Robert Southey

“ These transactions in Spain and Portugal excited the deepest interest in the English people; not so much for the hope, which had thus unexpectedly arisen, of advantages to England, and to the general welfare of Europe, as for the nature of the contest, their detestation of the unequalled iniquity by which it had been provoked, and their sympathy in the instinct and principle by which it was carried on. Every day seemed lost till an army of our own should be co-operating with men engaged in a cause so sacred, so congenial to the feelings of a Briton. ”

“ In whatever way we acted, some loss of honour was inevitable; but it was less disgraceful to break the terms than to fulfil them; better that the French should reproach us, than that they should compliment us upon a fidelity which enabled them to injure our allies. The blow, it was affirmed, might have gone far towards deciding the fate of Europe. France had lost one army in Andalusia, and how deeply Buonaparte felt the loss was shown by the anxiety with which he concealed it from the French people. ”

“ Thus it is that the Portugueze people, blind instruments of the unfeeling calculations of the British cabinet, destroy with their own hands the happiness which we with all our power were endeavouring to make them enjoy! Thus it is that from the bosom of tranquillity, of good order, and of repose, they draw upon themselves the destructive scourge of war, and bring devastation even upon the very fields where God had given abundance! ”

“ Beja had revolted, and Beja exists no longer. Its guilty inhabitants have been put to the edge of the sword, and its houses delivered up to pillage and to the flames. Thus shall all those be treated who listen to the counsels of a perfidious rebellion, and with a senseless hatred take arms against us. Thus shall those bands of smugglers and criminals be treated, who have collected in Badajoz, and put arms into the hands of the unhappy Lusitanians, but dare not themselves march against us. Who, indeed, can resist our invincible troops? ”

“ About the same time a handful of students from Coimbra, collecting volunteers as they went, spread the insurrection at Condeixa, Ega, and Pombal, and approached Leiria, from which city a small party of the French retired before them. This place was within easy reach of the enemy, and troops, arms, and ammunition were wanting to defend it. The people sent to Coimbra for all, as if Coimbra could supply either: the Bishop exerted himself to forward the preparations; and the people mustered tumultuously with that confidence which an ignorant multitude always feels of its own untried strength. ”

“ The threats of the intrusive government therefore excited indignation instead of dismay; such language addressed to minds in their state of exaltation, was like water cast upon a fire intense enough to decompose it, and convert its elements into fuel for the flames. The fate of Beja excited hatred and the thirst of vengeance instead of fear, and the insurrection continued to spread in the very province where the experiment had been made upon so large a scale of putting an end to it by fire and sword. ”

“ A regular siege was to be expected; how were the citizens to sustain it with their brick walls, without heavy artillery, and without troops who could sally to interrupt the besiegers in their works? In spite of all these discouraging circumstances, confiding in God and their own courage, they determined to defend the streets to the last extremity. Palafox, immediately after the repulse of the enemy, set out to muster reinforcements, to provide such resources for the siege as he could, and to place the rest of Aragon in a state of defence, if the capital should fall. ”

“ But they will not be suffered to live; hand-cuffed and haltered, they will be dragged out of their country; they will be made soldiers by force, though they would not become so from honour and a sense of duty; there they will be exposed in the foremost ranks to the fire of the enemy; there they will not be able to fly; ... the toil, the danger, and death will be theirs; the glory and the spoil will be their conquerors’, and the crowns which they win will be for the tyrant, the cause of all this misery. ”

“ The history of a battle, however skilfully narrated, is necessarily uninteresting to all except military men; but in the detail of a siege, when time has destroyed those considerations, which prejudice or pervert our natural sense of right and wrong, every reader sympathizes with the besieged, and nothing, even in fictitious narratives, excites so deep and animating an interest. There is not, either in the annals of ancient or of modern times, a single event recorded more worthy to be held in admiration, now and for evermore, than the siege of Zaragoza. ”

“ It had been happy for Spain if the government had always acted as energetically as it wrote; but it should be remembered in justice to the Spaniards, that the dispersion of the troops was in many instances an act of self-preservation, so utterly were they left without supplies of food or clothing, by the inexperience and incompetence of every military department. Even against the testimony and the reproaches of its own government, the Spanish nation stands acquitted. Never did men suffer more patiently, or fight more bravely, than Blake’s army. ”

“ The enemy had now been three days before Madrid, and the ardour of the people was deadened by delay and distrust. Deserted and betrayed as they were, they knew not in whom to confide, and therefore began to feel that it behoved every one to provide for his own safety. During the night the strangers who had come to assist in the defence of the capital, and such of the inhabitants as had been most zealous in the national cause, left a scene where they were not allowed to exert themselves; and at ten o’clock on the morning of the 5th the French General Belliard took the command of the city. ”

“ If indeed we had only armies to oppose to Buonaparte, infallibly we should become his slaves; the victory would be the usurper’s beyond all resource. But it is the collective strength of our inhabited places, the defence of our walls, the obstinate and repeated resistance of the people in the streets and gateways, along the roads and upon the heights, wherever they can cut off or annoy the detachments of the enemy, ... the universal spirit of insurrection, now become as it were the very element of our existence ”

“ Impossible as it was to conciliate a people upon whom they had inflicted such deep and irreparable injuries, the French deemed it politic at this time to take the most conciliatory measures in their power; if the popular feeling could be repressed or allayed only for a few days, by that time they should either have obtained a victory over the English, or have placed themselves by treaty under the safeguard of British honour. ”

“ Buonaparte now addressed a proclamation to the Spaniards. What possible result, he asked them, could attend even the success of some campaigns? Nothing but an endless war upon their own soil. It had cost him only a few marches to defeat their armies, and he would soon drive the English from the peninsula. Thus, to the rights which had been ceded him by the princes of the last dynasty, he had added the right of conquest: that, however, should not make any alteration in his intentions. His wish was to be their regenerator. ”

“ He fell, as it had ever been his wish to do, in battle and in victory. No man was more beloved in private life, nor was there any general in the British army so universally respected. All men had thought him worthy of the chief command. Had he been less circumspect, had he looked more ardently forward, and less anxiously around him, and on all sides, and behind, ... had he been more confident in himself and in his army, and impressed with less respect for the French Generals, he would have been more equal to the difficulties of his situation. ”

“ Vaughan visited Zaragoza a little while after the siege, and remained there during several weeks: he saw (they are his own impressive words) “many a parent who had lost his children, and many a man reduced from competence to poverty, but he literally did not meet with one human being who uttered the slightest complaint: every feeling seemed to be swallowed up in the memory of what they had recently done, and in a just hatred of the French.” ”

“ When the English soldiers went to occupy the arsenals and forts, refreshments were brought out for them along the way, and British officers were followed in the streets by applauding crowds; while the hatred which was manifested towards the French was so deep and general, that no people could possibly have incurred it unless they had deserved it to the utmost. Not only did the Portugueze refuse to purchase from them those things which they wished to convert into money, they refused to sell them any thing, even provisions for their hospital. ”

“ And would they let themselves be dragged on by the influence of a banditti, at the very moment when they should be happy? “Portugueze,” said he, “you have but one moment to implore the clemency of the Emperor and disarm his wrath. Already the armies of Spain touch your frontiers at every point; ... you are lost if you hesitate. Merit your pardon by quick submission, or behold the punishment that awaits you! ”

“ The war had on our part so long been almost exclusively maritime, that the army had suffered something in reality and more in reputation. The French, always fond of war, had become a military people; their military establishment was supposed to be perfect in all its branches, their troops experienced, their officers excellent, their commanders of the highest celebrity: to oppose them we had generals very few of whom had ever been tried in command, and officers of whom the far greater number, like their men, had never seen an enemy in the field. ”

“ This is not the flourish of an historian, seeking artfully to embellish details which no art can render interesting to any but military readers; it is the language of an actor in the scene, who could not call it to mind in after-hours without shuddering; for the very men whose superiority was thus decidedly proved, could not speak without involuntary awe, of so complete and instantaneous a destruction, produced as it was, not by artillery or explosions, but by their own act and deed, and the strength of their own hearts and hands. ”

“ Spain, where honour is the characteristic virtue of the nation, where so many heroic and illustrious men have arisen, has never produced a man more excellently brave, more dutifully devoted to his country, more free from all taint of selfishness, more truly noble than Romana. ”

“ It might enable France to sow distrust and jealousy in the councils of those who were combined to resist her oppression; and if, among the nations which were groaning under the tyranny of French alliance, or among those which maintained against France a doubtful and precarious independence, there should be any who were balancing between the certain ruin of a prolonged inactivity and the contingent dangers of an effort to save themselves from that ruin ... to nations so situated, the delusive prospect of a peace between Great Britain and France could not fail to be peculiarly injurious. ”

“ Like tygers, these enemies make no distinction in their carnage, ... the aged, the infants, the women, ... all are alike to them, wherever they can find blood to shed.”
This appeal could be of no avail against a tyrant who, in the very origin of the war, had shown himself dead to all sense of justice, humanity, and even of honour, which sometimes supplies their place; nor against generals and officers who could serve him in such a cause. Such men could be taught humanity only by the severest retaliation. The language which the government addressed to their own subjects might be more effectual. ”

“ He had with him some of the Walloon and Spanish guards, and a few regiments of the line; the rest were new levies, and among them a corps of students, volunteers from Salamanca and Leon. These youths, the pride and the hope of many a generous family, were in the advanced guard. They displayed that courage which might be looked for in men of their condition, and at that time of life: twice they repulsed the French infantry, and when Bessieres with the horse came upon their flank, fell almost to a man where they had been stationed. ”

“ To prevent so much disgrace and misfortune, two millions of brave men were ready to scale the Pyrenees, and chase the English from the peninsula. If the French fought for the liberty of the seas, they must begin by wresting Spain from the influence of the tyrant of the ocean. If they fought for peace, they could not obtain it till they had driven the enemies of peace from Spain. If they fought for honour, they must promptly inflict vengeance for the outrages committed against the French name in Spain. ”

“ The plan which he had proposed would give the army of Spain 200,000 men, without weakening the other armies; and the conscription of 1810 would increase the armies of Germany, of the North, and of Italy, by more than 80,000. From such a force what could be expected but the speedy re-establishment of tranquillity in Spain, of a maritime peace, and of that general tranquillity which was the object of the Emperor’s wishes? Much blood would be spared, because so great a number of men would be ready to shed it.... ”

“ While Blake’s army was fighting, day after day, without clothing, without food, and without reinforcements to recruit its ranks, they passed a decree for the establishment of a special tribunal, to try all persons accused of treason; its object being not more to bring such as were guilty to deserved punishment, than to rescue from suspicion and danger those who were unjustly suspected; for, under the existing circumstances of Spain, they said, the people having suffered so much from treachery, would naturally suspect all those whose conduct it did not fully comprehend. ”