a comparatively modern place, pitched upon by Philip II as the seat of his court, but destitute of ancient memories. ”

“ A despotic government, which never takes the people into its confidence, must always expect to have its actions interpreted in the most unfavourable light. Except Godoy’s personal adherents, there was not a soul in Madrid who did not believe that the favourite was acting in collusion with Napoleon, and deliberately betraying his sovereign and his country. It was by his consent, they thought, that the French had crossed the Pyrenees, had seized Pampeluna and Barcelona, and were now marching on the capital. ”

“ Gregorio de la Cuesta, the Governor-General of Old Castile, who was destined to play such a prominent and unhappy part in the history of the next two years, nearly shared Solano’s fate. The populace of Valladolid, where he was residing, rose in insurrection like those of the other cities of Spain. They called on their military chief to put himself at their head; but Cuesta, an old soldier of the most unintelligent and brainless sort, hated mob-violence almost more than he hated the French. He held back, not from a desire to serve Bonaparte, but from a dislike to being bullied by civilians. ”

“ That a nation of three million souls, which in earlier days had repeatedly defended itself with success against numbers far greater than those now employed against it, should yield without firing a single shot was astonishing. It is a testimony not only to the timidity of the Portuguese Government, but to the numbing power of Napoleon’s name.
The force destined by the Treaty of Fontainebleau for the invasion of Portugal consisted of Junot’s ‘Army of the Gironde,’ 25,000 strong, and of three auxiliary Spanish corps amounting in all to about the same numbers. ”

“ The idea of running away, without even firing a shot, from the enemy we had beaten so easily at Vimiero, was too galling to their feelings. Each spoke to his fellow, even in common conversation, with bitterness: rage flashed out on the most trifling occasion of disagreement. The poor Spaniards had little to expect from such men as these, who blamed them for their inactivity. Every man found at home was looked upon as a traitor to his country. “Why is not every Spaniard under arms and fighting? The cause is not ours: are we to be the only sufferers?” ”

“ If Saragossa had defended itself street by street, why, they asked, should not Madrid do the same? Their spirits were so high and their temper so ferocious, that the authorities realized that they must place themselves at the head of the multitude, or be torn to pieces as traitors. On December 1 a Junta of Defence was formed, under the presidency of the Duke of Infantado, in which Morla and Castelar were given a large and heterogeneous mass of colleagues—magistrates, officers, and prominent citizens forming an unwieldy body very unfit to act as an executive council of war. ”

“ Of Ferdinand VII or Joseph I, of politics domestic or foreign, there is not a word. Two days later the Council at last makes up its mind, and, after a week of most uncomfortable sitting on the fence, suddenly bursts out into an ‘Address to the honourable and generous people of the capital of Spain,’ in the highest strain of patriotism: ‘Our loved King is in chains, but his loyal subjects have risen in his name. Our gallant armies have achieved triumphs over “the invincibles of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena.” All Europe stands surprised at their rapid victories. ”

“ Yet this plan too was seriously brought forward: the Frenchman would not have been unwilling, but the Spanish officers, flushed with their recent successes, were not the kind of people to welcome a foreign leader, and one whose last military exploit had been to desert his own army and go over to the enemy.
Much more specious, at first sight, than any project for the establishment of a regency, was the proposal mooted in many quarters for the summoning of the Cortes—whose name recalled so many ancient memories, and was connected with the days of constitutional freedom in the Middle Ages. ”

“ Violently irritated at the long delay, Napoleon turned on every pioneer that could be found to clear away the drifts, set masses of men to trample down the snow into a beaten track, forced the officers and all the cavalry to dismount and lead their horses, and unharnessed half the artillery so as to give double teams to the rest. ”

“ As we looked round on gaining the highest point of these slippery precipices, and observed the rear of the army winding along the narrow road, we could see the whole track marked out by our own wretched people, who lay expiring from fatigue and the severity of the cold—while their uniforms reddened in spots the white surface of the ground. ”

“ Springing up from his chair and smiting the table a resounding blow, he exclaimed, ‘Who is the man that dares bid the troops march without my leave? Away with all provincial differences: I am the general of the Spanish nation, I am in command of an honourable army, and we are not going to allow any one to stir up civil war [351] .’ Conscious that the regiments would follow the victor of Baylen, and refuse obedience to mere civilians, the Junta dropped their suicidal project. But they turned all their energy into devising pretexts for delaying the march of the army on Madrid. ”

“ There is no need for us to trace back the growth of Napoleon’s conception of himself as the successor of Charlemagne beyond the winter of 1805-6, the moment when victorious at Austerlitz and master for the first time of Central Europe, he began to put into execution his grandiose scheme for enfeoffing all the realms of the Continent as vassal states of the French Empire. He had extorted from Francis of Austria the renunciation of his meagre and time-worn rights as head of the Holy Roman Empire, because he intended to replace the ancient shadow by a new reality. ”

“ But the excellence of a scheme is not to be judged merely by the difficulties in its way; and military genius can be displayed in dealing with an easy as well as with a dangerous problem. Half a dozen other plans for conducting the invasion of Spain might have been drawn up, but it is impossible to see that any better one could have been constructed. In its main lines it was carried out with complete success: the armies of the Junta were scattered to the winds, and Madrid fell almost without a blow. ”

“ By the thirty-first, however, Astorga was clear of British and Spanish troops. Moore marched by the new high-road, the route of Manzanal: La Romana took the shorter but more rugged defile of Foncebadon. But he sent his guns along with the British, in order to spare the beasts the steeper ascents of the old chaussée. The terrible rain of the last week was just passing into snow as the two columns, every man desperately out of heart, began their long uphill climb across the ridge of the Monte Teleno, towards the uplands of the Vierzo. ”

“ When Bonaparte rode up from Chamartin, to place himself at the head of his Guard, which was to cross the mountains on the twenty-second, he found the whole column stopped by a howling blizzard, which swept down the pass with irresistible strength and piled the snow in large drifts at every inconvenient corner of the defile. It is said that several horsemen were flung over precipices by the mere force of the wind. The whole train of cannon and caissons stuck halfway up the ascent, and could neither advance nor retreat. ”

“ Successes had not been so plentiful on the Continent during the last fifteen years, that an agreement which gave back its liberty to a whole kingdom need have been criticized with vindictive minuteness. But the news of Baylen had set the public mind on the look-out for further triumphs, and when the dispatches which gave an account of Roliça and of Vimiero had come to hand, there had been a confident expectation that the next news received would be that Junot’s army had been scattered or captured, and that Lisbon had been set free. ”

“ Opinion relative to the British arms was of the highest importance, as it might influence the confidence of the Spaniards, or invite the nations groaning under the yoke of France, to appeal to this country, and co-operate with it for their deliverance. The advantages ought, therefore, to have been more than usually great, which should be deemed sufficient to balance the objection of granting to a very inferior army, hopeless in circumstances, and broken in spirit, such terms as might argue, that, notwithstanding its disparity in numbers, it was still formidable to its victors. ”

“ While this idea was still current, the Spanish king, or rather his favourite Godoy, put forth a strange proclamation which showed how slight was the bond of allegiance that united them to France, and how hollow their much vaunted loyalty to the emperor [7] . It was an impassioned appeal to the people of Spain to take arms en masse, and to help the government with liberal gifts of men, horses and money. ”

“ Wherever there was the least show of resistance they slew off whole households: but they were rather intent on pillage and rape than on murder. Cordova was a wealthy place, its shops were well worth plundering, its churches and monasteries full of silver plate and jewelled reliquaries, its vaults of the strong wines of Andalusia. All the scenes of horror that afterwards occurred at Badajoz or San Sebastian were rehearsed for the first time at Cordova; and the army of Dupont had far less excuse than the English marauders and murderers of 1812 and 1813. ”

“ About one o’clock in the afternoon the French appeared, pushing cautiously forward from Bembibre with Colbert’s cavalry brigade of Ney’s corps now at their head, while Lahoussaye’s division of dragoons was in support. The infantry were not yet in sight. Colbert, a young and very dashing officer, currently reputed to be the most handsome man in the whole French army, was burning to distinguish himself. He had never before met the British, and had formed a poor opinion of them from the numerous stragglers and drunkards whom he had seen upon the road. ”

“ Nothing could be more convenient than that the favourite and his sovereigns should sink yet further into the abyss of unpopularity.
Napoleon therefore went steadily on with his plans for pushing more and more French troops into Spain, with the object of occupying all the main strategical points in the kingdom. The only doubtful point in his schemes is whether he ultimately proposed to seize on the persons of the royal family, or whether he intended by a series of threatening acts to scare them off to Mexico, as he had already scared the Prince of Portugal off to Rio de Janeiro. ”