4
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE STATE OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, FRANCE AND ENGLAND.
The history of Spain and Portugal, from the foundation of their respective monarchies to the middle of the sixteenth century, when both countries attained their highest point of greatness, is eminently heroic, for the persevering spirit with which they warred against the Moors, never ceasing and scarcely breathing from the contest till they had finally exterminated them; and for the splendour, the extent, and the importance of their foreign conquests. Both kingdoms had risen by the same virtues; the same vices brought on the decline of both; and the history of their decline is not less instructive than that of their rise. Their external relations have been widely different; but notwithstanding this difference, and notwithstanding a national enmity, kept alive rather by old remembrances and mutual pride than by the frequency of their wars with each other, the Spaniards and Portugueze have continued to be morally and intellectually one people. They spring from the same stock; the same intermixture of races has taken place among them; and their national character has been formed by similar circumstances of climate, language, manners, and institutions.
5 The old governments are called free, like all those which the Teutonic tribes established; but this freedom was little better than a scheme of graduated tyranny, and the laws upon which it was founded were only so many privileges which the conquerors reserved or arrogated to themselves. When the commixture of languages and nations was complete, and commerce had raised up a class of men who had no existence under the feudal system, a struggle for political liberty ensued throughout all the European kingdoms. It was soon terminated in Spain: a good cause was ruined by the rashness and misconduct of its adherents; and the scale, after it had been borne down by the sword of the sovereign, never recovered its equipoise: for the Romish church leagued itself with the monarchical authority, against whose abuse it had formerly been the only bulwark; but changing its policy now according to the times, it consecrated the despotism whereby it was upheld in its own usurpations. The effects of this double tyranny were not immediately perceived; but in its inevitable consequences it corrupted and degraded every thing to which it could extend, ... laws, morals, industry, literature, science, arts, and arms.
In other countries where absolute monarchy has been established, and the Romish superstition has triumphed, both have been in some degree modified by the remains of old institutions, the vicinity of free states, and the influence of literature and manners. But in Spain and Portugal almost all traces of the ancient constitution had been6 effaced; and as there existed nothing to qualify the spirit of popery, a memorable example was given of its unmitigated effects. The experiment of intolerance was tried with as little compunction as in Japan, and upon a larger scale. Like the Japanese government, the Inquisition went through with what it began; and though it could not in like manner secure its victory, by closing the ports and barring the passes of the Peninsula, it cut off, as much as possible, all intellectual communication with the rest of the world.
The courts of Madrid and Lisbon were as despotic as those of Constantinople and Ispahan. They did not, indeed, manifest their power by acts of blood, because the reigning families were not cruel, and cruelty had ceased to be a characteristic of the times: but with that cold, callous insensibility to which men are liable, in proportion as they are removed from the common sympathies of humankind, they permitted their ministers to dispense at pleasure exile and hopeless imprisonment, to the rigour and inhumanity of which death itself would have been mercy. ♦Mal-administration of the laws.♦ The laws afforded no protection, for the will of the minister was above the laws; and every man who possessed influence at court violated them with impunity, and procured impunity for all whom he chose to protect. Scarcely did there exist even an appearance of criminal justice. Quarrels among the populace were commonly decided by the knife: he who stabbed an antagonist or an enemy in the street wiped the instrument in his cloak, and passed on unmolested by the spectators,7 who never interfered farther than to call a priest to the dying man. When it happened that a criminal was thrown into prison, there he remained till it became necessary to make room for a new set of tenants: the former were then turned adrift; or, if their crimes had been notorious and frequent, they were shipped off to some foreign settlement.
After the triumph of the monarchical power, the Cortes had fallen first into insignificance, then into disuse1. There was no legislative body; the principle of the government being, that all laws and public measures of every kind were to proceed from the will and pleasure of the sovereign. ♦Condition of the nobles.♦ Men of rank, therefore, if they were not in office, had no share in public business; and their deplorable education rendered them little fit either to improve or enjoy a life of perfect leisure. It is said also to have been the system of both governments, while they yet retained some remains of perverted policy, to keep the nobles in attendance about the court, where they might be led into habits of emulous extravagance, which would render them hungry for emoluments, and thereby dependent upon the8 crown. The long-continued moral deterioration of the privileged classes had produced in many instances a visible physical degeneracy; and this tendency was increased by those incestuous marriages, common in both countries, which pride and avarice had introduced, and for which the sanction of an immoral church was to be purchased.
The armies partook of the general degradation. The forms of military power existed like the forms of justice: but they resembled the trunk of a tree, of which the termites have eaten out the timber, and only the bark remains. There appeared in the yearly almanacks a respectable list of regiments, and a redundant establishment of officers: but, brave and capable of endurance as the Portugueze and Spaniards are, never were there such officers or such armies in any country which has ranked among civilized nations. Subalterns might be seen waiting behind a chair in their uniforms, or asking alms in the streets; and the men were what soldiers necessarily become, when, without acquiring any one virtue of their profession, its sense of character and of honour, its regularity, or its habits of restraint, they possess all its license, and have free scope for the vices which spring up in idleness. Drawn by lot into a compulsory service, ill-disciplined, and ill-paid, they were burthensome to the people, without affording any security to the nation.
The state of religion was something more hopeful, though it is scarcely possible to imagine any thing more gross than the idolatry, more impudent9 than the fables, more monstrous than the mythology of the Romish church, as it flourished in Spain and Portugal. Wherever this corrupt church is dominant, there is no medium between blind credulity and blank, hopeless, utter unbelief: and this miserable effect tends to the stability of the system which has produced it, because men who have no religion accommodate themselves to whatever it may be their interest to profess. The peasantry and the great mass of the people believed with implicit and intense faith whatever they were taught. The parochial clergy, differing little from the people in their manner of life, and having received an education so nearly worthless that it can scarcely be said to have raised them above the common level, were for the most part as superstitious and as ill-informed as their flock. ♦Improvement of the higher clergy.♦ The higher clergy, however, had undergone a gradual and important change, which had not been brought about by laws or literature, but by the silent and unperceived influence of the spirit of the times. While their principle of intolerance remained the same (being inherent in popery, and inseparable from it), the practice had been greatly abated; and the autos-da-fe, the high festival days of this merciless idolatry, were at an end: for it was felt and secretly acknowledged, that these inhuman exhibitions were disgraceful in the eyes of Europe, and had brought a stain upon the character of the peninsular nations in other catholic countries, and even in Rome itself. The persecution of the Jews therefore (which the founder of the Braganzan line would10 never have permitted if he had been able to prevent it) ceased; and the distinction between Old and New Christians had nearly disappeared. At the same time, an increased intercourse with heretical states, the power and prosperity of Great Britain, and the estimation in which the British character is held wherever it is known, had insensibly diminished, if not the abhorrence in which heresy was held, certainly the hatred against heretics. Thus the habitual feelings of the clergy had been modified, and they were no longer made cruel by scenes of execrable barbarity, which in former times compelled them to harden their hearts. They became also ashamed of those impostures upon which so large a portion of their influence had been founded: though they did not purge their kalendar, they made no additions to it; miraculous images were no longer discovered: when a grave-digger, in the exercise of his office, happened to find a corpse in a state of preservation, no attempt was made to profit by the popular opinion of its sanctity: miracles became less frequent as they were more scrupulously examined; and impostures2, which, half a century ago, would have been encouraged and adopted, were detected, exposed, and punished. The higher clergy in both countries were decorous in their lives, and in some instances exemplary in the highest degree.
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To the monastic orders the influence of the times had been less beneficial. There were ages during which those institutions produced the greatest blessings in Europe; when they kept alive the lamp of knowledge, mitigated barbarian manners, and carried the light of Christianity among a race of ferocious conquerors. These uses had long since gone by; and the dissolution of the Jesuits had extinguished the missionary spirit which that extraordinary society had provoked in its rivals, and by which it had itself almost atoned to humanity and to religion for its own manifold misdeeds. The wealthy orders still afforded a respectable provision for the younger sons of old or opulent families; the far more numerous establishments of the mendicants were more injuriously filled from the lower classes. The peasant who was ambitious of seeing a son elevated above the rank in which he was born, destined him for a friar; and he who was too idle to work, or who wished to escape from military service, took shelter in the habit. The mendicant orders were indeed a reproach to Catholicism, and a pest to the countries wherein they existed; they contributed not only to keep the people ignorant, but to render them profligate. Yet even among the Franciscans men were found, who, by their irreproachable conduct, their sincere though misdirected piety, and sometimes by their learning and industrious lives, preserved the order from the contempt into which it would otherwise have fallen even among the vulgar. The nunneries of12 every description produced nothing but evil, except in those cases where persons went into them by their own choice, who in Protestant countries would have been consigned to a Bedlam.
Literature had revived in both kingdoms, and was flourishing, notwithstanding the restraints which the government and the Inquisition continued to impose. Few similar institutions have equalled the Royal Academies of Madrid and Lisbon in the zeal and ability with which they have brought to light their ancient records, and elucidated the history and antiquities of their respective countries. There was one most important subject from which men of letters were compelled to refrain ... the old free constitution: but it met them every where in their researches; and its restoration was the object of their wishes, if not of their hopes.
The lower classes, who in great cities are every where too generally depraved, were perhaps peculiarly so in Spain, from the effect of what may be called their vulgar, rather than their popular, literature. This had assumed a curious and most pernicious character, arising partly from the disregard in which ill-executed laws must always be held, and partly from the faith of the people in the efficacy of absolution. The ruffian and the bravo were the personages of those ballads which were strung for sale along dead walls in frequented streets, and vended by blind hawkers about the country. In these pieces, which, as they were written by men in low life for readers of their13 own level, represent accurately the state of vulgar feeling, the robberies and murders which the hero commits are described as so many brave exploits performed in his vocation; and, at the conclusion, he is always delivered over safely to the priest, but seldom to the hangman. Fables of a like tendency were not unfrequently chosen by their dramatists for the sake of flattering some fashionable usage of superstition, such as the adoration of the cross and the use of the rosary; and the villain who, in the course of the drama, has perpetrated every imaginable crime, is exhibited at the catastrophe3 as a saint by virtue of one of these redeeming practices. Such works were more widely injurious in their tendency than any of those which the Inquisition suppressed. They infected the minds of the people; and the surest course by which a coxcomb in low life could excite admiration and envy among his compeers was by appearing habitually to set justice at defiance. It became a fashion among some of the higher classes in Spain to imitate4 these wretches; and, by a stranger and more deplorable perversion of nature, women were found among those of distinguished rank, who affected the dress and the manners of the vilest of their sex. No such depravity was known in Portugal: the court set an example of decorum and14 morality there; and as there were fewer large towns, in proportion to the size of the kingdom, there was consequently less corruption among the people.
Travellers, forming their hasty estimate from the inhabitants of sea-ports and great cities, have too generally agreed in reviling the Portugueze and Spaniards; but if they whose acquaintance with these nations was merely superficial have been disposed to depreciate and despise them, others who dwelt among them always became attached to the people, and bore willing and honourable testimony to the virtues of the national character. It was indeed remarkable how little this had partaken of the national decay. The meanest peasant knew that his country had once been prosperous and powerful; he was familiar with the names of its heroes; and he spake of the days that were past with a feeling which was the best omen for those that were to come.
Such was the moral and intellectual state of the peninsular kingdoms toward the close of the eighteenth century. There was not the slightest appearance of improvement in the principles of the government or in the administration of justice; but, if such a disposition had arisen, no nations could have been in a more favourable state for the views of a wise minister and an enlightened sovereign. For the whole people were proudly and devoutly attached to the institutions of their country; there existed among them neither sects, nor factions, nor jarring interests; they were15 one-hearted in all things which regarded their native land; individuals felt for its honour as warmly as for their own; and obedience to their sovereign was with them equally a habit and a principle. In spite of the blind and inveterate despotism of the government, the mal-administration of the laws, and the degeneracy of the higher classes, both countries were in a state of slow, but certain, advancement; of which, increasing commerce, reviving literature, humaner manners, and mitigated bigotry were unequivocal indications. In this state they were found when France was visited by the most tremendous revolution that history has recorded, ... a revolution which was at once the consequence and the punishment of its perfidious policy, its licentiousness, and its irreligion.
It was soon seen that this revolution threatened to propagate itself throughout the whole civilised world. The European governments combined against it; their views were discordant, their policy was erroneous, their measures were executed as ill as they were planned: a master-mind was equally wanting in the cabinet and in the field. In the hour of trial the Spanish court perceived the inefficiency of its organized force; and having neither wisdom to understand the strength of the nation, nor courage and virtue to rely upon it, it concluded a disastrous war by a dishonourable peace. From that time its councils were directed by France, and its treasures were at the disposal of the same domineering ally. A war against England, undertaken upon the most frivolous16 pretexts, and ruinous to its interests, was the direct consequence; and when, after the experimental peace of Amiens, hostilities were renewed between France and England, Spain had again to experience the same fatal results of the dependence to which her cabinet had subjected her. Portugal had purchased peace with less apparent dishonour, because the terms of the bargain were not divulged; but there also the government soon found that in such times to be weak is to be miserable: it was compelled to brook the ostentatious insolence of the French ambassadors, and to pay large sums for the continuance of a precarious neutrality whenever France thought proper to extort them; for the system of Europe had now been overthrown, and the laws of nations were trampled under foot. A military power, more formidable than that of Rome in its height of empire, of Zingis, or of Timour, had been established in France upon the wreck of all her ancient institutions; and this power was directed by the will of an individual the most ambitious of the human race, who was intoxicated with success, and whose heart and conscience were equally callous.
Many causes combined in producing the French revolution: the example of a licentious court had spread like a pestilence through the country; impiety was in fashion among the educated classes; and the most abominable publications were circulated among the ignorant with as much zeal as if a conspiracy had actually been formed for the subversion of social order, by removing from17 mankind all restraints of morality, of religion, and of decency. Things were in this condition when France took part in the American war; a measure to which Louis XVI. reluctantly consented, because he felt in his heart its injustice, and had perhaps an ominous sentiment of its impolicy. The seeds of republicanism and revolution were thus imported by the government itself, and they fell upon a soil which was prepared for them. Financial difficulties increased; state quacks were called in; a legislative assembly was convoked in a kingdom where none of the inhabitants had been trained to legislation; and the fatal error was committed of uniting the three estates in one chamber, whereby the whole power was transferred to the commons. There was a generous feeling at that time abroad, from which much good might have been educed, had there been ability to have directed it, and if the heart of the country had not been corrupted. Nothing was heard except the praises of freedom and liberality, and professions of the most enlarged and cosmopolitan philanthropy. The regenerated nation even renounced for the future, all offensive war by a legislative act: they fancied that the age of political redemption was arrived, and they announced the Advent of Liberty, with peace on earth, good will towards men. They themselves seemed to believe that the Millennium of Philosophy was begun; and so in other countries the young and ardent, and the old who had learned no lessons from history, believed with them. But the consequences which Burke predicted from18 changes introduced with so much violence, and so little forethought, followed in natural and rapid succession. ♦Progress of the French revolution.♦ The constitutionalists, who had supposed that it is as easy to remodel the institutions of a great kingdom in practice as in theory, were driven from the stage by bolder innovators; and these in their turn yielded to adventurers more profligate and more daring than themselves. Nobility was abolished; monarchy was overthrown; the church was plundered; the clergy were proscribed; atheism was proclaimed; the king and queen were put to death, after a mockery of judicial forms; the dauphin slowly murdered by systematic ill-usage; a plaster statue of Liberty was set up in Paris; and in the course of two years more than fifteen hundred persons were beheaded at the feet of that statue, men and women indiscriminately. The frenzy spread throughout all France. In the wholesale butcheries which were reported to the National Convention, by its agents, as so many triumphs of equality and justice, not less than eighteen thousand lives were sacrificed by the executioner. It seemed as if God had abandoned the unhappy nation who had denied Him, and that they were delivered over, as the severest chastisement, to the devices of their own hearts. Before this madness was exhausted, the wretches who had thrust themselves into the government paid the earthly penalty of their guilty elevation. One faction did justice upon another: in the same place where dogs had licked the blood of Louis and his queen, there in succession did19 they lick the blood of Brissot, Danton, Hebert, Robespierre, and their respective associates. When the theorists, the fanatics, and the bolder villains, had perished, a set of intriguers, who had accommodated themselves in turn to all, came forward, and divided the spoil; till the unhappy nation, disgusted with such intrigues, and weary of perpetual changes, acquiesced with joy in the usurpation of a military adventurer, which promised them stability, at least, if not repose.
The revolution had given the government absolute command over the whole physical force of France; and this prodigious power was now at the disposal of an individual unchecked by any restraint, and subject to no responsibility. Perhaps it would not have been possible to have selected among the whole human race any other man, to whom it would have been so dangerous to commit this awful charge. Napoleon Buonaparte possessed all the qualities which are required to form a perfect tyrant. His military genius was of the highest order; his talents were of the most imposing kind; his ambition insatiable; his heart impenetrable: he was without honour, without veracity, without conscience; looking for no world beyond the present, and determined to make this world his own, at whatever cost. The military executions committed in Italy by his orders had shown his contempt for the established usages of war, the law of nations, and the common feelings of humanity: the suppression of the Papal government, the usurpation of the Venetian states, and20 the seizure of Malta, had proved that neither submissiveness nor treaties afforded any protection against this fit agent of a rapacious and unprincipled democracy. ♦His crimes in Egypt and Syria.♦ But it was during the Egyptian expedition that the whole atrocity of his character was displayed. He landed in Egypt, proclaiming that he was the friend of the Grand Seignior, and that the French were true Mussulmen, who honoured Mahommed and the Koran. His first act was to storm a city belonging to the Grand Seignior, which he never summoned to surrender, and which was incapable of defence. The butchery was continued for some hours after the resistance had ceased. The very perpetrators of this carnage have related that they put to death old and young, men, women, and children, in the mosques, whither these unoffending and helpless wretches had fled to implore protection from God and from their prophet; and they have avowed that this was done deliberately, for the purpose of astonishing the people. Thus it was that Buonaparte commenced his career in Egypt. He left Alexandria, exclaiming, “The Virtues are on our side! Glory to Allah,” he said; “there is no other God but God: Mahommed is his prophet, and I am his friend.” He proclaimed to the Egyptians that Destiny directed all his operations, and had decreed from the beginning of the world, that after beating down the Cross, he should come into that country to fulfil the task assigned him; and he called upon them to enjoy the blessings of a system, in which the wisest and the most virtuous were to govern,21 and the people were to be happy. It is literally true, that the Egyptian mothers mutilated or killed their daughters, to save them from the brutality of his troops; and that wherever the French moved, a flock of kites and vultures followed, sure of the repast which these purveyors every where provided for them. Their general entered Syria, took Jaffa by assault, and issued a proclamation upon its capture, professing that he would be “clement and merciful, after the example of God.” Four days after the capture, and after that profession of clemency had been made, he drew out his prisoners, some three thousand in number, and had them deliberately slaughtered. A whole division of his army was employed in this massacre; and when their cartridges were exhausted, they finished the work with the bayonet and the sword, dragging away those who had expired, in order to get at the living, who, in the hope of escaping death, had endeavoured to hide themselves under the bodies of the dead. To complete this monster’s character, it was only needful that he should show himself as inhuman toward his own soldiers as his prisoners; and that it might be complete in all parts, this proof of his disposition was not wanting. When Sir Sidney Smith and Captain Wright, then Sir Sidney’s lieutenant, compelled him to raise the siege of Acre, the sick and wounded in his army were more than he had means of removing: any other general would have recommended them to the humanity of an English enemy; but this would have been humiliating to Buonaparte, and therefore poison was administered to them by his orders.
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Yet this man, like Augustus, had an opportunity of earthly redemption afforded him; and, while he fabricated for himself a splendid fortune, might have deserved the gratitude of Europe, not only in the existing generation, but through after ages. When he had attained the supreme authority, he might have restored the Bourbons in France, and taken Italy for his own reward: an arrangement, for which no fresh act of injustice would have been required; which none whom it offended would have been able to oppose; and which, more than any other conceivable alteration in the state of Christendom, might have tended to the general good. Here was an object worthy of ambition, and a richer prize than military ambition had ever yet achieved: so great would have been the public benefit; so signal and durable the individual glory. Even if, incapable as he was of aiming at such true greatness, he could have contented himself with the situation in which he was recognized by the peace of Amiens, and have borne his faculties meekly in that unexampled elevation, the world is charitable to all extremes of fortune, and would have forgiven his former crimes; which, public and notorious as they were, were loudly denied by his advocates, and already disbelieved by his infatuated admirers. But the heart of Napoleon Buonaparte was evil; he regarded his fellow-creatures merely as instruments for gratifying his desire of empire, ... pieces with which he played the game of war: in the presumptuousness of his power he set man at defiance, and in his philosophy God was left out of the account. Unhappily, the internal23 circumstances of France accorded but too well in all things with the disposition and the views of its autocrat.
The revolutionary governments, through all their changes, had steadily pursued the favourite object of placing the military establishment of the country upon the most formidable footing, and thereby enabling France to give laws to the rest of Europe. During the first years, immense armies were filled with enthusiastic volunteers; and before that spirit exhausted itself, provision was made for permanently supporting so disproportionate a force by means of the conscription. The conscription originated in Prussia, when Prussia was under a mere military despotism; it was now carried to its utmost extent in France. The law declared that every Frenchman was a soldier, and bound to defend his country; but the principle of general law which the latter clause of the sentence announces served to introduce a code, whereby the whole youth of France were placed at the disposal of the government, to be sent whithersoever its ambitious projects might extend, ... to the sands of Egypt, or the snows of Moscovy. A view of this system will equally elucidate the strength, the resources, and the character, of the French government during these disastrous years.
Under the new arrangement of its territory, France was divided into departments, districts, cantons, and municipalities. The departments were governed by a prefect, and a council of prefecture; the districts by a sub-prefect and his council; the cantons and municipalities by a mayor and24 town-court; to which were added, on the part of the general government, a commissary of police, and his adjuncts. There was also a military division of the country into thirty districts, each under a general of division, with a long establishment of commissaries, inspectors, and military police-officers. On a certain day in every year, notice was given in every municipality that all men, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, should within eight days appear at the town-house, and enrol their names: if any individual failed, not he alone, but his family also, were subject to a criminal prosecution. The names of the absent were to be enrolled by their nearest relations, and concealment was thus rendered impossible: the man who was not in his usual domicile being doubly registered; as an absentee in one place, and as a temporary sojourner in another. From these registers the returns for the conscription were prepared in five lists, according to age, and the names in each were carefully arranged according to seniority. The civil officers by whom these lists were formed were responsible for any omission; and, as a farther precaution, every village and every house was visited at stated and at unexpected times, publicly and secretly. After such preparations, the machine was easily put in motion. The war-minister gave notice what number of men were required; the senate voted them from the conscripts of that year which was next in course, and the prefects were ordered to provide their contingents: they called upon the sub-prefects; these again upon the municipalities; and within sixteen days from the date of the prefect’s orders,25 the ballot took place. Tickets, numbered to the amount of all who were upon the list, were put into the urn, and the men were registered in the order of the numbers which they had drawn. The first numbers, up to the sum required, were for immediate service; the others were to be called upon in sequence, in case of necessity only: but, under Buonaparte, that necessity always existed. They were marched off under military escort, and distributed among the artillery, cuirassiers, dragoons, infantry, or sappers and miners, according to their stature and bodily strength.
The infirmities which might be pleaded as exemptions were severely scrutinized, and were determined by the law with critical inhumanity: inveterate asthma, habitual spitting of blood, and incipient consumption only entitled the sufferer to a provisional dispensation. Men who were incapable of enduring the fatigues of war, or who might be more useful to the state in pursuing their own employments or their studies, were allowed to provide substitutes or purchase an exemption by the payment of three hundred francs; but this was an early law, and it is not likely that the pecuniary alternative was ever accepted when the waste of men became excessive. ♦Substitutes.♦ The substitute was required to be a Frenchman, between twenty-five and forty years of age (and therefore not liable to the conscription), not below five feet one, of a strong constitution, and in robust health. In addition to his own name, he was to take that of the person for whom he served, and by that name26 he was to be known in the army: the principal was still upon the list, and subject to be called upon if his representative deserted or withdrew; nor could he obtain a definitive exemption unless he produced proof that the substitute had either been killed or disabled in service, or had served the full time which the laws required; during war the term was indefinite, in peace it was fixed at five years. During the latter years of Buonaparte’s government men who could be admitted as substitutes were necessarily so rare, that their price rose from two hundred to a thousand Napoleons.
No constituted authority, no branch of the civil or military administration, might retain in its service a conscript who was called upon in his turn. No Frenchman, being, or having been, liable to the conscription, could hold any public office, or receive any public salary, or exercise public rights, or receive a legacy, or inherit property, unless he produced a certificate that he had conformed to the law, and either was actually in service, or had obtained his dismissal, or was legally exempted, or that his services had not been required. They who failed to join the army within the time prescribed were deprived of their civil rights, a circular description of their persons was sent to all the chiefs of the gendarmerie throughout the empire, and they were pursued as deserters. Eleven depôts were appointed, where these refractory conscripts were disciplined in an uniform of disgrace, with the hair cut close: they were employed upon the fortifications, or in other hard labour, for which27 they received no additional pay or rations. This, however, was thought too lenient when the emperor’s expenditure of men became more lavish, and it was then decreed that such offenders were to be punished as if they had actually deserted. ♦Punishments for desertion.♦ A deserter was condemned to a fine of fifteen hundred francs, chargeable upon whatever property might fall to him at any future time, if he was not able to pay it immediately. In addition to this fine, the punishment for the simple offence of deserting into the interior was three years’ labour upon the public works. The culprits wore a particular uniform, and were allowed shoes; their heads were shaved every eighth day, and they were not permitted either to shave their beards or to cut them. Their rations were the soldiers’ bread, rice, or dry pulse; their pay half that of a common labourer; and of this a third was withheld till they should have served out their time, a third was deducted for their expenses, and the remainder was all which they had for purchasing better food than their miserable allowance. He who had deserted from the army, or a frontier place, or in a direction toward the enemy, or with a companion, or who had scaled ramparts in effecting his escape, was sentenced to public labour for ten years, with a bullet of eight pounds weight fastened to him by a chain eight feet long. He was to work eight hours a day during five months, ten during the better part of the year, and to be chained in prison all the rest of the time: he wore wooden shoes, and an uniform differing both in colour and fashion from28 that of the troops; his mustachios, as well as his head, were shaved every eight days; his beard was never shaved, nor shorn, nor shortened; his rations and pay were like those of the common deserters, because, indeed, life could not be supported upon less. The punishment of death, which was inflicted upon those who had deserted to the enemy, and in other aggravated cases, was mercy when compared to this.
By the operation of this system the French were made a military nation, a change equally inconsistent with their own welfare and with the safety and independence of the surrounding states. Beginning at first with all men between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, enrolling the whole rising generation afterwards as they attained to manhood, and retaining all who were embodied as long as their services were required, in other words, as long as they were capable of serving, ... the government had thus brought within its disposal every man who was capable of bearing arms; and this was the tremendous power which Buonaparte found already organized to his heart’s desire when he assumed the supreme authority. Such power might have kindled ambition in an ordinary mind; no wonder then that the most ambitious of the human race, when he saw himself in possession of it, supposed universal empire to be within his reach. His supply of men might well appear inexhaustible: there was neither difficulty nor expense in raising them; he had only to say what number he required, and the rest was mere matter29 of routine. ♦War made to support itself.♦ After his armies had once passed the frontier, there was no cost in maintaining them; war was made to support itself. This system also had been matured for him by his republican predecessors. The contributions which he levied upon conquered or dependent states discharged the soldiers’ pay: in an ally’s country their subsistence was expected as a proof of alliance; in an enemy’s it was taken as the right of war. And the perfection of the French commissariat was admired and extolled in England as a masterpiece of arrangement by the blind admirers of France, who either did not or would not perceive how easy the duties of that department were made, when every demand was enforced by military power, and nothing was paid for.
When Louis XVI. began his unhappy reign, the French army was still constituted upon a feudal principle which had been well adapted to the circumstances of later times. The corps were divided into proprietary companies, the captains of which, receiving pay proportionate to the required expenditure, provided every thing for the men, and raised them among their own vassals. The system was liable to abuse, but it had great advantages: for if the captain should act upon no worthier motive than mere selfishness, it was his interest to be careful of his men, lest he should incur the expense of recruiting them; and it might reasonably be expected that he would treat them kindly to prevent desertion, and that he would spare no means for keeping them in health30 or restoring them in sickness. But there were better principles brought into action: the character both of the captain and of the men, in their native place, depended upon what each should report of the other; the men also knew that their fidelity would not be forgotten when their services were over, and that, if they fell, their good conduct would be remembered to the benefit of their family. Both parties were always in the presence of that little world, to the opinion of which they were more immediately amenable, and from which applause or condemnation would most sensibly affect them; and local and hereditary attachments, with all their strength and endurance, were thus brought into the service of the state. ♦Change introduced by M. de St. Germaine.♦ The system was abolished when M. de St. Germaine was minister at war, for the sake of some sordid speculations upon clothing and victualling the troops. Subalterns, who were learning their profession, and acquiring the love and confidence of the soldiers, were disbanded as a sacrifice to the prevailing fashion of economical reform: at the same time the penal discipline of the Germans was introduced, ... a poor substitution for the old bonds of feeling which had been thus rudely broken; and while all that was useful in the feudal constitution of the army was discarded, the worst part was retained by an order that no person should hold a commission unless he could prove the nobility of his family for four generations.
The republicans naturally went into the other extreme; and Buonaparte retained in his army31 the levelling principle which the revolution had introduced, because it is as congenial to a despotism as to a democracy. No Frenchman could be made an officer (except in the artillery and engineers) till he had served three years as a private or sub-officer, unless he signalized himself in action. Perhaps the conscription, in its full extent, could never have been established without such a regulation. It rendered the military service less odious to the common people, who saw the children of the higher classes thus placed upon a level with themselves, and who were deceived into an opinion that merit was the only means of promotion: it brought also into the ranks a degree of intelligence and ambition not to be found there in armies which are differently composed; and those qualities were a security for discipline and perfect obedience under circumstances in which ordinary troops might have become impatient of continual privations. But it may well be doubted, on the other hand, whether the officers derived any important advantage from being trained in the ranks; and there can be no doubt that any such advantage would be dearly purchased by the degradation to which they were exposed; for, while the soldiery were materially improved by the mixture of wellborn men who looked for promotion, these persons themselves were more materially injured by the inevitable effects of a system which levelled nothing so effectually as it did the manners, the moral feeling, and the sense of honour.
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The policy of the old French government had often been detestably perfidious, and yet French history abounds with examples of high chivalrous sentiment; and nowhere were men to be found more sensible of what was due to their king, their country, and themselves, more alive to the sense of national and individual honour, than in the old French army. A fatal change was produced by the revolution. At a time when all persons of high birth were objects of persecution or suspicion, men from the lowest occupations were hurried into the highest posts in the army. Many of them were possessed of great military talents, and there were some few who in every respect proved worthy of their fortune. But there were others who never cast the slough of their old habits: no service was too bloody or too base for such agents; and, without feeling shame for the employment, or compunction for the crime, they were ready to obey their remorseless master in whatever he might command, ... the individual murders of Palm and the Duc d’Enghein, or the wholesale massacres of Jaffa and of Madrid, and those other atrocious actions in Portugal and Spain, of which this history records the progress and the punishment.
It was observed by Montesquieu, that honour, which is the moving and preserving principle of monarchy, is not, and cannot be, the principle of despotism. Little did he apprehend how soon the state of his own country would exemplify the maxim. Among military bodies, honour had hitherto supplied, however imperfectly, yet in some33 degree, the place of a higher and nobler principle: but under the tyranny of Buonaparte, while his measures tended directly, as if they had been so designed, to subvert this feeling (already weakened by the false philosophy of the age), there remained nothing in its stead except that natural goodness, and that innate sense of rectitude, which, in certain happy natures, can never be totally extinguished, but which, in the vast majority of mankind, are easily deadened and destroyed. The humaner studies, whereby the manners and the minds of men are softened, and the sacred precepts whereby they are purified and exalted and enlightened, had been the one neglected, and the other proscribed, during the revolution; and a generation had grown up, without literature, without morals, and without religion.
Education had been chiefly in the hands of the Jesuits till the extinction of that famous company, the most active, the most intriguing, but in later times the most useful and the most calumniated of the monastic orders. After their dissolution, the system was continued upon the same plan, though perhaps with inferior ability, and the colleges were every where conducted by the clergy, either secular or regular. The massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day, and the dragonades of Louis XIV., are crimes always to be remembered with unabating and unqualified detestation. Even at a later time it was evinced, in the shocking tragedies at Rouen and Thoulouse, that the same spirit existed in the French church, and was ready to blaze34 out. These execrable things were known over Europe; but it was not so generally known, that in the service of that same church which had dishonoured itself, and outraged human nature, by these actions, many thousand ministers were continually employed in training the young, visiting the sick, relieving the poor, consoling the penitent, and reclaiming the sinner; uninfluenced by love of gain, hope of applause or of advancement, or any worldly motive; but patiently and dutifully devoting themselves in obscurity to the service of their fellow-creatures and their God. The knowledge of their virtues was confined to the little sphere wherein their painful and meritorious lives were passed; and the world knew them not, till they were hunted out by the atheistical persecution, and were found to endure wrongs, insults, outrages, exiles, and death, with the meekness of Christians, and the heroism of martyrs.
Under these teachers, the doctrines of Christianity, according to the Romish church, and the duties of Christianity, wherein all churches are agreed, were the first things inculcated, as being the first things needful. Errors of doctrine, though of tremendous importance when men are actuated by blind zeal, are, among the quiet and humble-minded part of mankind, latent principles which produce no evil, unless some unhappy circumstance calls them into action: but the moral influence of religion is felt in the whole tenour of public and of private life. There were endowed schools and colleges, before the revolution, in every35 part of France, chiefly under the direction of persons who acted from motives of duty and conscience, rather than of worldly interest. The French court, in the midst of its own licentiousness, understood the importance of training up the people in a faith which tended to make them good subjects, and therefore it had provided5 for this great object from a sense of policy, if from no better impulse. ♦The whole system of education destroyed by the revolution.♦ The reformers, in the natural course of political insanity, plundered the church before the revolutionists overthrew the throne. The Constituent Assembly followed up this act of iniquity by requiring from the clergy an oath, which they knew the greater part must conscientiously refuse to take. The whole system of education throughout France was thus subverted, before the work of proscription and massacre began; and, to complete the wreck, the National Convention, by one sweeping decree, suppressed36 all colleges and faculties of theology, medicine, arts, and jurisprudence, throughout the republic.
Public instruction, however, had been one of the first blessings which were promised under the new order of things; and accordingly plan after plan was pompously announced, as short-lived constitutions and short-sighted legislators succeeded one another. ♦Talleyrand’s scheme.♦ The Constituent Assembly promised an establishment of primary schools in the chief place of every canton; secondary ones in the capital of every district; department schools in the capitals of these larger divisions; and, finally, an Institute in the metropolis: the whole under a Commission of Public Instruction. Public tuition was not to begin before the age of six; till which time, it was said, mothers might be trusted to put in practice the immortal lessons of the author of Emilius: and girls were left wholly to their parents. ♦Religion omitted.♦ Religion made no part of the scheme6; and instead of teaching children faith, hope, and charity, their duties toward God and man, the Declaration of Rights was to be cast into a catechism for their use. This plan, which was the work of Talleyrand, was thrown aside when the Constituent Assembly, having completed, as they supposed, the work of demolition, made way for the Legislative Assembly, which was to erect a new edifice from the ruins. ♦Condorcet’s scheme.♦ A second project was then presented by Condorcet.37 ♦Religion proscribed.♦ Revealed religion was, of course, proscribed from his scheme; and the miserable sophist said that this proscription ought to be extended to what is called natural religion also, because the theistic philosophers were no better agreed than the theologians in their notions of God, and of his moral relations to mankind. All prejudices, he said, ought now to disappear; and therefore it must now be affirmed that the study of the ancient languages would be more injurious than useful. The physical sciences were the basis of his plan; and he advised that scientific lessons should be given in public weekly lectures, and that the miracles of Elijah and St. Januarius should be exhibited, in order to cure the people of superstition. A time, he said, undoubtedly would come, when all establishments for instruction would be useless: however, as they were necessary at present, girls as well as boys were to be received in the public schools. ♦Scheme of the National Convention.♦ The orators of the National Convention went farther: they maintained, that domestic education was incompatible with liberty; that the holy doctrine of equality would have been proclaimed in vain if there were any difference of education between the rich and the poor; that, of all inequalities, the inequality of knowledge was the most fatal; and that every thing which elevated one man above another in the scale of intellect was studiously to be destroyed. All children, therefore, of both sexes, ... the boys from the age of five till that of twelve, the girls from five to eleven, ... ought to be educated in common at the expense of the republic; there was room enough for lodging them all38 in the palaces and castles of the emigrants; the boys should be employed in tilling the earth, in manufactures, or in picking stones upon the highways; hospitals were to be annexed to the schools, where the children were in rotation to wait upon the sick and the aged; and they were never to hear of religion. One democratic legislator proposed, that those parents who chose to have their children educated at home should be vigilantly observed; and if it were discovered that they brought them up in principles contrary to liberty, that a process should be instituted, and the children taken from them, and sent to the houses of equality. This implied some choice on the part of the parents, though it would have made the choice a cruel mockery: but it was contended that liberty could not exist if domestic education were tolerated; ♦Domestic education proscribed.♦ and when the clause was proposed that parents might send their children to these schools, it was carried as an amendment that they must send them, because it was time to establish the great principle, that children belong to the republic more than to their parents. This, said one of their blasphemous declaimers, would complete the Gospel of Equality! It was even maintained, that education ought to commence before birth; and the philosophical statesmen of regenerated France were called upon to form rules for women during the time of gestation, and to enact laws for midwives and for nurses7!
39
Follies and schemes like these were discussed by the National Convention in the intervals between their acts of confiscation and blood; and to this intolerable tyranny the fanatics of liberty and equality designed to subject the people in the40 dearest and holiest relations of domestic life! But proscriptions and executions succeeded so rapidly, that the various projectors were swept off before their projects could be attempted in practice; till at length, when the remaining members of that nefarious assembly, after the death of Robespierre, had acquired some feeling of personal safety, the Normal Schools were established, in which the art of teaching was to be taught. ♦Normal Schools.♦ And now, it was proclaimed, the regeneration of the human mind would be effected; now, for the first time upon earth, Nature, Truth, Reason, and Philosophy would have their seminary! The most eminent men in talents and science were to be professors in this institution; from all parts of the republic the most promising subjects were to be selected by the constituted authorities, and sent to the metropolis as pupils: and when they should have completed the course of human knowledge, the disciples of these great masters, thoroughly imbued with the lessons which they had received, were to return to their respective places of abode, and repeat them throughout the land, which would thus, in its remotest parts, receive light from Paris, as from the focus of intellectual illumination. Fourteen hundred young men were in fact brought from the country; and, that nothing might be lost to mankind, the conferences in which universal instruction was to be communicated were minuted in short-hand. So notable a plan excited great enthusiasm in Paris; it soon excited as much ridicule: in the course of three months both pupils41 and professors discovered in how absurd a situation they were placed; it was acknowledged in the National Convention that the scheme had altogether failed; and thus ended what was properly called the organized quackery of the Normal Schools8.
Meantime the irrecoverable years were passing on, and the rising generation was sacrificed to the crude theories and ridiculous experiments of sophists in power; men whose ignorance might deserve compassion, if their absurdity did not provoke indignation as well as contempt, and their presumptuous wickedness call for unmingled abhorrence. When the subject was renewed under the consular government, the frightful consequences had become too plain to be dissembled. A view of the moral and religious state of France was drawn up from official reports which were sent in from every department, and it was acknowledged that the children throughout the republic had been left to run wild in idleness during the whole preceding course of the revolution.42 ♦Analyse des Pròces Vérbaux, quoted by Portalis. L. Goldsmith, Recueil, T. i. p. 282.♦ “They are without the idea of a God,” said the Report, “without a notion of right and wrong. The barbarous manners which have thus arisen have produced a ferocious people, and we cannot but groan over the evils which threaten the present generation and the future.”
It suited the views of Buonaparte that his government should hold this language while he was negotiating the Concordat, for the sake of obtaining the papal sanction to his authority. Perhaps he was then hesitating whether to take the right hand way or the left; whether to build up again the ruined institutions of France, strengthen the throne on which he had resolved to take his seat by an alliance with the altar; and in restoring to the kingdom all that it was possible to restore while he retained the sovereignty to himself, engraft upon the new dynasty those principles which had given to the old its surest strength when it was strongest, and a splendour, of which no change of fortune could deprive it. Two parties would be equally opposed to this, the Jacobines and the Royalists. The latter it was impossible to conciliate: they would have stood by the crown even if it were hanging upon a bush; but their allegiance being founded upon principle and feeling, ... upon the sense of honour and of duty, ... would not follow the crown when it was transferred by violence and injustice from one head to another. He found the Jacobines more practicable. They indeed had many sympathies with Buonaparte: he favoured that irreligion to which they were43 fanatically attached, because it at once flattered their vanity and indulged their vices; his schemes of conquest offered a wide field for their ambition and their avarice: and what fitter agents could he desire than men who were troubled with no scruples of conscience or of honour; whom no turpitude could make ashamed; who shrunk from no crimes, and were shocked by no atrocities? Thus Buonaparte judged concerning them, and he reasoned rightly. The Jacobines both at home and abroad became his most devoted and obsequious adherents: they served him in England as partizans and advocates, denying or extenuating his crimes, justifying his measures, magnifying his power, and reviling his opponents; on the Continent they co-operated with him by secret or open treason, as occasion offered; in France they laid aside in his behalf that hatred to monarchy which they had not only professed but sworn, and swearing allegiance to a military despotism, gave that despotism their willing and zealous support.
Such persons were still a minority in France; but their activity, their arts, and their audacity supplied the want of numbers. It was essential to his views that a succession of such men should be provided, and that the French nation should by the sure process of education be moulded to his will, and made to receive the stamp of his iron institutions. Many of the clergy, when the proscription which had driven them from their country was removed, had opened schools on their return from exile, as the readiest means of obtaining a44 maintenance for themselves and of performing their Christian duties. Their success was incompatible with Buonaparte’s policy: he wanted not a moral and a religious9, but a military people. After some preparatory attempts, all tending to the same object, the Imperial University was established; ... a name which, it was admitted, had altogether a different signification from what it bore under the old order of things. The legitimate principle was proclaimed, that the direction of public education belongs to the state; the intolerant one was deduced and put in practice, that therefore a monopoly of education should be vested in the new establishment.
At the head of this University there was a Grand Master, for whom Buonaparte, indulging in such things his own taste as well as that of the French people, appointed a splendid costume; his civil-list was 150,000 francs, and he had the power of nominating to all the inferior appointments, ... an enormous influence, if it had been intended that he should be any thing more than the mere organ of the Emperor’s will. There were under him a chancellor, a treasurer, with salaries of 15,000 francs each; ten counsellors for life, twenty counsellors in ordinary, the former with salaries of 10, the latter of 6,000 francs; and thirty45 inspectors general, whose salary was 6,000 also, and whose travelling expenses were paid. Next in rank were the Rectors of Academies: this too was an old word with a new signification. There were to be as many Academies in the empire as there were courts of appeal. Each Rector had an establishment for his inferior jurisdiction analogous to that of the Grand Master; his salary was 6,000 francs, with 3,000 for his official expenses, and the additional emolument which he derived as Dean of the Faculties. He ranked with the Bishop of the diocese; and the rivalry which this pretension occasioned was in no degree mitigated by the spirit in which the Imperial University was founded and administered. The Faculties, or Schools of Theology, Jurisprudence, Medicine, Physical Sciences, and Literature, were under the Rector’s authority, as were the Lyceums, Colleges, Institutions, Pensions, and even the Primary Schools, which were not considered as beneath the cognizance of the University, although the government had taken care that even these should not be under the direction of the clergy, having committed them to the superintendence of a certain number of inhabitants, among whom the parochial priest had only a single voice. All seminaries, therefore, of every kind belonged to the University, and contributed in no small degree to its revenues. For it was not only required that every person who opened a Pension or Institution must be a graduate, but also that he must take out a brevet from the Grand Master, the price of46 which varied from 200 to 600 francs, and which was to be renewed at the same cost every ten years. Besides these decennial droits, a fourth part of the same sum was exacted annually; and a tax was levied upon the pupils of five per cent. upon what they paid to the master. It was the purpose of the government to discourage these schools, which, as being mostly in the hands of the clergy, were nowise congenial with the principles and views of Buonaparte: therefore they were thus heavily taxed; and lest they should be supported in spite of all discouragement, a decree was issued, declaring that the Lyceums might at any time fill up their numbers by taking from the nearest Pensions or Institutions as many pupils above the age of nine as would complete their complement. The precise effect of this iniquitous decree was, that exactly in proportion as any particular Lyceum was known to be ill conducted, and as parents were unwilling to entrust their children there, it became impossible for any better seminary to exist in its neighbourhood.
There were two other kind of seminaries which it was in like manner the intention of the Imperial government to destroy by indirect means, ... the Communal Colleges and the Ecclesiastical Schools. More than four hundred of the former had been founded at the expense of their respective communes, as soon as any hope appeared that a settled order of things might be maintained in France. But because every thing far and near was regulated by the new despotism, the money47 which they levied upon themselves for this purpose went, like other imposts, to the capital: and was thrown into a common fund, from whence an allowance to each particular college was made, not according to its necessary expenditure, but according to the pleasure of the minister to whom the distribution was confided. Thus the design of starving the colleges, and rendering the communes weary of a voluntary tax from which no benefit was derived, was in most cases easily effected; and where the inhabitants of a town, being more desirous of supporting such an establishment, supplied the deficiency of the fund by fresh subscriptions, the University interfered, to harass and disgust them by means contradictory in appearance, but tending to the same end. Being vested with authority over the Regents, it appointed and superseded them at pleasure, removing to the Lyceums those who had deserved the confidence of the neighbourhood, and supplying their place by incompetent and worthless adventurers; it forced upon the colleges professors of sciences which were not taught there, or it forbade them to pursue the same branches of education if they were teaching them with success. Very few of these establishments, and those only in the remotest provinces, escaped the effects of this insidious hostility. ♦Ecclesiastical Schools.♦ The Ecclesiastical Schools had been instituted as seminaries for the priesthood by the Bishops, and were founded and supported by contributions. Some were placed in cities where they were under the Bishop’s immediate48 inspection, and became especial objects of his care; others were fixed in the country, that they might be removed from the corruption of great towns. The children of the poor who appeared by their talents and disposition to be fit subjects for the ministry, were educated there gratuitously; those of the wealthy for a moderate payment. The Romish clergy have always understood that where religious feeling exists, money is never wanting for religious purposes. Poor as Buonaparte had left the Gallican church, large buildings were now bought or erected for these seminaries, and furnished and supported with a liberality which manifested that in the provinces at least there was more religion than suited the wishes of the imperial government. Effectual means therefore were pursued for degrading and destroying them. It was decreed that not more than one should be allowed in a department, and that that one must be in a large town where there should be a Lyceum: all others were to be shut up within a fortnight after the promulgation of the law, and their property, moveable and immoveable, applied to the use of the University. The pupils were compelled to attend the Lyceums, and go through the same course of mathematical studies as if they had been designed for the army; they were not allowed to keep the church festivals as holidays, although they wore the habit of ecclesiastical students, and their masters were ranked below those of the meanest boarding-school. The object of the government in thus mortifying the teachers would49 be defeated by the wise policy of the Romish church, which has taught its ministers to regard every act of humiliation as adding to their stock of merits; the design of disgusting the students with their profession, by the contempt to which they were exposed in what were essentially military academies, and of unfitting them for their intended profession by an intercourse with military pupils, was likely to be more successful.
It was through the Lyceums more than any other of his institutions that Buonaparte expected to perpetuate the new order of things: in these academies it was, that, by a system such as a Jesuit might have devised for the use of a Mamaluke Bey, he trained up the youth of France to become men after his own heart. It was laid down as a maxim by the government that all public education ought to be regulated upon the principles of military discipline, not on those of civil or ecclesiastical police. In the Lyceums, therefore, the pupils were distributed not in forms, or classes, but in companies, each having its serjeant and its corporal; and an officer-instructor, as he was called, taught the use of arms to all above twelve years of age, and drilled them in military manœuvres. He was present to superintend all their movements, which were so many evolutions, or marches. The punishments in use were arrest and imprisonment; and for their meals, their studies, their lessons, their sports, prayers, mass, going to bed, and getting up, signal was given by beat of drum.50 ♦First catechism.♦ The youth who were thus trained up in military habits had been taught, in their first catechism, that they owed to their Emperor Napoleon love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military services, and the contributions required for the preservation and defence of the empire, and of his throne: that God, who creates empires and disposes of them according to his will, had, by endowing Napoleon with a profusion of gifts as well in peace as in war, made him the minister of his power, and his image upon earth: to honour and serve the Emperor was therefore the same thing as to honour and serve God; and they who violated their duty towards him, would resist the order which God himself had established, and render themselves worthy of eternal damnation. The religious sanction which was thus given to his authority had its full effect in childhood, and when this feeling lost its influence, devotion to the Emperor had become a habit which every thing around them contributed to confirm and strengthen. There were 150 exhibitions, or burses, appointed for every Lyceum: twenty were of sufficient amount to cover the whole expense of the boys’ education and maintenance; the others were called half or three-quarter burses, and the relatives of those who obtained them made up the sum which was deficient. The money for these foundations was of course drawn from the public taxes: a third part was even raised by an extra and specific impost upon the respective communes. But in the eyes of the pupils every thing flowed from the Emperor himself: he was their immediate benefactor, as well as their future and sure patron; and they looked to him51 with gratitude and hope at an age when these generous feelings are the strongest. ♦Special military academies.♦ Two hundred and fifty chosen youths were transferred every year to the special military academies, where they were supported by the state; and from whence the army was supplied with a succession of young men, thoroughly educated for their profession, and thoroughly attached to the Emperor Napoleon. Others were appointed to such civil offices as they seemed best qualified to fill, and they carried with them the same attachment to revolutionary principles, and to the person of Buonaparte. This was not all. Buonaparte, far-sighted when not blinded by vanity, or dazzled by ambition, made use of the Lyceums to assist in securing his conquests. ♦Youths from the conquered countries.♦ Two thousand four hundred youths, chosen from the foreign territories which had been annexed to France, were educated in these academies at the public expense. This measure, said Fourcroy (by whom the scheme of the University was framed), was so congenial with the times, that its advantages would be perceived by all who were capable of understanding the existing circumstances. The inhabitants, he said, who spake a language of their own, and were accustomed to their own institutions, must relinquish their old usages, and adopt those of their new country: they had not the means at home of giving their children the education, the manners, and the character, which were to identify them with the French. What more advantageous destiny could be prepared for them than that which the new system offered? and what more52 efficacious resource could be given to the government, which had nothing more at heart than to bind these new citizens to the French empire?... Bound to it, indeed, they would thus be; the youths by the effect of the education which they received; the parents because the children were hostages for their forced allegiance.
Thus was the scheme of the Lyceums well suited both to the foreign and domestic policy of Buonaparte. The tone of morals which prevailed in these academies is said to have been not less congenial to his purposes. If, indeed, in happier countries, and where the intention is that better principles should be carefully inculcated, schools still are places where good dispositions incur some danger of contamination, and where evil ones have their worst propensities nurtured, and forced as if in a hotbed, what was to be expected from a system of education planned and directed by men who had grown up during the revolution, or who had taken part in it, and gone through the course of its crimes, ... its agents, or its creatures? A thorough corruption, under the appearance of that regularity which military order produced; a cold irreligion, with which the youths went through the external practices of devotion as they went through the drill; a calculating spirit of insubordination, never breaking out but in concerted movements; speculating selfishness, premature ambition, ferocious manners; ... ♦Genie de la Revolution. T. 1. 392.♦ these were to be expected, and by these, it is said, the Lyceums were characterised.
The Proviseurs (or masters), the censors, and53 the teachers in the Lyceums and Colleges (which latter were regarded as secondary schools), were bound to celibacy: the professors might marry, but in that case they were not allowed to lodge within the precincts, nor might any woman enter there. Every academy had one or two inspectors, whose business it was from time to time to visit all the Lyceums and inferior schools within their respective districts, and see that the rules of the University were strictly observed; and lest this examination should be carelessly or unfaithfully performed, there were from twenty to thirty general inspectors. The members of the University were bound each to inform the Grand Master and his officers of any thing contrary to the rules, which might occur within their knowledge: they were bound to obey him in whatever he might command for the Emperor’s service; and whosoever was expelled, or left the University without a letter of dismission, became thereby incapable of holding any civil employment. The pupils were not permitted to correspond with any persons except their parents, or persons acting for their parents; and all letters which they received or wrote passed through the hands of the censor.
The University was one of Buonaparte’s favourite plans: it well exemplifies his precipitate temper and his thorough despotism. In the edict which erected it, the Napoleonic dynasty was styled the conservator of the liberal ideas which the French constitutions had announced; ... that very edict was an act for enforcing uniformity of54 education throughout the empire! All persons who were previously employed in tuition were by this act incorporated as members of the University, without their consent, and bound to all its regulations: they were compelled to change the course of instruction to which they had been accustomed, and to follow a prescribed form, whether they approved it or not: they were subjected to the inquisitorial visits of the inspectors, and to the arbitrary power of the Grand Master: they were heavily taxed for the support of this system, and ultimately were to be sacrificed to it; for it was the declared intention of government gradually to diminish the number of their schools till they should all be shut up, for the purpose of multiplying the Lyceums. The insolent injustice of such a measure would produce disgust and consequent neglect in many instances, the suddenness of the change would occasion disorder and confusion in all; and the itinerant inspectors were less likely to amend what was amiss, than to act in a vexatious spirit of interference, or with corrupt connivance, according as the views and temper of the individual inclined him to the one abuse or to the other. Except the miserable schoolmasters who were pressed into the University, its other members were taken from such persons hanging loose upon society as had interest enough to obtain the better appointments, or were forlorn enough to accept the worst. Yet from some thousands of men, not prepared by previous habitudes and studies, not selected for the fitness of55 their acquirements, their talents, or their disposition to the course of life in which they were to be placed, but brought together by the drag-net of despotism, Buonaparte expected and demanded that singleness of purpose, that totality of interests, that subserviency of all the parts to the whole, that disciplined unanimity which had existed among the Jesuits, and was the perfection of their consummate system. But the great object of his policy was answered; the youth of France were brought up in military habits; they were taught from their earliest boyhood to look to him for patronage, and to consider their own advancement as connected with the prosperity and permanence of his empire: if the moral and religious part of their education was worse than neglected, it mattered not, or rather it accorded with his views and wishes; they were then fitter instruments for the work in which they were to be employed.
The revolution had seared the feelings and hardened the hearts of a light-minded people: this was the natural effect of its horrors and of the ruin which it had spread10. That immorality which a succession of vicious courts had encouraged by their example, was released by the revolution from all restraints of law and of external decorum. ♦Frequency of divorces.♦ The religious sanction of marriage was destroyed, and the unbounded facility of divorce56 rendered the civil ceremony a mere form, which was no longer binding than till one of the parties might choose to throw off the engagement. ♦Obscene publications.♦ The literature of France, always, to the disgrace of the nation, more licentious than that of any other country, became, under the perfect freedom of the press, obscene to a degree too loathsome for expression; the arts were prostituted to the same devilish purpose; and the line of distinction between vice and virtue, which can never be too strongly marked, was as completely effaced in general practice as in the theories of those sophists who have laboured to corrupt their fellow-creatures. Such things were beneath the consideration of a legislature which arrogated to itself the praise of philosophical liberality; or, rather, they accorded with the views of that foul philosophy, which, regarding man as a mere material machine, would degrade him to the condition of the beasts that perish. Gambling, also, which every government that regards the welfare of its subjects endeavours to check by salutary laws, was encouraged by authority in France. ♦Gaming-houses established by government.♦ Every week two or three lotteries were drawn, in which the poorest of the poor were tempted to engage, there being shares as low as sixpence. Nor must it be supposed that this measure was defended upon the specious ground that governments ought to regulate the vices which they cannot prevent, and therefore may allowably make them conducive to the advantage of the state. The French government legalized this vice in its fullest extent, took to itself a monopoly of the57 gaming-houses, farmed them at one time, and afterwards administered them by agents of its own. This profligate measure originated with the Directory, and was continued by Buonaparte: whatever tended to make men prodigal and desperate accorded with the spirit of his system, and under that system every thing tended to that effect.
Of all the previous measures of the revolutionists there was none which more entirely suited his views than the abolition of the law of primogeniture; that law, which perhaps, next to the institution of marriage, has produced more good, moral and political, than any other act of human legislation. The revolutionists were not mistaken when they believed that that structure of social order which it was their determination to destroy rested upon this basis; and they were too short-sighted to perceive that in breaking it up they were acting as pioneers to prepare the way for despotism. Buonaparte was thus enabled to surround himself with an aristocracy of his own making, who possessed no natural influence in the country, who represented none of its interests, who had no inheritance of honour to maintain and to bequeath, but were his mere creatures and dependents. In this respect the government of France under the Emperor Napoleon was assimilated to the barbarous despotisms of Persia and Turkey: and this was the direct consequence of a measure, which was intended to secure and perpetuate the triumph of liberty and equality! But it was not the only consequence: the evil extended throughout the58 whole middle class of society. The best motive whereby men are induced to labour for the accumulation of wealth, the motive by which a propensity, mean in itself, is exalted and refined, was removed when the hope of building up a family was taken away. Mansions would not be erected, and domains ornamented and improved, when, upon the death of the proprietor, the estates were to be divided. There no longer existed the same means for that liberal expenditure which called forth ingenuity, encouraged the arts, and afforded employment to useful industry in all its branches. Properties were broken down, which in former times enabled the father to set his younger children fairly forward in the world, and the heads of families to assist their relatives, ... from pride sometimes, if a kindlier principle were wanting. And as estates by this levelling act were divided into smaller and smaller portions at every descent, more adventurers were thrown upon the public with less parental aid. The political system of the revolutionists, like their godless philosophy, looked to the present alone, deriving no wisdom from the past, and having for the future neither care nor hope.
The growth of that middle order was thus prevented in which the strength of civil society mainly consists; which is the most favourable to the developement of our intellectual faculties, and to the improvement of our moral nature; to knowledge, and contentment, and virtue; to public freedom, individual happiness, and general prosperity. No59 measure could more certainly tend to perpetuate barbarous institutions than one by which property was thus divided in every generation: and the state of things among the Huns and Tartars of old scarcely operated more exclusively to form a military people than all the circumstances of France under its military Emperor. The conscription was as indiscriminate as the plague, and less to be averted by any human means: it mattered not what might be the inclinations of the youth, nor what the wishes, principles, and feelings of the parents; he must take the chance of the lot, and as Buonaparte became more eager in his ambition and more prodigal in his expenditure of life, there was scarcely a chance of escaping from it. The chief object of education was to train up the boys in military habits and propensities; and the military was the only profession which offered any thing to their hopes. Commerce had been almost destroyed, less by the maritime war than by the tyranny of Buonaparte, who, in the vain desire of ruining Great Britain, cared not what injury he brought upon his own subjects and his dependent states. Few persons would engage in the study of the liberal professions, because it was not in their free choice to follow them. The official business of the state no longer offered, as in former times, a sure and honourable path to promotion and public esteem; it was reduced to the wretched art of doing whatever the Emperor required, supplying immediate wants by temporary shifts, enforcing oppressive edicts, defending acts of perfidy,60 inhumanity, and flagrant wrong, and promoting a system of despotism and delusion by all the aids of systematic falsehood. ♦Degradation of the church.♦ And the Church was in a state of degradation as complete as that to which Julian would have reduced it; it had been stripped of its respectability as well as of its wealth. Buonaparte had hardly condescended to treat its re-establishment as any thing more than a mere matter of expediency: and when the Pope was brought to Paris for the purpose of crowning a man who had publicly professed himself an enemy to the Cross, the ceremonies of his reception were performed in a spirit of mockery which it was scarcely attempted to conceal. The Bishops of the new establishment, indeed, were not wanting in endeavours to deserve the Emperor’s favour; they uttered their maledictions against England, as Balaam would fain have done against the Israelites; and in strains of blasphemous adulation they addressed Buonaparte as one whom the Lord had brought out of the land of Egypt to be the man of his own right hand, the Cyrus whom God had chosen for the accomplishment of his inscrutable designs in regard to the nations of the earth, the Christ of providence, the lion of the tribe of Judah! But if this impious flattery gratified the tyrant to whom it was addressed, it contributed still farther to degrade the clerical character in public estimation. The constitutional clergy were regarded as little better than schismatics by those persons who retained a rooted attachment to the religion of their fathers: hence, in the interior, the churches61 were deserted by the devout as well as by the infidel; and they who were near enough the frontier went to partake of the ordinances and receive confirmation, from a foreign clergy, because they had no reverence for their own. Public opinion being so decidedly against the national priests, and their stipends precarious in all places, and at the best barely sufficient for a decent maintenance, it followed, as a natural consequence, that a supply of ministers for the service of the altar could not be found. Thus while the laws made every youth look to a military life as the probable allotment of destiny from which he could not escape, the circumstances of France were such as to take away all desire for any other profession.
At the head of a nation whose whole activity and talents were thus directed to war as the only pursuit, Buonaparte had realised those schemes of ambition which Louis XIV. had been prevented from accomplishing by Marlborough’s consummate abilities as a statesman and a general. He had effected all, and more than all that Louis had designed. The Austrian Netherlands, and all the German states as far as the Rhine, were annexed to France, and the European powers who were most injured and endangered by this usurpation acquiesced in it with hopeless submission. Beyond the Rhine the French were in possession of many strong places, which gave them access into the heart of Germany. Buonaparte was King of Italy, as well as Emperor of France. One of his brothers had been made King of Holland, a second62 King of Naples, and a third King of Westphalia, all in immediate dependence upon him as the head and founder of the Napoleonic dynasty. The Holy German Empire, ... the Empire, as by a prouder and exclusive title it claimed to be called, ... that venerable and mighty body of which the complicated confusion had hitherto, so it was boasted, been divinely preserved, was dissolved by the defection of its members, and the abdication of its chief. The secondary, and all the inferior powers of which it had been composed, had contracted under the name of the Confederation of the Rhine, federatively and individually an alliance with the Emperor Napoleon, offensive and defensive, whereby they were virtually rendered so many feuds of France: the force which they were to bring into the field was determined; and to enable them to raise their respective contingents, the conscription was introduced into these states, as the accompanying curse of French alliance. This Confederacy was extended from Bavaria and the frontiers of Switzerland, to the banks of the Elbe. Switzerland acknowledged Buonaparte as its protector, and continued in peace, with something of the appearance, but little of the reality of independence, till it should suit his purpose to assume the sovereignty without disguise. Prussia, beaten, humbled and dismembered, seemed to exist only by his sufferance. Austria, after three struggles against revolutionary France, each more lamentably misconducted and more disastrous than the last, divorced from the empire, despoiled of the63 Netherlands, the Brisgaw, the Frickthal, the Vorarlberg, the Tyrol, and all its Italian territories, had no other consolation in the ignominious peace to which it had been forced than that of seeing the house of Brandenburg soon afterwards reduced to a state of greater humiliation. Denmark was in alliance with France, the government rather than the nation co-operating heartily with Buonaparte. Sweden, with an insane king, and a discontented people, maintained against him a war which was little more than nominal. Russia, the only country which seemed secure in its distance, its strength, and the unanimity of its inhabitants, ... the only continental state to which the rest of Europe might have looked as to a conservative power, ... Russia appeared to be dazzled by Buonaparte’s glory, duped by his insidious talents, and blindly subservient to his ambition. Spain was entirely subject to his control, its troops and its treasures were more at the disposal of the French government than of its own. Portugal had hitherto been suffered to remain neutral, because Buonaparte from time to time extorted large sums from the Court as the price of its neutrality, and because the produce of the Spanish mines found their way safely through the British cruisers, under the Portugueze flag. England alone perseveringly opposed the projects of this ambitious conqueror, and prevented the possibility of his accomplishing that scheme of universal dominion, which had it not been for her interference he believed to be within his reach.
The situation of England in the year 1807 was64 more extraordinary than any that is exhibited in the history of former times. After a war, which with the short interval of the peace of Amiens had continued fifteen years, and at the commencement of which all Europe had been leagued with her against revolutionary France, her last reliance upon the continental governments had failed; most of her former allies were leagued against her, and it was manifest that the few states which still preserved a semblance of neutrality, would soon in like manner be compelled into a confederacy with France. The French army and the English navy, two more tremendous powers than old times had ever seen, were opposed to each other without the possibility of coming in conflict. Masters as the French were on the continent, all thoughts of attacking them by land were at an end, and neither they nor their allies dared show their flag upon the sea. England could not in any way lessen the power of France, neither could France subdue, nor in any way weaken England. The threat of invasion had been laid aside: it had been seriously intended by Buonaparte, but the spirit with which the English people flew to arms intimidated him, and his gun-boats were left to rot in the harbours where with so much cost and care they had been collected. Secured against any such evil by our fleets, and still more by our internal strength, we were carrying on the war equally without fear and without hope.
The state of our home politics was not less remarkable. For the first time Great Britain was65 under an administration without a name; its ostensible head the Duke of Portland never appeared in parliament, and was neither spoken of, nor thought of by the public. He deserves, however, an honourable memorial in British history, for having accepted office in a time of peculiar and extreme difficulty, and thereby enabled the King to form a ministry whose opinions were in unison with his own principles and feelings, and with the wishes and true interests of his people. The other ministers held their places less by their own strength than by the weakness of their opponents, for of all administrations, that to which they had succeeded had been the most unpopular. From their want of influence in the country, the powerful families being mostly with the opposition, it was thought that they depended too much upon the personal favour of the sovereign, and were more literally the King’s servants than is consistent with the spirit of the constitution. Their talents had not been put fairly to the proof, and the nation had not as yet learned to appreciate the cool clear judgement of Lord Hawkesbury, the finished oratory of Mr. Canning, and the activity and intrepidity of Mr. Percival, always ready and always right-minded. While Pitt and Fox were living, every man believed either in one or in the other; one party was perfectly satisfied that all the measures of the minister were right, and the other as confidently expected that notwithstanding the evil consequences of his mispolicy and his misfortunes, the country was to be saved as soon as their66 political redeemer came into power. From this comfortable state, wherein faith supplied the place of reason, they were disturbed by the death of both these leaders, neither of whom left a successor, but both exaggerated reputations. It became the general complaint that there was no man or set of men in whom the nation had any confidence. Some persons apprehended from this a dangerous indifference in the public toward parliament itself. Others hoped that as the people were weary of factious debates, parliament would no longer be made a theatre of faction, but that measures would be discussed with a view to the common weal, and no longer solely with reference to the party by which they were brought forward.
The opposition consisted of the most heterogeneous and discordant materials. The Grenville party had a just view of the dangers of the country, and a right feeling for its honour. They were sincerely attached to the monarchy, to the Church of England, and to the existing constitution of the state: therefore they steadily and manfully resisted the measures of pretended reform which were brought forward sometimes by mistaken, sometimes by designing men, as leading with sure tendency to a mob-government, and all its certain horrors. They knew also that hopeless as the war might seem, it was our safest position, and that peace could not be made without disgrace and imminent danger, so long as the continent of Europe was under the control of67 France. But while they thus entirely agreed with the government in the fundamental principles of its policy foreign and domestic, they opposed it in all the details of administration with a factious animosity, which seemed to show how deeply they resented their dismissal from power: and thus they lost with the nation much of that weight which they must otherwise have possessed by reason of their acknowledged ability, their constitutional principles, and their high personal character. Still, however, they were regarded with a certain degree of respect, which was not the case with the remains of Mr. Fox’s party. ♦The Foxites.♦ The Foxites, from the beginning of the war, through all its changes had uniformly taken part against their country; consistent in this and in nothing else, they had always sided with the enemy, pleading his cause, palliating his crimes, extolling his wisdom, magnifying his power, vilifying and accusing their own government, depreciating its resources, impeding its measures, insulting its allies, calling for disclosures which no government ought to make, and forcing them sometimes from the weakness and the mistaken liberality of their opponents. Buonaparte, as Washington had done before him, relied upon their zeal and virulence; and they by their speeches and writings served him more effectually upon the continent and in France itself, than all the manifestoes of his ministers, and the diatribes of his own press. In future ages it will be thought a strange and almost incredible anomaly68 in politics, that there should have existed in the legislature of any country a regular party, organised and acknowledged as such, whose business it was to obstruct the proceedings of government, and render it by every possible means contemptible and odious to the people; a party always in semi-alliance with the enemy, who in times of difficulty and danger prophesied nothing but failure, disgrace, and ruin; and whose systematic course of conduct, if it had been intended to bring about the fulfilment of their predictions, could not have been more exactly adapted to that object.
The Foxites, before they were admitted into office, had pertinaciously insisted upon the practicability and ease of making peace; this opinion could not be maintained while they were in power, and their dismission was at this time so recent, that it could not as yet decently be resumed. Attempts, however, to raise a popular cry for peace were made by certain manufacturers whose trade was at a stand: they were assisted by many of those persons who in strict adherence to the phraseology as well as the principles of the puritans, call themselves religious professors, and by some other conscientious but inconsistent men, who while they admit that the necessity of war must be allowed in just cases, exclaim in all cases against the practice, setting their compassionate feelings in array against reason, and against the manlier virtues. ♦Superstition concerning Buonaparte.♦ A superstition concerning Buonaparte was mingled with this69 womanish sensibility. They who had not lost sight of his enormities doubted whether he were the Beast, whose number they contrived to discover in his name; ... or Antichrist himself. Others whom he had in some degree conciliated by his various aggressions upon the papal power, forgave him his crimes because the Whore of Babylon happened to be among those whom he had plundered: they rather imagined him to be the Man upon the White Horse. In this, however, they were all agreed, that Providence had appointed him for some great11 work: and it was an easy conclusion for those whose weak heads and warm imaginations looked no further, that it must be unavailing, if not impious, to oppose him.
This was a pitiable delusion: but more extraordinary was the weakness of those, who having been the friends of France at the commencement of the revolution, when they believed that the cause of liberty was implicated in her70 success, looked with complacency now upon the progress which oppression was making in the world, because France was the oppressor. They had turned their faces toward the east, in the morning, to worship the rising sun, and now when it was evening they were looking eastward still, obstinately affirming that still the sun was there. Time had passed on; circumstances were changed; nothing remained stationary except their understandings; and because they had been incapable of deriving wisdom from experience, they called themselves consistent; and because they were opposed in every thing to the views of their government, the hopes of their countrymen, and the honour and interest of their country, they arrogated to themselves the exclusive praise of patriotism! But the persons who from these various views and feelings united in calling for peace, were insignificant in number, and government had never at any time more certainly acted with the full concurrence of the nation, than in carrying on the war against Buonaparte.
Heavy burthens had been incurred during this long and arduous contest. At the commencement of the year 1807, the annual expenditure was not less than seventy-two millions, and the national debt amounted to six hundred and twenty-seven. But hitherto the prosperity of the country had kept pace with its exertions. The wheels of the machine seemed rather to move more freely than to be impeded by the71 weight which was laid upon them; and the war created means for supporting its enormous demands, by the enterprise which it called into action, and the money which it put in circulation. All the manufactures connected with the numerous branches of the naval and military service were in full activity. Agricultural industry also received an impulse such as had never before been experienced; for the English being excluded from the Baltic, and holding relations of doubtful amity with the United States of America, were fain to depend upon themselves for produce, and the emergency produced commensurate exertions throughout the kingdom. The country banks supplied a currency without which these exertions could not have been made; every where wastes were brought into cultivation; and the agricultural labourers being every where employed at high wages, contributed by their increased expenditure to extend the prosperity of which they partook.
Other circumstances, connected with the progress of society, and leading beyond all doubt to the most perilous crisis which society has ever yet undergone, conduced at this time mainly to the service of the state, and enabled the government to raise a revenue and support fleets and armies upon a scale which even in the last generation could not have been contemplated as possible. As the drunkard derives a pleasurable sensation, and an immediate excitement from strong liquors which by their sure effect are72 producing organic derangement, incurable disease, and death, so the manufacturing system contributed at this time to the national wealth and strength, while it was poisoning the vitals of the commonwealth. Carried as it now appeared to be by mechanical ingenuity and power to its utmost extent, it enabled our merchants to supply the world with manufactured goods, and at so low a price, that the most severe enactments, enforced by the most vigilant precautions, could not exclude them from the continental markets. In vain did Buonaparte shut the ports of Europe against the British flag, thinking that by destroying that part of our revenue which is derived from foreign trade, he should cut the sinews of our strength; in vain did the American government co-operate with him by its non-importation acts; British goods still found their way every where, and the books of the custom-house proved a continual increase in our exports; while the internal commerce of the country (nine-elevenths of the whole), and that with Ireland and our foreign possessions (a large proportion of the remaining parts), flourished beyond all former example. The manufacturing system supplied the war with men as well as means; the necessity for hands in agriculture also being greatly diminished by improved modes of labour, and by the use of agricultural machines, we were enabled without violence or difficulty to maintain in arms a force scarcely inferior in numbers to that of the enemy with all their fivefold73 superiority of population. And thus the country was prevented from feeling the evil of that forced population which the manufacturing system and the poor laws had produced, and of the prevailing custom of educating youths of the middle rank for stations higher than that in which they were born, or had means to support.
In resources therefore for maintaining war, the British government had never been so strong: and so far as Buonaparte reckoned upon our financial difficulties, and the want of men to resist him whenever and wherever he should bring his overwhelming force against us, he deceived himself, as much as when he supposed it possible to intimidate the British nation. But he reckoned also upon the weakness of our government, the aid which would be given him by a licentious press, and the progress of those insane opinions which lead to revolution and ruin. His councils were directed by a single will steadily to one end; and whatever he undertook was vigorously pursued, and with means proportioned to the object so as to render success certain, as far as depended upon well-concerted plans, adequate preparations, and military strength. But the constitution of a British cabinet, in which contrarious opinions are reconciled by concessions and compromises, seemed in time of war to insure vacillation and weakness. The whole conduct of the war had confirmed him in this judgement, which the history of all our wars since the days of Marlborough74 exemplifies. Every administration, this like the last, and the last like that before it, treading one after another in the same sheep-track of fatuity, proceeded without system, and with no other views than such as the chance and changes of the hour presented. Setting sail before the wind from whatever quarter it happened to blow, they steered a driftless course, though the shallows lay full before them. The same tardiness, the same indecision, the same half measures, the same waste of men and money in nugatory expeditions, had characterized them all. Moreover the government itself had been weakened by the concessions which faction, ever active and ever alert, had extorted from a series of feeble ministers during this long reign. At a time when discontent was at its height at the close of the American war, the House of Commons passed a resolution that the power of the Crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished; a resolution that carried with it its own refutation, being itself a decisive proof of the weakness of the government under which and against which it was passed. More than once had a ministry been forced upon the King in opposition to his own principles of policy, and his personal feelings. That which had happened might again happen; changes, always possible in a country which was governed so little by system, and so much by popular opinion, might again force the Whigs into power: ♦Hopes of Buonaparte.♦ and under their ascendancy Buonaparte might reasonably75 expect to conclude a peace. With all the ports of the continent at his command he could build ships in any number, but it was only during peace that sailors could be trained to man them; a few years of peace would suffice for this, and then he might meet us on the seas with a superiority of force which would give him the power of landing an army at any time upon our shores. For this reason and for this alone, he was sincerely desirous of making peace with England, being the surest means by which he could hope to bring about the overthrow of this hated and otherwise invulnerable enemy. But while the war continued that enemy could do him no farther hurt, he was at leisure to continue his system of aggrandizement; wherever there was no sea to intervene, there was nothing to withstand him. His projects even in the fullest extent of their ambition were thought feasible by the public, who throughout Europe were dazzled by his success: his power appeared irresistible; and his empire was supposed by all persons to be firmly established, except by those who having a firm reliance upon the moral order of the world, believed that the triumph of evil principles could only endure for a time, and that no system can be permanent which is founded upon irreligion, injustice, and violence.
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CHAPTER II.
SECRET TREATY OF FONTAINEBLEAU. INVASION OF PORTUGAL. REMOVAL OF THE ROYAL FAMILY TO BRAZIL. STATE OF PORTUGAL UNDER THE FRENCH USURPATION.
Conjectures concerning the projects of Buonaparte.♦
All opposition to Napoleon Buonaparte being at an end upon the continent of Europe, men began to inquire what would be the next object of his restless ambition. Would he execute his long meditated designs against the Turkish empire, parcel out Greece in tributary dukedoms, principalities and kingdoms, and make his way again to Egypt, not risking himself and his army a second time upon the seas, but by a safer land journey, conquering as he went? The imbecile policy of the English in Egypt, the state of that country, and the importance of which it might become in the hand of an efficient government, seemed to invite the French emperor to direct his views thitherward, if he understood his real interests as a conqueror. The scene also which had recently been enacted at Paris by the Jews in Sanhedrim assembled, under his command, appeared to have more meaning than was avowed. It was little likely that he should have convened them to answer questions which there was no reason why he should ask; or to lend their77 sanction to the conscription, which requiring no other sanction than that of his inexorable tyranny, set all laws, principles, and feelings, at defiance. And though doubtless the deputies indulged gratuitously in impious adulation, yet it was apparent that in some of their blasphemies they echoed the pretensions of the adventurer whom they addressed. When in their hall of meeting they placed the Imperial Eagle over the Ark of the Covenant, and blended the cyphers of Napoleon and Josephine with the unutterable name of God; impious as this was, it was only French flattery in Jewish costume. But when they applied to him the prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel, when they called him “the Lord’s anointed Cyrus,” ... “the living Image of the Divinity,” ... “the only mortal according to God’s own heart, to whom He had entrusted the fate of nations, because he alone could govern them with wisdom;” ... these things resembled the abominable language of his Bishops and of his own proclamations, too much to escape notice. And when they reminded him that he had subdued the ancient land of the eternal pyramids, the land wherein their ancestors had been held in bondage, that he had appeared on the banks of the once-sacred Jordan, and fought in the valley of Sichem in the plains of12 Palestine,78 such language seemed to indicate a project for resettling them in the Holy Land, as connected with his views concerning Egypt. Nay, as he had successively imitated Hannibal, and Alexander, and Charlemagne, just as the chance of circumstances reminded him of each, was it improbable that Mahommed might be the next object of his imitation? that he might breathe in incense till he fancied himself divine; that adulation, and success, and vanity, utterly unchecked as they were, having destroyed all moral feeling and all conscience, should affect his intellect next; and that, from being the Cyrus of the Lord, he would take the hint which his own clergy had given him, and proclaim himself the temporal Messiah? Nothing was too impious for this man, nothing too frantic; ... and, alas! such was the degradation of Europe and of the world, England alone excepted, that scarcely any thing seemed to be impracticable for him.
Another speculation was, that, in co-operation with the Russians, he would march an army through Persia to the Indies, and give a mortal blow, in Hindostan, to the prosperity and strength of England; for it was one of the preposterous notions of our times, that the power of England depended upon these foreign possessions, ... the acquirements, as it were, of yesterday! An ominous present was said, by the French journalists, to have been sent him by the Persian sovereign, ... two scimitars, one of which had belonged to Timur, the other to Nadir Shah.79 The intrigues of his emissaries at the Persian court, and with the Mahrattas and Mahommedan powers in Hindostan, were supposed to render this project probable; and the various routes which his army might take were anxiously traced upon the map, by those whose forethought had more of fear in it than of wisdom and of hope. But Buonaparte was now enacting the part of Charlemagne, and had not leisure, as yet, to resume that of Alexander. He had determined upon occupying the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, believing that because of the helplessness of one country, and the state of the court in the other, he might obtain possession of both without resistance, and become master of Brazil and of the Spanish Indies.
Don Manuel de Godoy, Duke of Alcudia and Prince of the13 Peace, was at this time minister in Spain. He was an upstart, who, because he had been the Queen’s paramour, had attained the highest power in the state, and by whatever qualities he ingratiated himself with the King, possessed his confidence and even his friendship. There was no jealousy in the Queen’s attachment to this minion; she gave him one of the royal family in marriage, but the private life of the favourite continued to be as infamous as the means whereby he had risen. It is said that there was no way so certain to obtain promotion,80 as by pandering to his vices; and that wives, sisters, and daughters, were offered him as the price of preferment in a manner more shameless than had ever before been witnessed in a Christian country. Certain it is, that the morals of the Spanish court were to the last degree depraved, and that this depravity affected all within its sphere like a contagion. He was rapacious as well as sensual; but as his sensuality was amply fed by the creatures who surrounded him, so was his avarice gratified by the prodigal favour of the crown, and Godoy had nothing to desire beyond the continuance of the authority which he enjoyed. The cruel part of his conduct must be ascribed to that instinctive dread of wisdom and hatred of virtue which such men necessarily feel in their unnatural elevation.
Other ministers may have been as vicious; many have been more vindictive; and in ordinary times Godoy might have filled his station without more disgrace than certain of his predecessors, and even with some credit, for vanity led him to patronize arts and science in conformity with the fashion of the age. Pestalozzi’s scheme of education was introduced under his favour into Spain; and vaccination was communicated to the Spanish dominions in America, and to the Philippines by an expedition sent for that sole purpose. But his lot had fallen in times which might have perplexed the ablest statesman; and in proportion as he was tried his incapacity became notorious to all men. The81 measures for which he was rewarded with a princedom evinced his ignorance of the interests, and his insensibility to the honour of the country. ♦Disgraceful terms of that peace.♦ By the peace of Basle he ceded to the French republic the Spanish part of Hispaniola, which was the oldest possession of the Spaniards in the New World, and therefore, neglected and unproductive as it was, the pride and the character of the nation were wounded by the cession, a cession14 in direct contravention to the treaty of Utrecht. By the subsequent treaty of St. Ildefonso he contracted an alliance with France offensive and defensive against any power on the continent; now France was the only continental power with whom there was any probability that Spain could be involved in war; the advantage therefore was exclusively on the side of France: and at the time these terms were made, the French republic, notwithstanding its successes in the peninsula, would have been well contented with securing the neutrality of the Spaniards.
Under the reign of Charles IV. the whole machine of government was falling to decay. The navy which Charles III. left more formidable than it had ever been since the time of the Armada, was almost annihilated. The army was in the worst state of indiscipline and disorder; the finances were exhausted, and public credit at the lowest ebb: foreign commerce had been destroyed by the war with England; and France,82 meantime, insatiable in its demands upon a helpless ally, continued to exact fresh sacrifices of men and treasure. ♦Godoy not corrupted by France.♦ It has been loudly asserted that Godoy was corrupted by the French government; any thing was believed of one so profligate and so odious, as if because he would have scrupled at no wickedness, he was in like manner capable of any folly. But with what was France to purchase the services of one whose greediest desires were gratified? If Godoy had not felt and thought like his sovereign, he could not so entirely have obtained his confidence; now the disposition of the King could not be doubtful. Charles had been compelled to abandon the coalition, and ally himself with France, but he acted from his heart when he entered into that coalition, not when he withdrew from it. For the example of the French revolution could not but be regarded with fear by all crowned heads, and especially by those who were conscious that the state of their own kingdoms cried aloud for reform; and even when the frenzy fit of that revolution subsided, and anarchy in natural progress had ended in military despotism, it was not possible that princes who reigned by hereditary right should behold without secret apprehensions the establishment of a new dynasty upon an ancient throne. ♦Disposition to join with the allies before the peace of Tilsit.♦ At the first gleam of hope the court of Spain ventured to indicate its disposition: when Prussia began that war which the peace of Tilsit terminated, a rash proclamation was issued at Madrid, exhorting83 the nation not to be dismayed, for it yet possessed great resources, and a powerful armament was about to be formed. ♦De Pradt. Memoires sur la Revolution d’Espagne, p. 15.♦ This proclamation Buonaparte received upon the field of battle at Jena, and from that hour, as he afterwards declared, swore in his heart that the Spaniards should dearly abide it. That deep determination was, however, carefully dissembled. The French embassador presented a strong remonstrance upon the occasion, in reply to which, Godoy made the sorry excuse that the preparations were intended against an apprehended attack from the Emperor of Morocco. Shallow as this pretence was, it was allowed to pass, and no other immediate consequence ensued.
While Charles and his favourite were vainly wishing to free themselves from the yoke of France, that very disposition on their part induced the Prince of Asturias to regard Buonaparte with complacency and hope. The father’s favourite has seldom been the minister of the son. Those Spaniards who were excluded from any share in public affairs under the administration of Godoy, looked naturally to the Prince, and formed a party round him, in which men of the most opposite elements were combined. ♦Parties in favour of the French.♦ When the French revolution began, the young and the ardent in Spain, as in the rest of Europe, eagerly adopted principles which promised a new and happier order of things: they were comparatively far less numerous than in any other country, partly because of the state of the press, still more84 because of the feeling and devotion with which this nation is attached to its religion and all its forms. There were, however, many, and those of the best of the Spaniards, who hoped to obtain that reformation in their government by the assistance of France, which without such assistance they knew it would not only be hopeless, but fatal to attempt. The attachment which they had formed to the French republic, many of these men transferred to the French empire, with an inconsistency so gross and monstrous, that it might seem impossible, if we had not seen it exemplified among ourselves: having, because of their principles, at first acquired a party feeling, they deluded themselves by supposing that in serving their party they promoted their principles, till at last they had no other principle than the mere party interest itself. Another class of Spaniards had been hostile to the French revolution till its character was changed by Buonaparte: they felt no dislike to the system of his government, because they were accustomed to despotism, and the acts of personal atrocity which he had committed did not sufficiently alarm them. The unhappy circumstance with which the English war had commenced, irritated them against Great Britain, and that sentiment of indignation naturally biassed them toward France. There were some of a third description, who had neither heart nor understanding to feel for the honour, or to wish for any improvement in the state of their native land,85 but who desired a change for the mere sake of acquiring authority: these men were enemies to the Prince of the Peace, not for his vices, his injustice, and his political misconduct; they hated him because they envied him, and wished to exercise a like tyranny themselves.
The people felt the degradation of Spain, and imputed to Godoy not only their present difficulties, but the whole train of inveterate evils under which the country was groaning. Never had any former favourite been so universally detested. His administration would have been instantly at an end, if the Prince’s party could have appealed to public opinion; but being precluded by the nature of a despotic government from any other means of attempting his overthrow than those of intrigue15, and knowing that all86 intrigues against him at their own court would be dangerous, as well as ineffectual, they hoped to accomplish this object by help of a foreign power. ♦The French embassador advises the prince to solicit an alliance with Buonaparte’s family.♦ The Prince being a widower, Beauharnois, the French embassador at Madrid, seeing the disposition of the government to shake off its subjection to France, and that of Ferdinand and his friends to get the administration of affairs into their hands through the influence of France, hinted to him how advantageous it would be to connect himself by marriage with the new imperial family. Whether he was instructed to invite a proposal to this effect or not, it is believed that he acted with perfect good faith, and indeed he might well have imagined that in so doing he acted for the interest of both countries. It was at this time generally believed in Spain that Buonaparte, being justly offended with Godoy for the intention which he had manifested before the battle of Jena, would insist upon his dismissal from the government. The friends of Ferdinand therefore never doubted but that he would gladly contract the proposed alliance with the heir of the Spanish monarchy, a connection which would at once gratify his pride, strengthen his power, and secure a wavering ally. The better men of this party seem also to have been persuaded, that under the protection of Buonaparte they might relieve the country from some of its manifold grievances; nor would this persuasion have been unreasonable, if any ties could have restrained the merciless ambition of the man in87 whom they confided. For though it might be his policy now to keep Spain in her present weakness, and consequent dependence, yet when his own blood acquired an interest in the prosperity of that kingdom, it might fairly be expected that those salutary changes which were essential to its welfare would be promoted by him, and peaceably effected under his auspices.
The prince applies secretly to Buonaparte.♦
Influenced by such considerations, the Prince addressed a secret letter to Buonaparte. It had long, he said, been his most earnest desire to express, at least by writing, the sentiments of respect, of esteem, and of attachment which he had vowed to a hero who eclipsed all those that preceded him, and whom Providence had sent to preserve Europe from the total subversion with which it was threatened, to secure her shaken thrones, and to restore peace and happiness to the nations. He was unhappy enough to be compelled by circumstances to conceal so just and laudable an action as if it were a crime, ... such were the fatal consequences of the excessive goodness of the best of kings. His father was endowed with the most upright and generous heart; but artful and wicked persons too often took advantage of such a disposition to disguise the truth from their sovereigns, and none but the Emperor Napoleon could detect the schemes of such perfidious counsellors, open the eyes of his dearly beloved parents, render them happy, and provide at the same time for his happiness, and for that of the Spaniards.88 “Therefore,” said the Prince, “I implore with, the utmost confidence your majesty’s paternal protection, to the end that you will not only deign to accord me the honour of allying me with your family, but that you will smooth all the difficulties, and remove all the obstacles which might oppose this object of my wishes.” ♦Buonaparte intends to seize the Peninsula.♦ When Buonaparte was thus entreated by the Prince to lend his influence for the removal of Godoy, he was carrying on secret negotiations with that favourite. Long before he received this letter, he had determined upon seizing Spain; his measures for subjecting it by force had been arranged. But it was necessary to begin by occupying Portugal, and to dupe the Spanish court into a co-operation against a friendly and unoffending power, a power too with which it was connected by the closest ties: thus would the purposes of France be every way served; for while she derived from Spain all the assistance that could be desired, the Spanish government would be preparing the way for its own destruction, and depriving itself at the same time of all claim to compassion when the hour arrived.
The first step toward the accomplishment of his design, was to remove the best troops from Spain; and accordingly, at the requisition of the French government, in conformity to treaty, 16,000 men, the flower of the Spanish army, were marched into the North of Germany, under the Marquis de Romana, and another division into Tuscany, under D. Gonzalo O’Farrill. The next89 business was to introduce French troops into Spain, and for this the occupation of Portugal afforded a pretext. Buonaparte, who was regardless of all other engagements, however solemnly contracted, was always, as far as his power extended, faithful to his vows of vengeance. Exasperated by the service which the Portugueze ships had rendered in blockading Malta, he had said in one of his Egyptian proclamations, that there would come a time when the Portugueze should pay with tears of blood for the affront which they had offered to the French republic. Heavy payments of a different kind had already been exacted. ♦Condition of the Portugueze government.♦ During many years the Prince of Brazil had submitted to insults which he had no means of resenting, and from time to time had bought off at a heavy price the threat of invasion, in the hope of preserving his kingdom by these expedients till peace should be restored to Europe. So often had these threats been renewed, and these respites purchased, that Portugal incurred the burden and the shame of paying tribute, without obtaining the security of a tributary state. Upon this, however, that poor government relied. They thought themselves safe because France obtained greater sums from them in this manner than could be drawn from Portugal as a conquered country; because much of the treasure from Spanish America, so large a portion of which found its way into France, reached Europe in safety by the assistance of the Portugueze; and because they had every reason to suppose that if90 an attack upon them should at any time be seriously intended, the court of Madrid would use its utmost influence to avert their danger for its own sake. Could any reliance have been placed either upon the understanding or the honour of the Spanish king, upon royal and national faith, the plainest common interest, and the closest ties of alliance, the Portugueze government would have reasoned justly. But Charles IV. was one of the weakest of sovereigns; his favourite had obtained the administration for his vices, not for his talents, which were of the meanest order; and it was easy for Buonaparte to deal with such men, and make them at once the instruments and the victims of his ambition.
Portugal required to act against England.♦
A month after the peace of Tilsit had been concluded, the French and Spanish embassadors jointly informed the court of Lisbon that it must shut its ports to England, arrest the English subjects, and confiscate the English property in Portugal, or expose itself to an immediate war with France and Spain; if these propositions were not complied with, they were instructed to leave the country in three weeks. Without waiting for the reply, Buonaparte seized the Portugueze ships in his harbours. The crisis was now manifestly at hand; there no longer remained a hope of purchasing farther respite, and in the state to which the army had been reduced by long misrule, resistance was not thought of. The court of Portugal was weak even to helplessness, but it had the advantage of perfectly understanding the91 character of the two powers between which it was compelled to choose; knowing that every forbearance might be expected on the part of England, and on the part of France every thing that was oppressive and iniquitous. ♦Middle course proposed by the Portugueze government.♦ In full reliance therefore upon the justice and long tried friendship of Great Britain, the Prince informed the French government that he would consent to shut his ports, but that neither his principles of morality nor of religion would permit him to seize the persons and property of the British subjects, in violation of treaties and of the law of nations. At the same time the English were apprized that they would do well to wind up their affairs as speedily as possible, and leave the kingdom. A Portugueze squadron happened to be cruising against the Algerines, and the necessity of keeping on good terms with England till this should have re-entered the Tagus, was urged as a reason for temporising awhile, to which Buonaparte, eager as he was for ships, was likely to listen more readily than to any other plea. ♦Champagny’s report, in L. Goldsmith, v. iii. p. 253–255.♦ It was held out to him also, that as hostilities must be expected from England in case the rigour of the terms upon which France insisted were enforced, it would be prudent to send out the young Prince of Beira to Brazil, while the seas were still open, that his presence might secure the fidelity of the colonies.
The Portugueze ministers at Paris and Madrid have been accused of having betrayed their country at this time; more probably they were92 deceived and perplexed, and knew not how to advise; and thus the Portugueze government was left to act without any other information of the proceedings of the two hostile courts, than what it obtained from common rumour, or through the circuitous channel of England. Buonaparte’s intention was to secure the persons of the royal family if possible, but at all events to take possession of Portugal: this point was essential to his ulterior views. For this purpose a force had been collected under the title of the Army of Observation of the Gironde, ... a title which may have been intended to intimidate the government of Spain, for it was not even pretended that France could have any danger to apprehend in that quarter. Junot, who had been embassador at Lisbon, was appointed to the command, and he was on the way to Bayonne before the term expired which had been allowed to Portugal to choose its part. The Prince was prepared to make every sacrifice of interest and of feeling, so he might thereby save the country from an attack: the misery which the expulsion of the English, and the consequent loss of a flourishing and extensive commerce, must bring upon Lisbon and upon the whole kingdom, was yet less dreadful than the horrors of invasion at a time when defence appeared impracticable. He determined therefore, at the last, to comply with the demands of the besotted court of Spain, and of the tyrant who directed its suicidal measures, but not till the last. The French and Spanish93 legations were suffered to retire, because nothing but the last extremity could induce him, even in appearance, to commit an act of cruelty toward the English. ♦The French and Spanish embassadors leave Lisbon.♦ When these legations withdrew, the British residents were at the same time preparing with all speed for their compulsory departure: and so little did the Prince feel assured that he could preserve the country in peace by total submission to the iniquitous terms which were pressed upon it, that circular instructions were dispatched to the bishops and the heads of the religious orders, requiring them to register the plate of the churches, and send it to Lisbon or other places appointed for security.
While the Prince and his ministers were in this state of lamentable suspense, a secret treaty between France and Spain for the partition of Portugal was signed at Fontainebleau. By this extraordinary treaty, the King of Etruria ceding his Italian possessions in full and entire sovereignty to Buonaparte, was to have the province of Entre Minho e Douro, with the city of Porto for its capital, erected into a kingdom for him, under the title of Northern Lusitania. Alentejo and Algarve were in like manner to be given to Godoy16, in entire property and sovereignty, with the title of Prince of the Algarves; the94 other Portugueze provinces were to be held in sequestration till a general peace, at which time, if they were restored to the house of Braganza, in exchange for Gibraltar, Trinidad, and other colonies which the English had conquered, the new sovereign was, like the King of Northern Lusitania and the Prince of the Algarves, to hold his dominions by investiture from the King of Spain, to acknowledge him as protector, and never to make peace or war without his consent. The two contracting powers were to agree upon an equal partition of the colonial possessions of Portugal; and Buonaparte engaged to recognize his Catholic Majesty as Emperor of the Two Americas, when every thing should be ready for his assuming that title, which might be either at a general peace, or at farthest within three years therefrom; and he guaranteed to him the possession of his dominions on the continent of Europe south of the Pyrenees.
A secret convention, which was concluded at the same time, agreed upon the means for carrying this nefarious treaty into effect. Twenty-five thousand French infantry and 3000 cavalry were to enter Spain, and march directly for Lisbon; they were to be joined by 8000 Spanish infantry and 3000 cavalry, with 30 pieces of artillery. At the same time 10,000 Spanish troops were to take possession of the province between the Minho and Douro, and the city of Porto; and 6000 were to enter Alentejo and Algarve. The French troops were to be maintained by Spain95 upon their march. As soon as they had entered the country (for no opposition was expected), the government of each portion of the divided territory was to be vested in the Generals commanding, and the contributions imposed thereon accrue to their respective courts. The central body was to be under the orders of the French Commander-in-chief. Nevertheless, if either the King of Spain, or the Prince of the Peace, should think fit to join the Spanish troops attached to that army, the French, with the General commanding them, should be subject to his orders. Another body of 40,000 French troops was to be assembled at Bayonne, by the 20th of November at the latest, to be ready to proceed to Portugal, in case the English should send reinforcements there, or menace it with an attack. This army, however, was not to enter Spain till the two contracting parties had come to an agreement upon that point.
This nefarious treaty, whereby the two contracting powers disposed of the dominions of two other sovereigns, with whom the one was connected by the nearest and closest ties of relationship and alliance, and both were at peace, was carried on with a secresy worthy of the transaction. D. Eugenio Izquierdo, an agent of Godoy’s, was employed to negotiate it unknown to the Spanish embassador in France, and the whole business is said to have been concealed from the ministers17 in both countries. It was signed on96 the 27th of October. The convoy with the English factory on board had sailed from the Tagus on the 18th, and never had a day of such political calamity and general sorrow been known in Lisbon since the tidings arrived of the loss of Sebastian and his army. ♦The English residents expelled from Lisbon.♦ Their departure was followed by a proclamation for the exclusion of British commerce: it had ever, the Prince said, been his desire to observe the most perfect neutrality during the present contest; ♦Edict for the exclusion of British commerce. Oct. 22.♦ but that being no longer possible, and having reflected at the same time how beneficial a general peace would be to humanity, he had thought proper to accede to the cause of the Continent by uniting himself to the Emperor of the French and the Catholic King, in order to contribute as far as might be in his power to the acceleration of a maritime peace. Whatever hopes he might have indulged of satisfying France by this measure were soon dissipated, when the Portugueze97 embassadors at Paris and Madrid, having been formally dismissed, arrived at Lisbon. The former of these, D. Lourenço de Lima, is said to have travelled night and day, for the purpose of dissuading the Prince from removing to Brazil, ... a measure which the French apprehended, and which of all others would oppose the greatest obstacles to their projects. D. Lourenço is said to have represented that this step would make him the victim of the perfidious counsel of England, and at the same time provoke the utmost wrath of the great Napoleon. That emperor, he assured the Prince, had the highest respect for his virtues, and harboured no hostile intentions against him: he would be completely satisfied if Portugal would only sequester the British property, and arrest the few British subjects who remained. To this last sacrifice the Prince now consented, trusting to the generosity of England, and probably also, as has been well observed by a Portugueze historian, ♦Neves, i. 151.♦ secretly resolving to indemnify the sufferers whenever it should be possible, ... for this is consistent with his character. ♦Edict for registering the persons and property of the English.♦ Under these feelings he issued an edict for registering all English persons and property which were still to be found in his dominions. The order was reluctantly given, and leniently carried into effect; but it compelled the British minister, Lord Strangford, to take down the arms of Great Britain from his house: ♦The British minister leaves Lisbon.♦ he demanded his passports, and went off to a squadron under Sir Sidney Smith, which98 had been ordered to cruise off the mouth of the Tagus, and Lisbon was then declared to be blockaded.
A Russian squadron enters the Tagus.♦
While the court was waiting in the most anxious incertitude the result of its submission, the agitation of the Lisbonians was increased by the appearance of a Russian squadron in the Tagus. Admiral Siniavin with nine ships of the line and two frigates had been acting in the Archipelago against the Turks, in alliance with England; and now on his way home to act against England in conformity with the plans of Buonaparte, he found that he could not possibly reach the Baltic before it would be frozen. He would have put into Cadiz to winter there, but the British admiral who commanded upon that station would not permit him, rightly judging that as the disposition of the Russian government was now known to be unfriendly towards England, it was not proper that these Russian ships should be allowed to enter an enemy’s port, and thus effect a junction with an enemy’s fleet. Siniavin therefore proceeded to the Tagus; his unexpected arrival at such a juncture was naturally supposed to be part of the tyrant’s gigantic plans, and it was not doubted now that Buonaparte meant to make Lisbon one of the ports from which the British dominions were to be invaded. The circumstance was in reality accidental, but at such a moment it appeared like design, and the blockade was therefore more rigorously enforced.
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If Buonaparte’s only object had been to force the Prince into hostilities with England, he would now have been satisfied. A courier had been immediately dispatched to inform him that all his demands were complied with, and the Marquis de Marialva speedily set out after the courier with the title of Embassador Extraordinary; ... while he was on his way the French troops had entered Portugal. The tyrant thought to entrap the royal family; but disdaining in the wantonness of power to observe even the appearances of justice or common decorum toward a country which he so entirely despised, the success of his villany was frustrated by his own precipitation. From the commencement of these discussions the Prince had declared that if a French army set foot within his territories he would remove the seat of government to Brazil. The French expected that the rupture with England would deter him from pursuing this resolution; should it prove otherwise they thought to prevent it by their intrigues and their celerity: and such was the treachery with which the Prince was surrounded, and the want of vigilance in every branch of his inert administration, that Junot was within an hundred miles of Lisbon before any official advices were received that he had passed the frontiers! Even private letters which communicated intelligence of the enemy’s movements and the rapidity and disorder of the march, were detained upon the road.
Junot had advanced from Salamanca by forced100 marches; he reached Alcantara in five days, the distance being forty leagues, by mountainous and unfrequented roads and in a bad season. No preparations had been made for the French on the way; even at Ciudad Rodrigo the governor had received no intimation of their coming. The Spanish forces, which according to the secret convention of Fontainebleau were to be under the French general’s orders, had been instructed to join him at Valladolid and Salamanca; by his directions however they waited for him at Alcantara; scarce half a ration could be procured there for the half-starved and exhausted troops, and this the Spanish general Carraffa took up upon his own credit. ♦Junot’s proclamation from Alcantara. Nov. 17.♦ From thence Junot issued a proclamation to the Portugueze people, in which among his other titles he enumerated that of Grand Cross of the Order of Christ, an order conferred upon him by that very Prince whom he was hastening to entrap and depose. “Inhabitants of the kingdom of Portugal,” it said, “a French army is about to enter your country; it comes to emancipate you from English dominion, and makes forced marches that it may save your beautiful city of Lisbon from the fate of Copenhagen. But for this time the hopes of the perfidious English government will be deceived. Napoleon, who fixes his eyes upon the fate of the Continent, saw what the tyrant of the seas was devouring in his heart, and will not suffer that it should fall into his power. Your Prince declares war against101 England; we make therefore common cause. Peaceable inhabitants of the country, fear nothing! my army is as well disciplined as it is brave. I will answer on my honour for its good conduct. Let it find the welcome which is due to the soldiers of the Great Napoleon; let it find, as it has a right to expect, the provisions which are needful.” The proclamation proceeded to denounce summary justice against every French soldier who should be found plundering, but its severest threats were against the Portugueze themselves. Every Portugueze, not being a soldier of the line, who should be found making part of an armed assembly, was to be shot, as well as every individual exciting the people to take arms against the French; wherever an individual belonging to the French army should be killed, the district was to be fined in not less than thrice the amount of its yearly rents, the four principal inhabitants being taken as hostages; and the first city, town or village in which this might happen, should be burnt and rased to the ground. “But,” said Junot, “I willingly persuade myself that the Portugueze will understand their own true interest; that aiding the pacific views of their Prince they will receive us as friends; and especially that the beautiful city of Lisbon will with pleasure see me enter its walls at the head of an army which alone can preserve it from becoming a prey to the eternal enemies of the Continent.”
The march from Salamanca had been so102 fatiguing that it was impossible for the troops to proceed without some rest. Junot had arrived there on the 17th of November. On the 18th he sent a reconnoitring party as far as Rosmaninhal, and they returned with intelligence that the country was neither prepared to resist them, nor aware of their approach. ♦The French enter Portugal.♦ On the 19th, the vanguard passed the frontier, and Junot, with the remainder of the first division of his army, followed the ensuing day. This division consisted of 8,600 men, with 12 field pieces. The second division, moving likewise upon Castello-Branco, entered by Salvaterra and Idanha-a-nova: its cavalry and guns, with the third division and the baggage, were detained some days by the sudden rise of the mountain streams. On the evening of the 20th there was a report in Castello-Branco that the French were at Zebreira: and at six o’clock, when it was hardly known whether the rumour were true or false, a French officer arrived to inform the magistrates that quarters must be made ready for General Laborde and a corps of 3000 men, who would be there in the course of two hours. Junot took up his quarters the next day in the episcopal palace, and manifested sufficient ill-humour that no preparations had been made for entertaining him. ♦Their rapacity upon the march.♦ The adjutants carried off some of the bishop’s valuables, overhauled his library in the hope of finding money concealed there, and not finding what they were in search of, demanded money, and obtained it. One of them, after they103 had left the city, returned from Sarzedas to borrow a farther sum in Junot’s name; nor was it known whether this was a fraudulent extortion of his own, or a courteous mode of robbery on the part of the general. ♦Neves, i. 199.♦ The night which the French passed in Castello-Branco is described by the inhabitants as an image of Hell. Junot had pledged his honour for their good conduct; but men and officers were, like their commander, as rapacious and as unprincipled as the government which they served. They were passing through a country where they experienced no resistance, and which they protested they were coming to defend; but they added wanton havoc to the inevitable devastation which is made by the passage of an army; the men pillaged as they went, and the very officers robbed the houses in which they were quartered; olive and other fruit trees were cut down for fuel or to form temporary barracks, houses and churches were plundered; and as if they had been desirous of provoking the Portugueze to some act of violence which might serve as a pretext for carrying into effect the threats which Junot had denounced, ♦Neves, 196–199.♦ they burnt or mutilated the images in the churches, and threw the wafer to be trodden under foot.
The vanguard of the French reached Abrantes on the afternoon of the 23d, and Junot arrived the next morning. The generals entered that city with all the cattle which they had been able to collect on the way, like border-men returning from a foraging party, and the booty was sold for104 their emolument. A detachment was immediately sent to secure Punhete, a town situated on the left bank of the Zezere, where it falls into the Tagus. Means also were taken to supply some of the wants of the army, after the manner of the French in a country where they called themselves friends, protectors, and allies. The Juiz de fora was ordered to collect rations for 12,000 men, and 12,000 pair of shoes; a threat was added of imposing upon the town a contribution of 300,000 cruzados novos; and the manner in which these orders were intimated, seemed to imply such consequences to the magistrate in case of non-performance, that he thought it prudent to consult his own personal safety by flight. Junot then ordered the son of the person in whose house he had taken up his quarters to assume the vacant office, though the young man was not only not qualified for the office, because he had not taken the degrees which are required for it, but was positively disqualified, being a native of the place. The whole city was in consternation, apprehending the most dreadful results if the demands of the French were not complied with. Messengers were dispatched to Thomar and through all the country round, to purchase all the shoes which could be found, and set all the craft to work: by these means, and by taking them from individuals, between 2 and 3000 pair were collected; with which Junot was fain to be satisfied, because he saw that no possible exertions could have procured more.105 These exactions were less intolerable to the Portugueze, than the insults and irreligion with which they were accompanied. A colonel who was quartered in a Capuchin convent made the Guardian pull off his boots, and after robbing the convent of the few valuables which it contained, threatened to fusilade him if he did not bring him money; the friar had no other resource but that of feigning to seek it, and taking flight. ♦Neves, 200–2.♦ In the church of St. Antonio the altars were used as mangers for the horses.
Junot was at Abrantes, within ninety-two miles of Lisbon, before the Portugueze government received any certain intelligence that the French had passed the frontier. The first advices came from Lecor, orderly adjutant to the Marquez d’Alorna, and a truer Portugueze than his commander. ♦Observador Portuguez, p. 12.♦ At the same time a flag of truce from the British squadron entered the Tagus; and the secret treaties of Fontainebleau were communicated to the Prince by Great Britain. D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho urged him to execute his resolution of removing to his possessions in Brazil, the only course which he could pursue with honour or with safety. Lord Strangford came on shore, and assured him on the word of a British ambassador and a British admiral, that the measures which had been taken against Great Britain were considered as acts of compulsion on his part, in no ways abating the friendship of that old ally, if he would avail himself of her friendship. In106 Brazil he had an empire to the growing prosperity of which he might now add by his presence; or he must inevitably be cut off from it by the nature of the maritime war, against which the combination of all the continental powers must be ineffectual.
The Prince’s determination was anticipated at Abrantes before it was known, and perhaps before he himself had decided how to act. Rumours were current there that he had already embarked part of the royal family, that many fidalgos had gone on board to accompany the court in its removal, and that the army which had bombarded and taken Copenhagen was on board the British squadron. These reports made Junot fear that the prey would escape him; and he was the more uneasy, because at a moment when every thing depended upon celerity, his march was impeded. There was the Zezere to cross, a river which in former wars had been considered as protecting Lisbon on this side, ... its depth and rapidity, and the height of its banks rendering it easy to defend the passage. A bridge of boats had been constructed at Punhete in the campaign of 1801, and afterwards broken up. Every exertion was now made to re-establish it; and in the meantime Junot sent off a courier with a confidential dispatch to the minister of war and foreign affairs, Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo, framed for the purpose of being communicated to the Prince. Intrigue and protestations, however, would no longer107 avail; the entrance of the French was an act of such unequivocal outrage, that its object could not be doubted, and the Prince prepared immediately for his removal. Europe had never yet beheld one of its princes compelled to seek an asylum in his colonies; such an intention had once been formed by the Dutch, but it was reserved for Portugal to set the first example in modern history.
Had there been a previous struggle, like that of the democratic cantons in Switzerland, or of the Tyrolese, such a termination would have been not less glorious than the most signal success. Preceded as it had been by long misgovernment, and all the concessions and vacillations of conscious imbecility, still it is among the most impressive as well as most memorable events in the annals of a kingdom fertile beyond all others in circumstances of splendid and of tragic story. The Prince had uniformly declared that to this measure he would resort, if the French entered Portugal; but he had not expected to be driven to it, and was not prepared for it. ♦Neves, i. 171.♦ So completely indeed had he relied upon the assurance of the French legation, and of Dom Lourenço de Lima, that he had publicly assured the people all had now been settled, and there no longer existed any cause of apprehension from France. The dismay and astonishment of the Lisbonians, therefore, may well be conceived, when a few days only after this declaration, they learnt that the French108 were at Abrantes, and saw the court making ready for immediate flight. The hurry and disorder of Junot’s march was not unknown; his artillery had been damaged, having been dragged by oxen and peasantry over mountainous roads, a great number of his horses had died upon the way overworked, and the men themselves had been marched so rapidly and fed so ill, that a large proportion of them were more fit for the hospital than for active service. The greater part of the Portugueze army was near the capital, and wretched as the state was to which it had fallen, neither the will nor the courage of the men was doubted. The English in the fleet, with a right English feeling, were longing to be let loose against the enemy: Sir Sidney offered to bring his ships abreast of the city, and there, seconded by the indignant populace, dispute every inch of ground with the invader: “Surely,” he said, “Lisbon was as defensible as Buenos Ayres!” Well might he thus feel and express himself who had defended Acre; and certain it is that Junot and all his foremost troops might have been put to the death which they had already merited at the hands of the Portugueze, if the Prince had given the word. ♦Manifesto of the court of Portugal.♦ But such an act of vengeance, just as it would have been, would have been advantageous to Buonaparte, by giving him a colourable pretext for treating Portugal as a conquered country: this the Prince knew; and it was in reliance upon his gentle and conscientious character, that Junot109 advanced in a manner which would else have appeared like the rashness of a madman.
The royal family had for some time past resided at Mafra; as soon as the emigration had been determined, they removed to Queluz, where they might be nearer the Tagus, and less exposed to any sudden attempt of the enemy. The Portugueze navy was ill equipped for sea; no care had been taken to keep it victualled, and it was now found that many of the water casks were rotten, and new ones were to be made. The morning of the 27th had been fixed for the embarkation, and at an early hour numbers of both sexes and of all ages were assembled in the streets and upon the shore at Belem, where the wide space between the river and the fine Jeronymite convent was filled with carts and packages of every kind. From the restlessness and well-founded alarm of the people, it was feared that they would proceed to some excess of violence against those who were the objects of general suspicion. The crowd however was not yet very great when the Prince appeared, both because of the distance from Lisbon, and that the hour of the embarkation was not known. He came from the Adjuda, and the Spanish Infante D. Pedro in the carriage with him; the troops who were to be on duty at the spot had not yet arrived, and when the Prince alighted upon the quay, there was a pressure round him, so that as he went down the steps to the water-edge, he was obliged to make way with his110 hand. He was pale and trembling, and his face was bathed in tears. The multitude forgot for a moment their own condition in commiseration for his; they wept also, and followed him, as the boat pushed off, with their blessings. There may have been some among the spectators who remembered that from this very spot Vasco de Gama had embarked for that discovery which opened the way to all their conquests in the East; and Cabral for that expedition which gave to Portugal an empire in the West, and prepared for her Prince an asylum now when the mother country itself was lost.
A spectacle not less impressive presented itself when the royal family arrived from Queluz. The insane Queen was in the first carriage; for sixteen years she had never been seen in public. It is said that she had been made to understand the situation of affairs, so as to acquiesce in what was done; and that when she perceived the coachman was driving fast, she called out to him to go leisurely, for she was not taking flight. She had to wait some while upon the quay for the chair in which she was to be carried to the boat, and her countenance, in which the insensibility of madness was only disturbed by wonder, formed a striking contrast to the grief which appeared in every other face. The widow Princess, and the Infanta D. Maria, the Queen’s sister, were in the next carriage, both in that state of affliction and dismay which such a moment might well occasion. The Princess of111 Brazil came next, in the octagon coach, with all her children, the nurse of the youngest babe, and the two Camareiras mores, or chief ladies of the bedchamber. She had been indefatigable in preparing for the voyage, and now she herself directed the embarkation of the children and domestics with a presence of mind which excited admiration. The royal family were distributed in different ships, not merely for the sake of being more easily accommodated, but that if shipwreck were to be added to their misfortunes, a part at least might probably be preserved.
The apprehension of this danger would occur more readily to the Portugueze than to any other people, because their maritime history is filled with the most dreadful and well-known examples; and the weather at the time of the embarkation gave a fearful specimen of what might be expected at that season. It blew a heavy gale, the bar was impassable, and continued so during the whole of the succeeding day. In the evening M. Herman, and a Portugueze, by name Jose de Oliveira Barreto, came with fresh dispatches from Junot; he had sent them down the river in pursuance of that system of deception which was to be carried on to the last. Their arrival produced no effect upon the determination of the Prince; but every hour added to the alarm and danger of his situation, and orders were given to dismantle the fortresses which commanded the river, and spike the guns in the112 batteries. During the night the storm abated, the weather was fair at daybreak on the 29th, a favourable wind sprung up, and the fleet crossed the bar when the enemy were just near enough to see their prey escape.
The fleet consisted of eight sail of the line, three frigates, and five smaller ships of war; besides these there were all the merchant-vessels that could be made ready, making in all a fleet of six-and-thirty sail. The nobles who accompanied the royal family, were the Duke of Cadaval, the Marquesses Angenja, Vago, filho, Lavradio, Alegrete, Torres Novas, Pombal, and Bellas; Counts Rodondo, Caparica, Belmonte, and Cavalleiro, Viscount Anadia; ♦Observador Port. 18.♦ Araujo, whom the public voice loudly, but erringly accused of treason, embarked with the other ministers. All the ships were crowded with emigrants, ... for every one who had the means was eager to fly from the coming ruin. The confusion had been so great, that families were separated; wives got on board without their husbands, ... husbands without their wives; children and parents were divided; ♦Neves, i. 180.♦ many were thus left behind, and many had the joy of meeting in Brazil when each believed that the other was in Portugal.
The Prince had appointed a regency the day before his embarkation, and the edict was made public on the next morning. Having endeavoured, he said, by all possible means to preserve the neutrality which his subjects had hitherto enjoyed, having exhausted his treasury, and after113 all other sacrifices, gone the length of shutting his ports against his old and faithful ally, the King of Great Britain, exposing thus the commerce of the country to total ruin, ... he saw that the troops of the Emperor of the French, to whom he had united himself on the continent in the persuasion that he should be no farther disquieted, were marching towards his capital. To avoid, therefore, the effusion of blood, for these troops came with professions of not committing the slightest hostility, ... knowing also that his royal person was their particular object, and that if he himself were absent, his subjects would be less disturbed, he had resolved for their sakes to remove, with the whole royal family, to his city of Rio de Janeiro, and there establish himself till a general peace. The persons whom he appointed to govern during his absence, were the Marquez de Abrantes, Francisco da Cunha de Menezes, lieutenant-general, the Principal Castro of the royal council, and Regidor das Justiças, Pedro de Mello Breyner, also of the council, and President of the treasury during the illness of Luiz de Vasconcellos e Souza, and Don Francisco de Noronha, Lieutenant-general, and President of the Board of Conscience. In failure of any of these, the Conde Monteiro Mor was appointed, who was also named for president of the Senado da Camara, with the Conde de Sampaio, or in his place Dom Miguel Pereira Forjaz, and the Dezembargador do Paço and Procurador da Coroa, Joam Antonio Salter de114 Mendonça, for the two secretaries. These governors were instructed to preserve, as far as possible, the kingdom in peace; to see that the French troops were well quartered and provided with every thing needful during their stay, to take care that no offence was offered them, or if offered, to punish it severely, and to preserve that harmony which ought to be kept with the armies of two powers to which Portugal was united on the continent.
Junot meantime had re-established the bridge over the Zezere, but not without difficulty. The river, at all times a strong and rapid stream, was swoln with rains; the work was more than once frustrated, and some of the workmen drowned. So impatient was he to proceed, that he had begun to pass over his men in boats. Hastening on with his usual rapidity over the marshes of Gollegam, he reached Santarem to dinner on the 28th. Here he met the messenger on his return whom he had dispatched from Abrantes, and the report of this person increased his anxiety. He ordered the Capitam Mor de Aviz, at whose house he was entertained, to provide him a horse: this gentleman happened to possess a very beautiful one, and Junot discovering that he had attempted to conceal the animal, was only dissuaded from putting him to death by the supplications of his wife; but he made him walk beside him, bare-headed, to the jail, and then dismissed him with every mark of ignominy. Time was when a Portugueze officer would have115 wiped out such an injury in the blood of him who inflicted it; it is fortunate that in this instance a forbearance suited to the times was shown. The French general reached Cartaxo that night; about an hour after midnight he was awakened with intelligence that the royal family had actually embarked, and it produced a fit of rage like madness.
The next day he was met by a deputation whom the governors sent to compliment him on his approach, a measure upon which the people commented with just severity. ♦Neves, i. 134.♦ A few persons volunteered on the same obsequious service; men, probably, who having adopted the principles of the revolution in its better days, adhered to the French party under all its changes. In the course of the day the advanced guard arrived in the immediate vicinity of the city, and Junot himself saw the ships with that prey on board in the hope of which he had advanced with such rapidity, conveying the family of Braganza beyond his power, and beyond that of his mighty master. ♦Obs. Port. p. 19.♦ The troops arrived without baggage, having only their knapsacks, and a half gourd slung from the girdle as a drinking cup; their muskets were rusty, and many of them out of repair; the soldiers themselves mostly barefoot, foundered with their march, and almost fainting with fatigue and hunger. The very women of Lisbon might have knocked them on the head. Junot reached Sacavem between nine and ten at night. The next morning the royal guard of116 police went on to meet him at an early hour. Without halting in Lisbon, he hurried on to Belem, and entering the battery of Bom-successo, satisfied himself by ocular demonstration that the Portugueze squadron was beyond his reach; ♦Neves, i. 215.♦ he fired, however, upon those merchant-ships, which not having been ready in time, were now endeavouring to escape. Very many were thus detained, for the Prince’s orders to spike the guns had only been partially obeyed, having been countermanded by the governors; ♦Neves, i. 184.♦ and this was another of their acts for which the people could assign no adequate or excusable cause. Junot immediately sent a battalion to garrison Fort St. Juliens, and then returned to Lisbon, with hardly any other guard than some Portugueze troops whom he had met on the way and ordered to follow him; thus accompanied, he paraded as in triumph through the principal streets. It was raining heavily, yet the streets were filled with a melancholy and wondering crowd. The shops were shut, the windows and varandas full of anxious spectators. The gestures of all those who saluted him as he passed, either for former acquaintance, or flattery, or fear, he returned with studied courtesy and stateliness. In this manner he proceeded to the house of Baraō de Quintella, in the Rua d’Alegria, one of the most opulent of the Portugueze merchants. The palace of Bemposta had been prepared for him, and the Senado da Camara assigned for his household expenses a monthly contribution of 12,000 cruzados. ♦Neves, i. 216–7.♦ He received the money, and compelled Quintella to117 be at the whole charge of his establishment.
During the night before his entrance the streets had been placarded with a proclamation in French and Portugueze, saying, “Inhabitants of Lisbon, my army is about to enter your city. I come to save your port and your Prince from the malignant influence of England. But that Prince, otherwise respectable for his virtues, has let himself be dragged away by the perfidious counsellors who surrounded him, to be by them delivered to his enemies: his subjects were regarded as nothing, and your interests were sacrificed to the cowardice of a few courtiers. People of Lisbon, remain quiet in your houses; fear nothing from my army, nor from me: it is only our enemies and the wicked who ought to fear us. The great Napoleon, my master, sends me for your protection; I will protect you.” This proclamation was not without effect upon that numerous class of the community who think little and know nothing. Only those persons, indeed, who were in the confidence of government, knew what was the real state of things; and many persuaded themselves the sole object of the French was to occupy the ports, that British commerce might be effectually excluded. ♦Miserable plight of the French who first entered.♦ The state in which the French entered, very much contributed to this short delusion; for they came in not like an army in collected force, with artillery and stores, ready for attack or defence, but like stragglers seeking a place of security after some118 total rout. Not a regiment, not a battalion, not even a company arrived entire: many of them were beardless boys, and they came in so pitiable a condition, as literally to excite compassion and charity18; foot-sore, bemired and wet, ragged and hungered and diseased. ♦Neves, i. 213.♦ Some dropped in the streets, others leant against the walls, or lay down in the porches, till the Portugueze, with ill-requited humanity, gave them food, and conveyed them to those quarters, which they had not strength to find out for themselves. Junot, however, well knew that he risked nothing by this disorder; his first object was speed, his next security; and while he was pushing on with the van of his army, Laborde, who had accompanied him as far as Santarem, ♦Neves, i. 213.♦ remained in that city to collect the following troops and provide the means of transport.
December.
Arrival of the second division.♦
The next day, December 1, was the anniversary of the Acclamation, ... of that revolution which in 1640 had restored Portugal to the rank of an independent kingdom, and given its crown to the rightful heir. What a day for those inhabitants of Lisbon who loved their country, and were familiar with the history of its better ages! The second division was now come up, with the artillery and baggage; ... powder waggons creaked119 along the streets; thousands, and tens of thousands, whom the destruction of trade and the dissolution of government had thrown out of employ, were wandering about the city, and the patroles and the whole force of the police was employed in calming and controlling the agitated multitude. The parish ministers went from house to house, informing the inhabitants that they must prepare to quarter the French officers, and collecting mattresses and blankets for the men. In the midst of all this so violent a storm of wind arose19, that it shook the houses like an earthquake, and in the terror which it occasioned many families fled into the open country: windows were blown in, and houses unroofed; the treasury and arsenal were damaged, and the tide suddenly rose twelve feet. ♦Obs. Port. 22.♦ The troops entered Lisbon mostly by night, and without beat of drum. On the 3rd, 11,000 men were posted in the city, from Belem to the Grilo, and from the castle to Arroios; and as the first fruits of that protection which the religion of the country was to experience, all persons in the great convents of Jesus, the Paulistas, and St. Francisco da Cidade, who had any relations by whom they could be housed, were ordered to turn out, that the French soldiers might be accommodated in their apartments. This measure produced a great effect upon those who had for a moment been120 deluded by the professions of the enemy. The generals of division and brigade took possession of the houses of the principal merchants, and of those fidalgos who accompanied the Prince.
Every day, almost every hour, brought with it now some new mark of French protection. No sooner had troops enough been introduced into Lisbon to enforce the demand, than the merchants were called on for a compulsory loan of two million cruzados; and this at a time when their property, to an immense amount, had been seized in France, when a British squadron was blockading the Tagus, when the ships from Brazil were warned off by that squadron, and sent to England, foreign commerce utterly destroyed, and the internal trade in that state which necessarily ensued when the spring which gave motion to the whole was stopped. ♦A Frenchman added to the Regency.♦ M. Herman, who had been sent to demand satisfaction from the court of Lisbon in 1804, for having suffered the ambassador, General Lasnes, to depart in disgust, was added to the regency by an act of Junot’s pleasure, and made minister of finance and of the interior by an appointment of the Emperor; the date of which afforded decisive proof, if any proof had been wanting, that whatever the conduct of the Prince might be, Buonaparte had resolved to usurp the kingdom. ♦Obs. Port. p. 44. Neves, ii. 225.♦ Another Frenchman was nominated to the new office of Receiver-general of the contributions and revenues of Portugal. It was now plainly seen upon what tenure the people of Lisbon held121 their remaining property; and that they might fully understand upon what tenure they held their lives, the threatening proclamation which Junot had issued at Alcantara was now reprinted and circulated in the capital.
The next measure was an edict for confiscating English goods, ordering all persons who had any British property in their possession to deliver an account of it within three days, on pain of being fined in a sum ten times the amount of the property concealed, and of corporal punishment also, if it should be thought proper to inflict it. On the same day the use of fire-arms in sporting was prohibited throughout the whole kingdom: all persons detected in carrying fowling-pieces or pistols without a license from General Laborde, the French commandant of Lisbon, were to be considered as vagabonds and highway-murderers, carried before a military commission, and punished accordingly. ♦Use of arms prohibited.♦ The next day the use of all kind of arms was prohibited; and the wine sellers were ordered to turn out all Portugueze, French, or other soldiers, at seven in the evening, on pain of a heavy fine, and of death for the third offence. More troops came daily in; they were quartered in the convents, and their women with them, ... a fresh outrage to the religious feelings of the people. Complaints were made that the officers required those persons upon whom they were billeted to keep a table for them: an order was issued, in which Junot expressed his displeasure at this, saying, that the122 French officers in Portugal were to consider themselves as in garrison, and had no right to demand any thing more than their lodging, fire, and lights. He reminded them also that the Emperor had placed them on the same footing as the grand army, in consequence of which they would regularly receive extraordinary pay sufficient to defray all their expenses. This was intended for publication in foreign newspapers, as a proof of the good order which the French observed; ... while the superior officers not merely compelled those upon whom they had quartered themselves to furnish a table, but every kind of provision also for the entertainments which they thought proper to give. Many persons abandoned their houses to these imperious guests, and retired into the country; still they were required to support the establishment, and answer all the demands which the intruders chose to make.
Pastoral letter of the Cardinal Patriarch.♦
There now appeared a pastoral letter from the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon, written in obedience to the desire of Junot, and according to his suggestions. The patriarch began by alluding to his age and infirmities; these, he said, prevented him from addressing his flock in person on the present occasion; but he could still, as their father and pastor, speak to them in this manner, so that in the day of judgment the Lord might not charge him with neglect of this important duty. “Beloved children,” he continued, “you know the situation in which we find ourselves; but you are not ignorant how greatly the123 divine mercy favours us in the midst of so many tribulations. Blessed be the ways of the Most Highest! But it is especially necessary, beloved children, that we should be faithful to the immutable decrees of his divine providence; and first we should thank him for the good order and quietness with which the kingdom has received a great army coming to our succour, and giving us the best founded hopes of prosperity. This benefit we owe equally to the activity and prudence of the general in chief, whose virtues have long been known to us. Fear not then, beloved children; live in security at home and abroad; remember that this is the army of Napoleon the Great, whom God hath destined to support and defend religion, and to make the happiness of the people. You know him, and the whole world knows him; confide implicitly in this wonderful man, whose like hath not been seen in any age! He will shed upon us the blessings of peace, if you obey his determinations, and if ye love each other, natives and strangers, with brotherly charity. Religion, and the ministers of religion, will then be always respected; the clausure of the spouses of the Lord will not be violated; and the people, being worthy of such high protection, will be happy. Demean yourselves thus, my children, in obedience to the injunction of our Lord Jesus Christ. Live subject to those who govern, not only for the respect which is due to them, but because conscience requires you so to do.” In conclusion,124 he entreated all his clergy, by the bowels of Christ Jesus, to concur with him in impressing upon the people the duty of resignation and submission. ♦Conduct of the Inquisitor general.♦ The Inquisitor general repeated the same strain of adulation and servility: some of the prelates followed the example, and the clergy were ordered in circular letters to enforce these principles from the pulpit and the confessional. Whatever may have been the secret wishes of these men, however their language may have belied their hearts, certain it is that they now betrayed their country, and as far as in them lay contributed to its degradation and destruction.
By such means and such agents Junot thought to prepare the minds of the Portugueze for fresh humiliation. On the day after the publication of this pastoral, he went on board the Russian admiral, and when he embarked the French flag was hoisted on the arsenal. This was the first time that it had been planted in Lisbon; all eyes were attracted to it by a salute which was fired on the occasion, and the sight exasperated a people who perhaps more than any other European nation are remarkable for national pride. The general feeling was sufficiently apparent in the murmurs and agitation of the populace; but they had no leaders, and in murmurs it seemed to spend itself. ♦Dec. 13.♦ Two days the French colours remained flying there. On the third a large body of troops was drawn up in the great square of the Rocio, and Junot with his staff, and a numerous train of officers, appeared in state. He125 thanked them in the Emperor’s name for the constancy with which they had endured the hardships of their march. They had rescued, he said, this fine city from oppression, ... they had saved it from disorder; and they had now the glory of seeing the French flag planted in Lisbon. He concluded with three cheers for Napoleon: the troops took up the cry; at the same moment the French colours were hoisted on the castle, and a salute of twenty-five guns was fired and repeated by all the forts upon the river. A deep and general murmur ran through the multitude of spectators: at this moment the Marquez d’Alorna entered the square; the people regarded him as one of the generals to whom they might look up in their hour of deliverance, and they repeatedly cheered him as he passed. A spark then would have produced an explosion, and Lisbon was never in such danger of a massacre: happily there was no man bolder than his comrade, to step forward and provoke it; the troops marched off, and the crowd dispersed. But the national spirit which had thus systematically been outraged was burning in every heart. It was Sunday, a day on which more people are always in the streets than on any other, and now the confluence was increased by the perturbed state of the general feeling. Towards evening some French soldiers, riding their horses to water through the Terreiro do Paço, were hooted by some of the populace, and they on their part returned insult for insult. A quarrel ensued, a126 Portugueze of the police guard interfered, and the French, thinking that he interfered as a party and not as a mediator, seized him and delivered him to their principal corps de garde which was in the same great square. The populace attempted to rescue him: they attacked the guard with sticks and stones, ... and were on the point of overpowering and disarming them, when some patroles of the police came up, and succeeded in appeasing the tumult.
Junot had given a grand dinner to celebrate the events of the day: the governors and the greater part of the nobles were present at this festival for the degradation of their country. He was repeatedly called out, as messenger after messenger arrived with news of the tumult; the cause of these frequent interruptions was indicated by his thoughtful manner, and the guests were presently informed that the people had mutinied, and that they themselves were to be considered as hostages. It was believed that he had invited them for that purpose, and it seems as if he had determined to provoke a tumult for the purpose of intimidating the Portugueze. The disturbance in the Terreiro do Paço had been put an end to, but the crowd had not dispersed, and the popular feelings were still in the highest excitement. Things were in this state when Junot adjourned with his guests to the opera; he had taken possession of the royal family’s box in the centre of the theatre, and from thence he ordered the French flag to be displayed over the pit127 during this night’s representation. The French who were present saluted it with shouts; many of the Portugueze left the theatre, and the news of this fresh insult increased the indignation of the people. The patroles could no longer restrain them; men, women, and boys ran through the streets, exclaiming “The five wounds for ever, and down with France!” It was fortunate for the Lisbonians that they had at this time a well disciplined police guard, raised by the Comte de Novion, a French emigrant, whom General Frazer, when he commanded the British forces in Portugal, had first patronized and recommended to the Portugueze government, and who having rendered essential service to the city by the establishment of this body, was now become one of the most active and efficient agents of the new tyranny. These guards formed the principal part of the force which was called out against the people, and they levelled their pieces so as to spare their countrymen. The firing continued between three and four hours; but for this cause, and because the mob, who had neither arms, nor plan, nor leaders, were more loud than dangerous, few lives were lost. The firing ceased about nine o’clock: the remainder of the night was actively employed by the French; when morning appeared, cannon were seen planted at the door of the commander in chief, 1200 men were drawn up in the square, with horses and artillery, and the streets were every where filled with patroles of soldiers. In the course of the day a few128 straggling Frenchmen were killed, and some seven or eight of the people. The mob saw the danger of attacking so overpowering a force, and did not venture to engage against musketry and cannon with their knives. Had they been armed, nothing could have preserved Lisbon from a massacre. The few native corps which still remained in the city were confined to their quarters during the tumult; they would else probably have taken part with their countrymen. A corps at Almada, hearing the stir and the discharge of musketry, endeavoured to get boats to cross over for this purpose. ♦Neves, i. 274.♦ The populace were in a state of frantic agitation; at noon-day groups were collected in the streets, looking at the sky, and affirming that they saw a blazing star which portended the vengeance of God against their abominable oppressors.
These events convinced Junot at once of the disposition and the weakness of the people. He forbade immediately all assemblies of whatever kind, created a military tribunal, and decreed that every individual found with arms in an assembly should be carried before this tribunal, and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, or to death if he had used his arms against any person whatever. Death was in like manner denounced against the leaders of any assembly or tumult. These regulations, he said, were made for the security of the good and honourable inhabitants of Lisbon, whom he did not confound with a few wretches. Those wretches who had seduced the people he knew,129 and they should pay with their heads for the insult which they had offered to the French flag. These words stood as a text to the proclamation, “Rebellion is the greatest of crimes.” Junot had neither principles nor feelings to deter him from committing any wickedness which might suit with his policy or his inclinations; in the present instance nothing was to be gained by cruelty, and therefore no execution followed the insurrection, nor were the persons who had been taken at the time proceeded against. This forbearance the Portugueze imputed to fear; for however he might despise their present means, their numbers and their temper made them formidable, and the sight of the English fleet continually excited their hopes and his uneasiness. He began immediately to take the most effectual measures for securing himself. New batteries were formed at the castle, and works thrown up there from which the city might at any time be laid in ruins: and the provincial troops whom the Prince had called to Lisbon to cover his embarkation were now ordered back to their respective provinces, as the first step toward that breaking up of the Portugueze army which was intended. On the 17th, which was the queen’s birthday, the guards and patroles were doubled, and Novion paraded the streets in person. The midnight ceremonies of the church at Christmas were forbidden; the bells also were forbidden to be sounded on any pretext during the night; and when the host went out, a hand-bell only was to be rung before130 it, and that but thrice; once at its going out, once to call good Christians to the aid of the dying person, and again at its return.
Obs. Port. p. 52.
Neves, i. 288.♦
The edict for the discovery and confiscation of English property and goods had produced little effect. The three days allowed for sending in the returns having elapsed, the term was prolonged for eight days more, with heavy denunciations against those who should attempt to evade it. That part of the edict which related to English property might easily be obeyed by those who chose to obey it; but the confiscation of all English goods in a city where half the goods were English, was as impracticable as it was oppressive; and the day after Junot had issued his second decree upon this subject, he found it necessary to publish a third, modifying the former two, and in fact confessing their absurdity. It appeared, he said, that under these decrees the merchants and shopkeepers could not dispose of many articles of British manufacture; that the want of these articles kept out of the market a great number of things which were in daily use, ♦Dec. 19. Obs. Port. p. 50.♦ and would raise the prices of those which were not prohibited: such articles, therefore, as were not actually the property of British subjects, might be sold, on condition that the owners gave in an account of the British goods in their possession, and obtained permission to sell them from the commissary at Lisbon, or some public functionary in the provinces; that this permission should not be granted unless the kind, quality, measure,131 quantity, and price of the articles for sale were specified; that the vendor should hold himself responsible for the amount of all which he disposed of, and should for that purpose enter in his books the quantity of the thing sold, the price, and the name of the purchaser; and give security for this if it were required.
The trade of Lisbon needed not these new shackles. The stagnation of commerce was indeed beheld by the French General with complacency, as tending to the accomplishment of Buonaparte’s desires against England; but in its more immediate effects he felt the security of his army in some degree implicated. Lisbon is dependent for great part of its corn upon foreign supplies: the failure of this supply had been contemplated by the Prince’s government as one of the consequences to be expected if he submitted to the demands of France; and when he gave orders to shut the ports against England, an edict was issued, prohibiting all kinds of cakes and biscuits, that flour might be reserved for bread alone. ♦Neves, 263.♦ Grievously as a scarcity of corn is felt when it occurs in our own country, in Portugal it is more literally a necessary of life; for the Portugueze consume little animal food, and the potatoe is hardly known among them; nor, indeed, is its culture successful. When Junot took possession of Lisbon, it was apprehended that in the course of two or three months there would be an actual want of bread. The Russians consumed about 10,000 rations132 daily; a consumption which made the French, as well as the inhabitants, regard them with an evil eye. Junot disliked them on another account: he suspected that they favoured the escape of British subjects and Portugueze emigrants to the British squadron; and the Russian officers kept aloof from the French, as if they were shocked at the profligacy of their conduct. But before the close of the year intelligence arrived that Russia had declared war against Great Britain; an event which excited as much exultation in the French and their few partizans, as grief in the great body of the people; for, notwithstanding the peace of Tilsit, many were they who still rested their hopes upon the strength of Russia, and the personal character of the Emperor Alexander.
Whatever jealousy had been felt upon this score was thus removed; but the danger of scarcity still remained, and Junot’s first care was to provide for the subsistence of the army, whatever might become of the inhabitants. Many of the provisional authorities, in their fear of famine, laid an embargo upon the corn within their respective jurisdictions: this the French General forbade by a timely edict. ♦Feb. 16, 1808.♦ The Portugueze magistrates found themselves under a government which exercised an unremitting vigilance, and made itself felt every where; ♦Observador Port. 175.♦ and the orders of that government were obeyed with a promptitude and activity which had long been unknown in Portugal. Full use was thus made133 of the resources of the country. Some corn he procured from Spain: it would have been a heavy cost had it entered into his system to pay any part of the expenses; ♦Neves, 264.♦ Spain having little to export, the distance being great, and the roads and the means of carriage equally bad. ♦December.♦ All farmers and corn-dealers who might be indebted to the crown were ordered to pay half the amount in grain, and deliver it to the French commissariat at reduced prices. The march of the French through the country had been like that of an army of locusts, leaving famine wherever they passed; the tenantry, some utterly ruined by the devastation, and all hopeless because of the state to which Portugal was reduced, abandoned themselves to the same kind of despair which in some parts of the New World contributed to exterminate the Indians, and at one time materially distressed and endangered the merciless conquerors. ♦The Portugueze leave their fields unsown.♦ They thought it useless to sow the seed, if the French were to enjoy the harvest; and so generally did this feeling operate, that the regency which acted under Junot found it necessary to issue orders, compelling them to go on with the usual business of agriculture. ♦Dec. 29.♦ The encouragement of agriculture served also as a pretext for breaking up the Portugueze army. ♦Dec. 22.♦ Every subaltern and soldier who had served eight years, or who had not served six months, was discharged, and ordered to return to his own province. A like order was issued by the Spanish general at Porto; and the134 Marques del Socorro, who commanded at Setubal as governor of the new kingdom in which the Prince of the Peace was to be invested, disbanded by one sweeping decree all the Portugueze militia, discharged all the married men from the regular army, and invited all the others to apply for leave of absence.
In the partition and invasion of Portugal, the court of Madrid was as guilty as that of the Thuilleries; but the conduct of the Spaniards during the invasion was far different from that of their treacherous allies. The division of General Carraffa, which entered with Junot, and was under his command, separated from him at Abrantes to secure Porto, in case the army which was destined for that purpose should be delayed. This general had acquired the favour of Junot by his exertions at Alcantara, and had so far profited by his lessons, as to imitate him at humble distance; raising a contribution of 4000 cruzados at Thomar, and seizing 10,000 from the depositary at Coimbra; ... but he was the only Spaniard who thus disgraced himself. ♦Neves, i. 189.♦ The force with which he accompanied Junot was little more than 2000 men; it was doubled by the gradual arrival of reinforcements, and was then annexed to the division of D. Francisco Taranco, ♦Taranco takes the command there.♦ which, according to the convention of Fontainebleau, should have consisted of 10,000 men, but did not in reality exceed six, till its number was thus made up. Taranco’s army was formed in Gallicia, of which kingdom he was135 Captain-General: he entered on the side of the Minho, taking the Valença road; and having reached Porto, issued a proclamation, much in the style of that which Junot had sent before him, saying that he was come to deliver Portugal from the disgraceful yoke of England, and assist her in taking vengeance upon the English for their ferocious treachery toward all the nations of Europe: fair promises followed of strict discipline and just dealing, and bloody denunciations of punishment if resistance were attempted. ♦Good conduct of his troops.♦ The Spanish general’s conduct was wiser than his language; his promises were strictly observed, and no crime was added to that of the iniquitous attack and intended usurpation. He was, indeed, left at full liberty to act as his own disposition and principles might incline; for these provinces were, according to the treaty of Fontainebleau, to be formed into a kingdom for the former Prince of Parma, as an indemnification for Etruria; and as his consent had not been thought necessary to the arrangement which was to deprive him of one kingdom, neither were his instructions for the government of another.
The Spanish general who entered Alem-Tejo to take possession of Godoy’s kingdom was less fortunate; ♦Neves, i. 307.♦ for he was compelled to raise contributions from a ruined people, though in other respects considerable latitude seems to have been given him, in deference to his character and talents. This general was the Marques del Socorro,136 D. Francisco Maria Solano, destined to leave an unhappy name in the history of his country. During many years he had been governor of Cadiz, where he had employed an almost unlimited power in the most honourable and beneficial manner. It was his delight to ornament the city, and to promote the convenience and comfort of the inhabitants. One of the beneficial acts of his government was to abolish the practice of burying in the churches: this he accomplished, not without difficulty, during one of those contagious fevers which of late years have so frequently visited that part of Spain. ♦Jacob’s Travels.♦ He is also entitled to be remembered with respect for the manner in which he maintained the old humanities of war with the English squadron which so long blockaded Cadiz: this conduct was the more honourable, because Solano was decidedly a partizan of France, and had acquired a dangerous love of political experiments in the revolutionary school. He had now an opportunity of indulging this passion; and the measures which he attempted proved the goodness of his intentions, as well as the errors of his judgement. While Junot’s edicts were in one uniform spirit of tyranny, Solano was offering rewards to those who should raise the greatest crops, or breed the most numerous flocks and herds. ♦His schemes for the improvement of society.♦ He addressed circular instructions to the judges, enjoining each of them, when he had notice of any civil suit, to call the parties before him, hear their respective137 statements, and advise them to settle the dispute by arbitration. If they persisted in their appeal to the laws, he was then to require from each, before the process went forward, a written statement of the case, and the documents which were to support it. If the thing contested did not exceed eighty milreis in value, he might pronounce summary justice without farther examination: the losing party, however, retaining a right of appeal to the superior courts. If the value exceeded that sum, the parties were again to be exhorted to come to some accord, or at least to agree upon shortening the process, and avoiding all unnecessary delay and expense; and the judges were empowered to do this, even without the consent of the parties, and come as summarily as possible to the merits of the case. Another of his projects seems to have been borrowed from the policy of the Peruvian Incas, or the government of Japan. Every parish was to be divided into districts, containing not less than one hundred houses, nor more than two. Each district was to choose one among its inhabitants, with the title of Commissioner, whose duty it should be to make out a list of all the members of his district, their ages and occupations; to interfere in all family disputes, for the purpose of accommodating them; and to keep all persons to their respective employments. If they were not obedient to his admonitions he was to denounce them to the magistrates, that due punishment might be inflicted. ♦Observador Portuguez, 144–150.♦ He was also to138 walk his rounds for at least an hour every night, accompanied by four of the most respectable men of the district, to see that no prohibited games were played in the taverns, and that nothing was committed offensive to good morals.
Such were the projects with which Solano amused himself at Setubal! The conduct of his soldiers easily accommodated itself to the good disposition of their chief. Accustomed to the same habits of life, attached to the same forms of worship as the Portugueze, and speaking a language so little different that they mutually understood each other, the Spaniards lived among them like men of the same country; and, as long as the power remained in their hands, the people of Alem-Tejo and of the northern provinces experienced none of those insults and oppressions which the French inflicted wherever their authority extended. In Lisbon the burthen was at once heavier than in other places and more galling; and most persons who had the power of removing into the country retired from those daily and hourly vexations which aggravated their sufferings. The rapacity of the French leaders opened a surer asylum for others. Notice was given that all Brazilians who wished to return to their native land might obtain passports, and be permitted to embark in neutral ships. All who could invent any pretext for availing themselves of this permission hastened to purchase it; and the money which the French139 thus exacted was cheerfully paid as the price of deliverance. The ships which carried Kniphausen colours took out many emigrants in the dress of sailors, who smeared their hands with pitch, the better to disguise themselves. ♦1808. Jan. 5.♦ The Nuncio20, who during these transactions demeaned himself with great propriety, and repeatedly solicited passports for Brazil, that he might follow the court to which he was appointed, succeeded at last in getting on board a licensed vessel, unknown to Junot, and reaching England in safety, went from thence to Rio de Janeiro. Meantime the most rigorous measures were devised to prevent any person from escaping to the English squadron. All the fishing boats were arranged in divisions, which were denoted by letters, and the boats then numbered; and each had its letter and number painted on the bow and quarter in white characters a foot long. The master of every boat was bound to carry a list, specifying the letter of its division, the number of his boat, his name, his dwelling-place, and the number and names of the men on board. This paper was to be his passport at the different batteries, and his protection from the watch-boats which patrolled the river, and were charged to apprehend every person whose name was not140 inscribed in the list, and to seize every vessel by which any part of the edict was infringed, as a prize. The magistrate of every district was to deliver in a list of all the owners of fishing boats in the corresponding division, in order that their property might be answerable for any infraction of these rules: a counter list was to be kept on board the floating battery. All the owners of all the divisions were to appear every Saturday at this floating battery, there to have their papers verified. Every boat which had any communication with the English squadron was to be confiscated; and all were bound to be within the bar at sunset on pain of being fined one piece for the first offence, three for the second, and of confiscation and corporal punishment for the third.
The sight of the British squadron off the mouth of the Tagus continually kept alive the hopes of the Portugueze. Crowds of artizans who had been thrown out of employment used to assemble upon the heights of Santa Catharina, ♦Neves, i. 261.♦ of the Chagas, Buenos Ayres, and the other eminences, fixing their longing eyes upon the English fleet, counting its number, and oftentimes deluding themselves with a belief that it was entering the river to deliver Lisbon. It was thought necessary to forbid these assemblages. Junot affected to ridicule this popular hope, ♦Neves, i. 245.♦ and said, in scorn of the Marqueza de Angeja, who was known frequently to gaze toward the same object, that she would make an excellent wife for King Sebastian. But his own secret feelings were141 discovered by the falsehoods which were sedulously circulated respecting England. A pamphlet was published which pretended to describe the actual state of that country; and which, the better to deceive the people, was made by the manner of its license to appear as if it had been printed under the Prince’s government. It represented our population at less than eleven millions, our army as short of 100,000 men, our fleet in great part laid up for want of naval stores; our debt insupportable, our paper-money at a discount, our custom-houses almost shut up for want of any thing to do; more than a million of manufacturers ruined, and publicly crying out for peace, agriculture decaying for want of hands and of commerce, and the people in despair, unable longer to support the burthen and endure the misfortunes of a destructive war. To excite the hatred of the Portugueze, ♦Neves, ii. 8.♦ it was affirmed by Junot that the Prince had not been conveyed to Brazil by the English, but that they had conducted him and his fleet, with all the treasures on board, to England.
Junot, it is said, was not without some apprehensions of the displeasure of Buonaparte for having suffered this prize to escape him. When that tyrant was exasperated by the failure of his commanders, he seldom condescended to ask whether success had been possible: in the present instance he either was or affected to be satisfied; and the principles upon which he had thus far proceeded were now made known to the world142 in a report or M. Champagny, his minister for foreign affairs: it bore date a few days before the secret treaty of Fontainebleau. ♦Oct. 21, 1807.♦ After the peace of Tilsit, this minister said, France and Russia had combined to restore peace to the world, the sole object of all the Emperor Napoleon’s labours, of all his triumphs, of all his innumerable sacrifices. He had a right to call upon the continental powers to maintain their neutrality against England; he had a right to demand that all Europe should concur in re-establishing the peace of the seas, and those maritime rights which England had haughtily declared she would respect no longer. All governments ought to make war against the English; they owed this to their own dignity, they owed it to the honour of their people, they owed it to the mutual obligations by which the sovereigns of Europe are connected. There was not any sovereign who would not acknowledge, that, if his territory should be violated to the injury of the Emperor of the French, he would be responsible. For instance, if a French vessel were seized by the English in the ports of Trieste or Lisbon, the sovereigns to whom those ports belong are bound to make the English respect their territory by force; otherwise they would make themselves the accomplices of England, and place themselves in a state of war with the Emperor of France. When, therefore, the Portugueze government suffered its vessels to be searched by English ships, its independence was143 violated, with its own consent, by the outrage done to its flag, just as it would have been if England had violated its territory or its ports. ♦1808. January.♦ For the ships of a power are as portions of its territory which float upon the seas, and which, being covered by its flag, ought to enjoy the same independence, and to be defended against the same attacks. The conduct of Portugal, therefore, gave the Emperor Napoleon a right of proposing to it the alternative of making common cause with him in maintaining the rights of its flag, and declaring war against England, or of being considered as an accomplice in the evil which might result to his Imperial Majesty from that violation.... Such was the law of nations as laid down by Buonaparte’s minister, M. Champagny, and such the logic by which Portugal was proved to have placed itself in a state of war with France!—M. Champagny proceeded to affirm that Portugal had pronounced her own fate. She had broken off her last communications with the continent in imposing upon the French and Spanish legations the necessity of quitting Lisbon. Her hostile intentions, which the language of perfidy and duplicity had ill concealed, were then unveiled. Not only were the English and their property placed in safety, but her military preparations were directed against France; and she waited only for the arrival of the English fleet and army which had plundered Denmark to avow herself. This curious paper concluded in a manner worthy of its reasoning and its veracity. If,144 it said, this war was to make Portugal undergo the fate of so many states which had fallen victims of the friendship of England, the Emperor Napoleon, who sought not for such successes, would without doubt regret that the interest of the continent should have rendered it necessary. His views, which had constantly been raised with his power, showed him in war rather a scourge for humanity than a new prospect of glory; and all his wishes were that he might devote himself wholly to the prosperity of his people.
Jan. 2.♦
A second report of the same minister was published at the same time. The house of Braganza, it said, had delivered itself up to the English with all that it could carry away, and Brazil from henceforward would be only an English colony. But Portugal was at length delivered from the yoke of England. Her coasts had been left without defence; and England was at this time threatening them, blockading her ports, and wishing to ravage her shores. Spain, also, had had fears for Cadiz, and now was fearing for Ceuta. Toward that part of the world the English appeared to be directing their secret expeditions: they had landed troops at Gibraltar; they had assembled there those who had been driven from the Levant, and part of those whom they had collected in Sicily. Their cruisers upon the coast of Spain were become more vigilant; they seemed to wish to revenge themselves upon that kingdom for the disgrace which they had suffered in its colonies. The145 whole of the peninsula ought particularly to fix the attention of his Imperial Majesty, whose wisdom would dictate to him such measures as the state of things required. ♦Jan. 6.♦ This paper was followed by a report from General Clarke, the minister of war, who announced that the corps of observation of the Gironde under General Junot had conquered Portugal; ♦The conscription for 1809 required.♦ and advised that the conscription for the year 1809 should be called out, because of the necessity of shutting the ports of the continent against their enemy, and of having considerable forces at every point of attack, in order to profit by the fortunate circumstances which might arise for carrying the war into the heart of England, of Ireland, and of the Indies. “Although,” said the General, “the indignation of all Europe is roused against England, although France has at no time possessed such armies, this is not yet enough; English influence must be attacked wherever it exists, till the moment when the sight of so many dangers shall induce England to remove from her councils the oligarchs who direct them, and intrust the administration to wise men, capable of reconciling the love and the interest of their country with the interest and the love of the human race. A vulgar policy,” he pursued, “would have induced your Majesty to disarm, but that policy would be a scourge for France; it would render imperfect the great results which you have prepared. Yes, Sire, far from diminishing your armies, your146 Majesty ought to increase them, till England shall have acknowledged the independence of all powers, and restored to the seas that tranquillity which your Majesty has secured to the continent.... Doubtless your Majesty must suffer in requiring new sacrifices and imposing new burthens upon your people; but you ought to yield to the cry of all the French, ... no repose till the seas are set free, and till an equitable peace has re-established France in the most just, the most useful, and the most necessary of her rights.” ♦Jan. 21.♦ Accordingly, 80,000 conscripts, of the conscription of 1809, were, by a decree of the senate, placed at the disposal of government: they were to be taken from the youths born in the year 1789; according to the conscription laws, twenty was the age at which they were ripe for slaughter, but the practice of dispensing with a year had already been begun. ♦Threats against England.♦ The minister of state, M. Regnaud de St. Jean d’Angely, pronounced an harangue upon this occasion. “A holy and powerful league,” said he, “has been formed, to punish the English oligarchy, to defend the right of nations, to revenge humanity. From the Baltic to the Mediterranean, from the Nile to the Neva, there hardly remain for the ships of Great Britain any shores where they may land, any points where they are not forbidden to touch. But it is not enough, by a just reciprocity, to have pronounced against England this tremendous sentence of outlawry among nations; no rest must be given her in the147 seat of her iniquitous dominion, nor upon any of her coasts, nor in any of her colonies, nor in any of those parts of the globe where she is not yet interdicted. Repulsed from one part of the world, and menaced in all the other, England must not be suffered to know where to direct the little military force which she can command; and our armies, more formidable than ever, must be ready to carry our victorious and avenging eagles into her possessions. The pillage of the arsenal and port of Copenhagen, the emigration of the Portugueze fleet, have not left the continent without ships: our legions may yet reach the English militia; Ireland may still look for succours against oppression; India may still expect her deliverers.”
Well might the French nation have shuddered at the prospect of interminable war which was thus held out by the ministers of a tyrant, whose ambition increased with his power. He found, however, implicit and servile obedience in the nation. Their crime brought with it its curse, new successes only served as pretexts for demanding more sacrifices; and at a moment when France had not an enemy upon the whole continent of Europe, and a larger military force than had ever before existed, more conscripts were thus called for in advance! But though Buonaparte at this time despised the military force of Great Britain as heartily as he hated its naval power, neither London, nor Ireland, nor India, were as yet his objects. His projects for seizing148 the whole Spanish peninsula were now mature, and these projects were probably communicated to Junot by dispatches which arrived from Milan the second week in January. A few days afterward that General went with more than his usual pomp to the Foundery, destroyed the portraits of the Braganzan kings, and gave orders that the Portugueze arms should no longer be placed on the cannon. He gave orders also to deface the royal arms which were carved in stone over the entrance, but no Portugueze could be tempted to commit this act of treason; and when some French soldiers broke the crown and defaced the shield, no sooner had they left the place than the women gathered up the fragments to preserve them as relics. The final act of usurpation was not long delayed. ♦February.♦ Early on the morning of the first of February the movements of the troops indicated that some great measure was about to be announced, for which the public mind was to be prepared by intimidation. Cannon were planted in the Rocio; the streets from thence to head-quarters were lined with soldiers; and Junot, with all the parade of military pomp and power, proceeded to the palace of the Inquisition, where the Regents held their sittings. ♦Junot declares that the Portugueze government is dissolved.♦ Troops followed him, filling the lobbies of that execrable edifice, and extending even to the table where these poor puppets of authority were seated: amid this scene of noise and tumult and indecorum he read a paper, of which nothing more could be collected than149 that it pronounced the extinction of the Portugueze government, and the consequent dismission of the Regents from office. Rockets gave the signal when the General came out, and salutes of artillery from the castle and all the forts and batteries insulted the afflicted and groaning people. The city was soon placarded with a proclamation in French and Portugueze, saying that all uncertainty was now at an end, the fate of Portugal was decided, and her felicity secured, because Napoleon the Great had taken her under his omnipotent protection. The Prince of Brazil, in abandoning Portugal, had renounced all right to the sovereignty of that kingdom. The House of Braganza had ceased to reign, and it was the will of the Emperor Napoleon that the whole of that fine country should be administered and governed in his name, and by the General in chief of his army. ♦Junot appointed governor for the Emperor Napoleon.♦ “The duties,” said Junot, “which this mark of benignity and confidence on the part of my master imposes upon me, are difficult to fulfil, but I hope worthily to discharge them. I will open roads and canals, that agriculture and national industry may once more flourish. The Portugueze troops will soon form one family with the soldiers of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Jena, and of Friedland; and there will be no other rivalry between them than that of valour and discipline. The good administration of the public revenues will secure to every one the reward of his labours. Public instruction, that parent of national civilization, shall be150 extended over the provinces, and Algarve and Beira shall each have one day its Camoens. The religion of your fathers, the same which we all profess, shall be protected and succoured by that same will which restored it in the vast empire of France, but freed from the superstitions which dishonour it. Justice shall be equally administered, and disembarrassed of the delays and arbitrary will which paralysed it; the public tranquillity shall no more be disturbed by robbers, and deformed mendicity no longer drag its filth and its rags through this superb capital. Inhabitants of Portugal, be secure and tranquil! Resist the instigations of those who would excite you to rebellion, and who care not what blood is shed so it be the blood of the continent. Betake yourselves with confidence to your labours; you shall enjoy the fruits. If it be necessary that in these first moments you should make some sacrifices, it is that the government may be enabled to ameliorate your condition. They are also indispensable for the subsistence of a great army, which is required for the vast projects of the Great Napoleon. His vigilant eyes are fixed upon you, and your future happiness is secure. He will love you as he loves his French vassals: study therefore to deserve his goodness by your obedience to his will.”
A second decree, bearing date on the same day, was promulgated the next. It explained the form in which Portugal was from that time forward to be governed, in the name of the151 Emperor of the French, by the General in chief of the French army in that country. There was to be a council of government, composed of the General as president, a secretary of state for the administration of the interior and of the finances, with two counsellors of government, one for each department; a secretary of state for the departments of war and the marine, with a counsellor of government for the same departments; and a counsellor of government for the superintendence of justice and public worship, with the title of Regedor. The secretary-general of the council was to be keeper of its archives. M. Herman and M. Lhuitte were the two secretaries of state: the former had D. Pedro de Mello and the Senhor d’Azevedo for his secretaries; the latter had the Conde de S. Payo. The principal Castro was named for Regedor, and M. Vianez Vaublanc secretary-general. There was to be in every province an administrator-general, with the title of Corregedor Mor, to direct all the branches of administration, to watch over the interests of the province, and to point out to the government the improvements which ought to be made in it; on which subjects he was to communicate with the home secretary and the Regedor. The province of Estremadura was to have two of these Corregedores: one residing at Lisbon, whose jurisdiction was confined to that capital and its term; the other for the rest of the province, and residing out of it, at Coimbra. There was also to be in each152 province a general officer, to maintain order and tranquillity: his functions were purely military, but in all public ceremonies he was to take the right hand of the Corregedor Mor. This precedence was not required to prove to the people that they were under a mere military government.
The device of Buonaparte, an eagle upon an anchor, was now placed over the arsenal; the official seals were ordered to bear the same impress as those of the French empire, with this inscription, “Government of Portugal:” and on the same day that possession was thus taken, and protection promised, an edict was made public, dated from Milan Dec. 23, imposing a war contribution-extraordinary of an hundred million of francs upon the kingdom of Portugal, as a ransom for individual property of every kind. A second article of this memorable decree directed the French general to take the necessary means for promptly collecting this contribution; and a third declared that the property of the Queen, the Prince Regent, and all the royal family, should be sequestered, and that of all the fidalgos who accompanied him also, unless they should return by the 15th of February. The decree originally fixed the first, but as it was not published till the second, Junot ventured to extend the term: even then, however, it served only to show how little the framer of such decrees considered what was possible; how impudently he set even the forms of equity at defiance. It was now explained what those sacrifices153 were which the people had been told on the preceding day were necessary to enable the government to ameliorate their condition. The sum to be levied amounted in Portugueze money to forty million cruzados. Junot decreed that the two millions already paid, which he raised as a loan, and now called a contribution, should be accounted as part of the sum, and allowed for in the final payment. Six millions were to be paid by the commercial part of the nation at three instalments; on the first of March, the first of May, and the first of August. All goods of English manufacture being, on account of their origin, liable to confiscation, were to be ransomed by the merchants and tradesmen who possessed them, at a third of their value. All the gold and silver of all the churches, chapels, and fraternities in Lisbon and its district was to be carried to the mint within fifteen days; no other plate being excepted than what was indispensable for the decency of public worship. In the provinces the collectors of the tenths were to receive the church plate and transmit it to the mint, and the amount was to be carried to the contribution. Archbishops, bishops, religious orders and superiors of either sex, who possessed any revenue from land, or capital of any kind, were to contribute two-thirds of their whole yearly income, if that income did not exceed sixteen thousand cruzados, and three-fourths if it did; ... in consideration of which they were to be excused from paying the regular tenths for the154 current year. Every person enjoying a benefice which produced from six to nine hundred milreis, should contribute two-thirds of his income; three-fourths, if it exceeded the latter sum. All Commendadors of the military orders or of Malta should also pay two-thirds of their revenue. The donatories of crown property were to pay double their usual tax; owners of houses, half the rent for which they were let, or a proportionate sum if they inhabited them themselves; land-holders, two-tenths, in addition to the former imposts. The tax upon horses, mules, and servants, was doubled. The Juiz do Povo, under orders of the Senado, was to rate all trading bodies and booth and stall-keepers, and compel them to pay their assessments by distress; and shops which were not under the jurisdiction of the Senado were to be rated in like manner by the Mesa do Bem Commun, ... the Board of General Good, ... under the inspection of the Royal Junta of Commerce.
The few persons who had thus long obstinately persisted in believing or pretending to believe that France wished and intended to improve the state of Portugal could no longer deceive themselves, and dared not attempt to deceive others. The contribution thus imposed amounted to four millions and a half sterling; the population of Portugal was less than three millions: the sum demanded, therefore, was equivalent to a poll-tax at a guinea and half per head. Yet even this statement inadequately represents its155 enormity: from at least three-fourths of the people nothing could be collected; and the mercantile part of the community, who had been the most opulent, were already reduced to ruin. The sum required exceeded the whole circulating medium of the country; and the reason why it was permitted to be paid by instalments, and not insisted upon at once, was, that the money received at the first instalment might in the course of circulation find its way to serve for the second! It was levied with the utmost rigour. ♦Observador Portuguez, 203.♦ The lowest hucksters, stall-keepers, and labourers, were summoned before the Juiz do Povo, to be assessed in their portion; and the merchants were ordered to appear in tallies before the Junta of Commerce, and there reciprocally discuss their affairs, and tax each other! The expulsion of the English, the emigration, and the general distress, had left a very large proportion of the best houses vacant, and rents in consequence had fallen nearly to half their former value; but every house was rated at what it had brought in before these events, and the owners of those which were untenanted were compelled to pay three-tenths of what they would have received upon that valuation; and the property of those who had neither money nor commodities to satisfy the demand was seized without mercy. Articles which were needful for the army were received in part of payment in kind. The French officers turned speculators: they purchased colonial goods, which they sent to156 France by land; and thus the money which they had extorted was re-issued, to answer fresh exactions, or serve as booty again. They carried on also a gainful trade in money; importing French coin, which they forced into circulation, and exchanged for Spanish dollars, or for the fine gold of Portugal, at an enormous profit; or they purchased with it paper-money, which usually fluctuated between 28 and 30 per cent. discount, ... sometimes was as low as 35, and sometimes could find no purchasers. With this paper, according to law, they made half their payments at par: and when all their French money was expended in this manner, Junot issued an edict, by which he fixed a price at which it was to be received for the contribution, lower than that at which he had suffered it to be introduced.
The decree which appointed Junot governor of Portugal, and extended his authority over the whole kingdom, at once abrogated the secret treaty of Fontainebleau. That treaty had served Buonaparte’s purpose, and the Spanish cabinet was at this time too much agitated by home disquietudes to resent this breach of faith, or take warning by it. Godoy, fallen from his dreams of royalty, and trembling for his life, was ready to make any sacrifice which might procure him the protection of France. ♦Neves, i. 313.♦ ♦Part only obey his orders.♦ He had written to Junot, requesting that Carraffa’s division might return to Spain; alleging, that the English threatened a descent157 upon the coasts of Andalusia: ... but the French were not duped by a pretext which they themselves had invented for a different purpose; and Junot, in conformity to his master’s projects, detained the troops. Godoy probably wanted them to protect the removal of the King and Queen to the coast, but he was in no condition to insist upon any thing; and the abortive principality of the Algarves, and the kingdom of Septentrional Lusitania, came to an end before their intended lords had taken possession, and before their denominations had been made public. The Spanish troops from Algarve and Alentejo were recalled, and obeyed the order; those at Porto, and Carraffa’s division, were more under Junot’s power; they were detained, and Carraffa, upon the death of Taranco, by the French general’s order took command of both.
Thus had Junot, in pursuance of his instructions, extended his authority over the whole of Portugal. He was, however, far from feeling secure in his usurpation. The temper of the people had shown itself; and if the English had landed a force to attack him, his men were but in ill condition to take the field; for they were sickly during the whole of the winter months. ♦Journal de Coimbra, 2. 74.♦ ♦The flower of the Portugueze army marched into France.♦ For this reason he had disbanded the militia, and broken up so large a part of the native army; ... but the flower of that army was to be selected and sent into France, that they might be made agents in inflicting the same miseries upon other countries which their own endured.158 A great number of the soldiers who had been picked for this service deserted; and in consequence, the French code of martial law was declared to be applicable to the Portugueze army, and death became thereby the punishment for desertion. Six thousand infantry, and four regiments of cavalry, were marched off, under the Marquez d’Alorna. Gomes Freire d’Andrada, who had the highest military reputation of any officer in the army, was second in command. The Marquez de Valença, the Marquez de Ponte de Lima, the Counts Ega and Sabugal, and many other officers of rank and family, went in this ill-fated army; some by compulsion, others by choice, the leaders being devoted to Buonaparte.
Though the French despised the Portugueze troops as heartily as they did the people, it was observed that they became more insufferable in their personal conduct after the army was disbanded. As a body they might safely despise them; but every individual was in some measure restrained by the apprehension of individual vengeance, and the certainty that if in any tumult the military, as was natural, should take part with the people, the contest, though the event was not doubtful, must be far more severe. When this restraint was removed, they gave way to that insolence which adds a sting to oppression, and rouses even those who have submitted to heavier wrongs. A peasant at Mafra, Jacinto Correia was his name, killed two of these robbers with a reaping-hook; and when he was159 put to death for it by military process, he gloried to his last breath in what he had done, and repeated that if all his countrymen were like him, there should not a single Frenchman remain alive among them. ♦Observador Portuguez, 156.♦ The punishment was carefully made known in a proclamation, but the nature of the crime was as carefully suppressed, lest it should find imitation. It had, however, been determined to strike terror into the people by an execution, which should furnish in its example nothing but what was intimidating. ♦Executions at Caldas.♦ Insignificant as the cause was, the circumstances of this insulated tragedy deserve to be stated, as a specimen of the spirit in which the military government of Portugal was conducted. A number of French soldiers had been sent to the hospital at the Caldas, a munificent establishment of royal charity, to be cured of the itch by the baths at that place. They complained to General Thomiers, who commanded at Peniche, that the peasantry insulted them; and Thomiers sent a few stout grenadiers to take the first opportunity of resenting any mockery which might be offered to their comrades. These men paraded the streets, and drank at the wine-houses till they began to invite a quarrel. A countryman, heated like them with liquor, said to his companion as they were passing, I have killed seven of these fellows myself. The vaunt, which was probably as false as it was foolish, might have cost him his life in a regular way; but one of the French, who heard him, immediately attempted to cut him down; ...160 he ran to his mother’s house, which was close at hand, and calling out to his sister to help him, she stood in the door-way, let him enter, and instantly locking the door on the outside, put the key in her bosom. The French endeavoured to force the key from her; the woman was strong and determined: her cries were heard at a billiard table near, where a cadet of the regiment of Pato, which was quartered in the town, seeing a woman struggling upon the dunghill with three or four French soldiers, jumped out of the window, and ran to her assistance; the surgeon and a few others of the same regiment followed. A French captain also came up: by this time a considerable crowd had collected; the sword was knocked out of his hand by a stone, and he would have been in some danger, if a Portugueze sergeant had not called out to the mob to forbear, for he was a French officer. The soldiers now came up, and the tumult ended with no other immediate evil than that one or two of the first aggressors were slightly wounded: ... the woman was the greatest sufferer; for one of them, with the pummel of his sword, had beaten her cruelly upon the bosom. When the circumstances were made known to Thomiers, his first intention was to pass it over lightly: as the Juiz de Fora of the town happened to be with him at the time, he desired him immediately to send him any four fellows of bad character, to whom a little punishment would do no harm, and who might represent the town on this occasion. Such an161 arrangement, curious as it is, would have been an improvement upon the ordinary course of Portugueze justice. Four men, accordingly, against whom complaints had been recently preferred by their wives, but who were entirely innocent of the matter in question, were arrested, and put in confinement. Nine days afterward, Loison, who commanded in the district, appeared at the head of three or four thousand men, bringing Thomiers with him. The woman was called upon to declare which of the soldiers had beaten her: she pointed out the man, and there ended this part of the inquiry: but on the other part, fifteen Portugueze were condemned to death; among them the Escrivam da Camara, and one of the most respectable inhabitants of the place, who happened to be in the room with her when the tumult took place. They had been seen from an opposite house each to take a musket and load it: ... this they acknowledged that they had done; but they had taken no part in the disturbance, nor even gone into the street. It was argued that they could not have loaded those guns with any other intention than that of discharging them against the French troops, and therefore they had incurred the penalty of death. That sentence was passed against them; and the uncle of the Escrivam, being one of the magistrates of the town, was ordered and compelled by Loison to be present at the execution! Five of the condemned persons took the alarm in time, and escaped. The surgeon leaped from a window,162 and broke his leg: he was carried to the place of butchery upon a hand-barrow, covered with a piece of sacking. While the execution was going on, the Prince of Salm Kirburg, a young officer in the French service, lifted up the cloth to see what was under it: the sight shocked him, and he said to the French general it was monstrous to bring a man in such a condition to suffer death, ... let them heal him first, and then do with him what they would. ♦Neves, Ch. 30.♦ This intercession availed: the surgeon was remanded to the hospital, and Loison was content with having seen nine men put to death for an affray in which not a single life had been lost.
The place where this tragedy was perpetrated is a little town, containing not more than three hundred inhabitants; for its baths and for the beauty of the surrounding country it was frequented by strangers and invalids, and more wealth and more comforts were to be found there than in any other of the provincial towns. In such a place, where every one of the victims was known to the whole neighbourhood, and all had their nearest relations and connexions upon the spot, it may well be conceived what horror and what deep and inextinguishable hatred this bloody execution would excite. The hatred Junot despised; ... Buonaparte prided himself upon setting the feelings of mankind at defiance, and systematically outraging them for the purpose of displaying his power; and in this, as in every thing else, his generals were his faithful agents.163 The murders at Caldas were committed upon this system, merely to strike terror through the country.... Junot had refrained from making such an exhibition at Lisbon after the riot which the first act of open usurpation provoked, because there were native troops in the city; the population of a great capital would become formidable if it were made desperate; and, moreover, there was the English squadron in sight. But an opportunity had been watched for when it might be done safely and with more effect; and an affair which the nearest general passed over at the time as unworthy of serious notice was made the pretext.
The immediate superintendence of these murders had been intrusted to Loison. This general, whose military talents were considerable, had lost an arm in action with the Portugueze in Rousillon; for which reason the people now called him the Maneta, a name which will long be held in abhorrence: not that he was more rapacious, or more merciless, than his comrades; but, from the rank he held, he had better opportunities for pillage; and it was his fortune to preside at almost all the butcheries which were committed during the first invasion. Of all the French generals in this army, it is said that there were only two who preserved a fair character. These were, Travot, who commanded at Cascaes, and Charlot at Torres Vedras. They mitigated, as far as in them lay, the evils of which they were the instruments; but they could do little164 toward repressing the cruelty, the excesses, and the abandoned licentiousness of their officers and men. The language which the French openly held was, that Portugal was a conquered country, and therefore they, as conquerors, had a right to take what they chose and do what they pleased there; ♦Neves, ii. 132.♦ and they acted in full conformity to this principle21.
They had entered Portugal with so little baggage, that even the generals borrowed, or rather demanded, linen from those upon whom they were quartered. Soon, however, without having received any supplies from home, they were not only splendidly furnished with ornamental apparel, but sent to France large remittances in bills, money, and effects, especially in cotton, which the chief officers bought up so greedily that the price was trebled by their competition. The emigration had been determined on so late that many rich prizes fell into their hands. Fourteen cart-loads of plate from the patriarchal church reached the quay at Belem too late to be received on board. This treasure was conveyed back to the church, but the packing-cases bore witness of its intent to emigrate; and when the French seized it they added to their booty a165 splendid service for the altar of the sacrament, which had been wrought by the most celebrated artist in France. ♦1808. March.♦ ♦Neves, i. 247.♦ Junot fitted himself out with the spoils of Queluz, and Loison had shirts made of the cambric sheets belonging to the royal family which were found at Mafra. These palaces afforded precious plunder, which there had been no time to secure. The plate was soon melted into ingots, the gold and jewels divided among the generals, and the rich cloths of gold burnt for the metal, which constituted the smallest part of their value. ♦Neves, i. 229.♦ The soldiers had not the same opportunities of pillage and peculation, but they suffered no opportunity to escape: ♦Neves, i. 240–1.♦ those who were quartered in the great convent of St. Domingos pulled down the doors and window-frames, and put up the wood and iron work to auction. Yet their insolence was more intolerable than their rapacity, and their licentious habits worse than both. The Revolution had found the French a vicious people, and it had completed their corruption. It had removed all restraints of religion, all sense of honour, all regard for family or individual character; the sole object of their government was to make them soldiers, and for the purposes of such a government the wickedest men were the best. Junot himself set an example of profligacy: he introduced the fashion of lascivious dances, imported perhaps from Egypt ... one of them bears his name; and the Portugueze say that no man who regards the honour of his female relatives would166 suffer them to practise it. The Moors have left in the peninsula relics of this kind which are sufficiently objectionable: that, therefore, which could call forth this reprehension must be bad indeed. The decency of private families was insulted: the officers scrupled not to introduce prostitutes, without any attempt at disguising them, into the houses where they were quartered; and happy were the husbands and the parents who could preserve their wives and daughters from the attempts of these polluted guests.
The situation of Lisbon, at this time, is one to which history affords no parallel: it suffered neither war, nor pestilence, nor famine, yet these visitations could scarcely have produced a greater degree of misery; and the calamity did not admit of hope, for whither at this time could Portugal look for deliverance? As the government was now effectually converted into a military usurpation, it became easy to simplify its operations; and most of the persons formerly employed in civil departments were dismissed from office. Some were at once turned off; others had documents given them, entitling them to be reinstated upon vacancies; a few had some trifling pension promised. All who had depended for employment and subsistence upon foreign trade were now destitute. Whole families were thus suddenly reduced to poverty and actual want. Their trinkets went first; whatever was saleable followed: things offered for sale at such a time were sold at half their value, while the price of167 food was daily augmenting. It was a dismal thing to see the Mint beset with persons who carried thither the few articles of plate with which they had formerly set forth a comfortable board, and the ornaments which they had worn in happier days. It was a dismal thing to see men pale with anxiety pressing through crowds who were on the same miserable errand, and women weeping as they offered their little treasure to the scales. Persons who had lived in plenty and respectability were seen publicly asking alms ... for thousands were at once reduced to the alternative of begging or stealing; and women, of unblemished virtue till this fatal season, walked the streets, offering themselves to prostitution, that the mother might obtain bread for her hungry children, ... the daughter for her starving parents. Such was the state to which one of the most flourishing cities in Europe was reduced!
As the general distress increased, tyranny became more rigorous, and rapine more impatient. Many of the convents could not pay the sum at which they had been assessed, their resources having suffered in the common calamity; their rents were consequently sequestered, and the intrusive government began to take measures for selling off their lands to discharge the contribution. The rents of inhabited houses were sequestered, to answer for the assessment upon untenanted ones belonging to the same owner. At the beginning of April a prorogation of two168 months, for the payment of the last third of the impost, was promised to those who should have paid the first by the end of the month; ♦Observador Portuguez, p. 123.♦ on the 28th eight days grace was proclaimed for the payment of the first third; after which rigorous distress was to be levied upon the defaulters, not for the first payment alone, but for the whole contribution; ♦Ibid. p. 174.♦ and this threat was enforced. Suicide, which had scarcely ever been heard of in Portugal, became now almost a daily act. There is no inhumanity like that of avarice. The Royal Hospital at Lisbon was one of the noblest institutions in the world. Under the house of Braganza it was the admiration of all who knew how munificently it was supported, and how admirably conducted: under the usurpation of the French more than a third part of the patients who died there perished for want of food. Meantime the French government, affecting to compassionate the misery which it had created, made an ostentatious display of relieving the poor, and issued billets of two francs each, ♦Ibid. p. 200.♦ in Portugueze money 320 reis; four hundred of which were distributed weekly among forty parishes, and five more added afterwards for a parish which had been overlooked. This measure was none of that charity which vaunteth not itself. The billets were given only at one place; crowds flocked thither in expectation; and the amount of this eleemosynary expense was loudly boasted and exaggerated by the French and their partizans, ... the whole sum thus expended scarcely169 exceeding 40l. per week. After a few weeks the billets were not regularly paid, and at length they became worthless: and this was the extent of the liberality of this execrable government in a city where they reckoned their plunder by millions! ♦Neves, ii 157.♦ To complete the miseries of this devoted country anarchy alone was wanting; and it soon necessarily resulted from the barbarous system of the French wherever the immediate pressure of their authority was not felt. ♦Evora no seu Abatimento gloriosamente Exaltada, p. 5.♦ After the disbandment of the Portugueze army, troops of banditti were formed, who robbed in companies with perfect impunity. The edict which prohibited all persons from carrying arms left the traveller entirely at their mercy; and not content with being masters of the roads, they levied contributions upon the smaller towns and villages.
The French, in the pride of their strength, and their ignorance of the national character, despised this poor oppressed people too much to be in any fear of what despair might impel them to; and one remarkable effect of the general misery tended at once to increase their contempt and their security. There exists in Portugal a strange superstition concerning King Sebastian, whose re-appearance is as confidently expected by many of the Portugueze as the coming of the Messiah by the Jews. The rise and progress of this belief forms a curious part of their history: it began in hope, when the return of that unhappy prince was not only possible, but might170 have been considered likely; it was fostered by the policy of the Braganzan party after all reasonable hope had ceased; and length of time served only to ripen it into a confirmed and rooted superstition, which even the intolerance of the Inquisition spared, for the sake of the loyal and patriotic feelings in which it had its birth. The Holy Office never interfered farther with the sect than to prohibit the publication of its numerous prophecies, which were suffered to circulate in private. For many years the persons who held this strange opinion had been content to enjoy their dream in private, shrinking from observation and from ridicule; but, as the belief had begun in a time of deep calamity, so now, when a heavier evil had overwhelmed the kingdom, it spread beyond all former example. Their prophecies were triumphantly brought to light, for only in the promises which were there held out could the Portugueze find consolation; and proselytes increased so rapidly that half Lisbon became Sebastianists. The delusion was not confined to the lower orders ... it reached the educated classes; and men who had graduated in theology became professors of a faith which announced that Portugal was soon to be the head of the Fifth and Universal Monarchy. Sebastian was speedily to come from the Secret Island; the Queen would resign the sceptre into his hands; he would give Buonaparte battle near Evora on the field of Sertorius, slay the tyrant, and become monarch of the world. These events had long171 been predicted; and it had long since been shown that the very year in which they must occur was mystically prefigured in the arms of Portugal. Those arms had been miraculously given to the founder of the Portugueze monarchy; and the five wounds were represented in the shield by as many round marks or ciphers, two on each side, and one in the middle. Bandarra the shoemaker, who was one of the greatest of their old prophets, had taught them the mystery therein. Place two O’s one upon the other, said he, place another on the right hand, then make a second figure like the first, and you have the date22 given. The year being thus clearly designated, the time of his appearance was fixed for the holy week: on Holy Thursday they affirmed the storm would gather, and from that time till the Sunday there would be the most tremendous din of battle that had ever been heard172 in the world; ... for this April was the month of Lightning which Bandarra had foretold. In pledge of all this, some of the bolder believers declared that there would be a full moon on the 19th of March, ... when she was in the wane! It was a prevalent opinion that the Encoberto, or the Hidden One, as they called Sebastian, was actually on board the Russian squadron!
Those parts of the old prophecies which clearly pointed to the year 1640, when the event for which they were intended was accomplished, were omitted in the copies which were now circulated and sought with equal avidity. Other parts were easily fitted to the present circumstances. A rhyme, importing that he of Braganza would go out and he of France would come in, which was written concerning the war of the Succession, was now interpreted to point to the prince of Brazil and Buonaparte; and the imperial eagle which was preserved in the Spanish banners after Charles the Fifth, and against which so many denunciations had been poured out, was the device of this new tyrant. The Secret Island had lately been seen from the coast of Algarve, and the quay distinguished from which Sebastian was to embark, and the fleet in which he was to sail. The tongues of the dumb had been loosed, and an infant of three months had distinctly spoken in Lisbon to announce his coming. One believer read prophecies in the lines of those sea-shells upon which a resemblance to musical characters173 may be fancied. The effect of this infatuation was that in whatever happened the Sebastianists found something to confirm their faith, and every fresh calamity was hailed by them as a fulfilment of what had been foretold. The emigration of the Prince and the entrance of the French were both in the prophecies, and both therefore were regarded with complacency by the believers. When the French flag was hoisted they cried Bravo! these are the eagles at the sight of which Bandarra, one of the greatest prophets that ever existed, shed tears! During the tumult in Lisbon their cry was, Let them fire! let them kill! all this is in the prophecies. This folly gave occasion to many impositions, which served less to expose the credulity of individuals, than to increase the prevalent delusion. One Sebastianist found a letter from King Sebastian in the belly of a fish, appointing him to meet him at night on a certain part of the shore. A more skilful trick was practised upon another with perfect success. An egg was produced with the letters V. D. S. R. P. distinctly traced upon the shell; the owner of the hen in whose nest it was deposited fully believed that it had been laid in this state, and the letters were immediately interpreted to mean Vive Dom Sebastiam Rei de Portugal. The tidings spread over the city, and crowds flocked to the house. The egg was sent round in a silver salver to the higher order of believers. ♦Neves, ii. 142.♦ After it had been the great topic of conversation for three days,174 it was carried to Junot, by whom it was detained as worthy of being placed in the National Museum at Paris. These things naturally excited the contempt and ridicule of the French; nevertheless, when Junot, as if to put out of remembrance the very names of the Royal Family, ordered the ships that were called after the Prince and the Queen ♦Obs. Port. p. 275.♦ to be called the Portugueze and the City of Lisbon, he altered the name of the St. Sebastian also.
The Comte de Novion was succeeded in the police department by Lagarde, the fame of whose rapacities in Venice and other parts of Italy prepared the people to expect in him what they found. ♦April 7.♦ The first edict of this new minister commanded the Corregedores and Juizes do Crime, or Criminal Judges, to make out in the course of the ensuing fortnight a list of all the persons who had emigrated from their respective jurisdictions, specifying in every instance the place of abode both in town and country, the parish and street, the number and the floor of the house. Sequestration of the emigrant’s property was to follow as soon as possible; and any person, though father or child, or in their default the nearest heir, who should attempt to conceal or cover any part of the property, was to be treated as having criminally taken possession of that to which he had no right. If any person fled after the publication of this decree, his name, with all particulars concerning him and his disappearance, must be sent to the175 Corregedor, or Criminal Judge, within eight-and-forty hours, by the owner of the house which he had inhabited; or its chief tenant, if it were divided among many; or all its inhabitants, if the person dwelt in one of his own, and by those persons also to whom he should have left the keys and intrusted the care thereof. If any of these persons failed in informing in due time, they themselves would be considered as having intended to subtract property destined to sequestration. ♦April 5.♦ It had already been ordered that all flags of truce from the British squadron should be fired upon: that any person caught in attempting to reach the fleet should be punished with imprisonment for not less than six months, or with death, according to the circumstances; and that the master of the boat, and all other persons convicted of having consented to assist in the escape, should suffer capital punishment. It was now enacted, that every one having newspapers, letters, or any communication of any kind from the British ships, should instantly deposit them, or give account thereof, at the Intendant General’s office, on pain of being treated as an agent of the English; and the same penalty was decreed against every one who should spread news from the fleet, unless he specified his authority and named the person from whom his intelligence came. Notice was also given that an office was opened to receive information against those who were seeking to emigrate, against the boatmen who would facilitate the176 escape of such persons, and against all agents of the English; and it was added, that on proof of the accusation, Junot would determine what reward should be given to the informer. ♦Obs. Port, p. 224.♦ Lagarde had taken possession of the Inquisition; the old establishment of that devilish tribunal gave place only to one for political persecution, as if the edifice itself were polluted, and destined always to deserve the execrations of mankind.
April 8.♦
The next edict announced the formation of a special tribunal for all criminal cases. It was to consist of a President, who must be a superior French officer; a French Capitam Relator, which may be rendered Captain-Attorney-General; four other officers, of whom three must be French, the fourth a Portugueze; one Portugueze judge versed in criminal jurisprudence; and a secretary, who might be of either nation, but must speak both languages. Death was decreed against all who should be convicted of having been engaged in insurrection and popular commotion, or present at an armed assembly, these offences holding the first place: the same punishment for murder, either accomplished or attempted, arson, and robbery accompanied with violence; death or the galleys for burglary; stripes and the galleys for disobeying the law respecting the use of knives and other deadly weapons. It is remarkable, that though the preamble spoke of the insufficiency of the penal laws, all these punishments were, in the edict, sanctioned by references to the Portugueze, as well as to the177 French Code. But death for the crime of espionage, or for seducing any person to pass over to the enemy, was enacted by Junot’s own authority. The sentences of the Tribunal were to be without appeal. In the body of the decree it was said, that inasmuch as robberies had infinitely multiplied both in Lisbon and the whole kingdom, this Court should take cognizance of all offences of that nature, the General in Chief having so decreed in his desire of protecting with all his power the property of the inhabitants: but the Tribunal was never embodied; when any persons were to be fusiladed, a military tribunal sufficed for the summary forms with which these murders were committed.
The new Intendant was active in issuing edicts. Lisbon was infested by dogs, who, belonging to no one, found subsistence in the filth and offal which were cast into the streets. ♦Apr. 9.♦ The police guards were ordered to kill all whom they met in their rounds; the French soldiers were invited and entreated to assist in delivering the city from this nuisance, and the rabble were tempted to exert themselves by the promise of fifty reis per head: as long as the premium was paid, these poor animals were hunted down without mercy; the French however soon became weary of the expense, and the butchery then ceased after more than 2000 had been killed. ♦Apr. 11.♦ Another edict forbade old keys to be exposed for sale at the old iron stalls, because of the obvious facility which they afforded to thieves.178 These measures affected to reform glaring evils, though not of importance, and against which there were already existing laws; but Lagarde’s chief attention was directed to the two objects of securing the intrusive government and enriching himself. There soon occurred a curious specimen of his administration of justice. A quarrel took place in the Mouraria between a Portugueze soldier and three Frenchmen, and the Portugueze was killed. The scene of this transaction happened to be the worst part of Lisbon, and it occasioned a great tumult among the inhabitants of the Rua Suja, or Dirty Street, and three other such sties of filth and iniquity: more French collected; the mob had the advantage, and the riot was not appeased till a French serjeant of grenadiers was killed, a soldier mortally wounded, and three others severely cut by the knives of the Portugueze. Upon this an order appeared from M. Lagarde, decreeing that twelve of the inhabitants of these streets, being persons who bore the worst character there, should be apprehended and imprisoned for three months, unless they declared who were the chief instigators of the disturbance: that all the common strumpets who lodged in these four streets should quit them within four days, on pain of having their heads shaved and being banished from Lisbon; and that all eating and drinking houses in the said streets should be shut up for six months, unless the owners would give information against some179 person concerned in the affray. The result of the order was, that every strumpet who could pay a six-and-thirty was suffered to continue in her abode as not having been concerned in the riot: that the taverners paid from one to five pieces each, according to their means; the victuallers from eight milreis to two pieces; ♦Obs. Port. p. 250, 256.♦ the twelve hostages from twelve milreis to six pieces each; and the sum total which M. Lagarde extorted from these wretches as the amends for two Frenchmen killed and three wounded, amounted, according to an exact account, to 862 milreis; more than five times the weekly sum distributed by the intrusive government among the starving population of Lisbon.
Apr. 22.♦
By another edict all gunpowder, artillery, fire-arms, and weapons of every kind, in the possession of merchants or other individuals, were ordered to be carried to the arsenal, and deposited there till the owner having obtained a licence for his ship to sail, should want to embark them. ♦Obs. Port. p. 249.♦ As soon as they were delivered in, the best pieces of cannon were spiked and the musquets disabled. Such precautions were now become more needful for many reasons. May is the month in which23 provisions are always dearest in Portugal; and at this time Buonaparte’s plots against Spain were drawing toward their completion, and the ferment which had arisen in that country extended to Portugal.180 The Spanish troops from Alemtejo were all removed to Lisbon, and so divided as to be completely within the power of the French; and to amuse the Portugueze people with hopes, reports were circulated that the contribution was remitted, and that the sequestered property would be restored. Halcyon days were now to succeed. ♦Obs. Port. p. 262.♦ There was to be nothing but prosperity for Portugal. A deputation had been sent to Bayonne to offer the homage of their countrymen to Buonaparte. The persons appointed for this were either those who were thought dangerous in their own country, or useful in France. They were the Marquises of Penalva, Marialva, Valença, and Abrantes, father and son; the Counts of Sabugal and Arganil; Viscount de Barbacena, the Inquisitor-General, the Bishop of Coimbra, the Prior of Avis, D. Nuno Caetano Alves Pereira de Mello, D. Lourenço de Lima, Joaquim Alberto George, and Antonio Thomas da Silva Leitam. On the Prince’s birth-day, when the streets were strongly patroled lest that anniversary should call forth any expression of popular feeling, a letter from ♦Letter from the Deputation.♦ this deputation was made public. It assured the Portugueze, that if any thing could equal the genius of the Emperor Napoleon, it was the elevation of his soul, and the generosity of his principles: that with a truly paternal affability he had manifested those principles in his use of the rights which circumstances gave him. His army had not entered Portugal as conquerors.181 He bore no enmity to their Prince, nor to the royal family; he sought only to connect them with the rest of Europe in the great continental system, of which they were to be the last and closing link, for he could not tolerate on the continent an English colony. It depended upon the Portugueze themselves to show, by their conduct in this respect, whether they were now worthy still to form a nation, or must be annexed to a neighbour, from whom so many causes tended to divide them. The Emperor knew and lamented the privations which, in common with the continent and America, Portugal endured during the temporary interruption of her commerce; but this was the consequence of a struggle, the result of which would amply compensate for them. The weight of the contributions had impressed his heart, and his goodness had dictated a promise that it should be reduced to just limits, compatible with their means. These intentions of the Emperor, the deputies said, would, they doubted not, excite in the Portugueze the greatest gratitude. They meantime would continue to fulfil near the person of the Emperor, and conformably to his orders, the duties of a mission which had no difficulties, since the goodness of Napoleon united with his wisdom to simplify their dearest interests.
Upon the publication of this letter, the heads of the first corporate bodies were made to understand, that they must wait upon Junot, whom Buonaparte had created Duke of Abrantes, and182 request him to transmit the expression of their gratitude to the Emperor for the gracious reception with which their deputies had been honoured. The Dean of the Patriarchal Church spoke in the name of the clergy; the Desembargador do Paço and High Chancellor for the magistracy: both these speeches were remodelled by the intrusive government, and then printed; so that men who were groaning over the miseries of their country, were made appear to that country as if they crouched to lick the feet that trampled upon her. The Conde da Ega, one of the most devoted partizans of France, spoke for the nobles. Junot in reply told them, that Portugal, under the protection of the great Napoleon, would soon be replaced in that rank to which a Vasco da Gama and a Joam de Castro had raised it by their conquests; a Luiz da Cunha and a Pombal by their policy; and he desired that a Junta of the Three Estates might be assembled forthwith, to express the wishes of all classes in a manner worthy of the nation, and worthy of the monarch to whom they addressed themselves. ♦He hopes to be made king of Portugal.♦ The intention of this meeting was, that the Portugueze should request to have Junot for their king, a business which Ega was to manage in the Junta. This intrigue was unexpectedly counteracted by another, of which Carrion de Nizas, a French officer of cavalry, M. Verdier, a French subject born and always resident in Portugal, and the Desembargador Francisco Duarte Coelho, are said to have been183 the prime movers. Carrion de Nizas had the reputation of being the best informed man in the French army. M. Verdier was a man of great knowledge and extraordinary talents, fond of the country in which he had passed his life, but too enlightened not to perceive and lament the abuses by which it had been debilitated and degraded. He was too far advanced in years, and too wise a man, to wish for those sudden and violent revolutions, of which the evil is great, certain, and immediate, and the good contingent and remote. Such a revolution however had occurred, and he was perforce involved in it, having been called from a numerous family at Thomar, ♦Neves, T. ii. C. 42.♦ where he had a large cotton manufactory, that Junot might avail himself of the knowledge which he was known to possess.
Whatever may have been the motives of the French officer in opposing Junot’s pretensions to the crown, those of M. Verdier, and the Portugueze who acted with him, cannot be mistaken, and ought not to be condemned. Unlikely as it appeared that the House of Braganza should recover the throne, they desired in this dissolution of government, to build up the best system which circumstances seemed to allow; and for this purpose they drew up a paper which they entrusted to the Juiz do Povo, Jose de Abreu Campos, that he might produce it at the assembly. The Junta of the Three Estates was but a mere name which might give colour to the proceedings of Junot; the Juiz do Povo was little more; but one name184 served well in array against another, and moreover this had a popular sound with it, favouring that order of things which these persons were properly desirous of restoring. Accordingly when the deputies of the clergy and the various bodies corporate assembled in the mock Junta, and some person, after the Conde da Ega’s speech, would have answered for the Juiz do Povo, Campos spoke boldly and honestly for himself. He declared that he did not assent to what was going on, and that he had no authority to assent, for he was not a representative of the people. What was proposed could not be their wish, as the paper with which he had been entrusted would show. He then, amid the confusion which his unlooked-for opposition occasioned, produced and read a paper to this effect: that the Portugueze, looking upon France as their mother country, inasmuch as the first conquerors of Portugal from the Moors were French, and mindful of the aid which they had received from France when they recovered their independence in 1640, acknowledged with all gratitude the protection which the greatest of monarchs at this time offered them: they desired a constitution and a constitutional king, who should be a prince of the imperial family; the constitution with which they should be content was one in all things like that which had been given to the duchy of Warsaw, with only an alteration in the mode of electing the national representatives, which should be by chambers. The better to185 conform with their ancient customs, they desired that the Catholic and Apostolic Roman religion might be the religion of the state, requiring the admission of all the principles established by the last Concordat with France, whereby the free and public enjoyment of all modes of worship was tolerated: that there should be a minister specifically charged with the department of public instruction: that the liberty of the press should be established as it then was in France, because ignorance and error had caused their decay: that the legislative power should be divided into two houses, and communicate with the executive: that the judges should be independent, and the Code Napoleon established: that causes should be publicly tried with justice and dispatch: that all property held in mortmain should be set free: that the public debt should be paid, for which means were not wanting: and that the number of public functionaries, who in the general change must be displaced, should all receive decent and equitable pensions, and upon every vacancy be ♦Neves, T. ii. C. 42.♦ preferred, provided they were duly qualified.
Junot and the sycophants who hoped to figure at his court were incensed at this opposition to their project. They easily overpowered the Juiz do Povo in the meeting, and the Intendant of Police was then instructed to find out the persons who had instigated him. M. Verdier in consequence was sent back to Thomar in disgrace. This was what he would most have wished, could he have returned to that tranquillity and domestic186 happiness which he was wont to enjoy. But the crimes of his countrymen were visited upon him. In the tumults which ensued, the people among whom he had lived so long, and by whom he had been deservedly loved and respected, imagined that as a Frenchman he must needs be a partizan of France, and he was compelled to return to Lisbon for safety. There, as long as the French continued in Portugal, he remained under the inspection of the police, a prisoner by Junot’s orders in his own house. Upon the restoration of the legitimate government, the part which he had taken was remembered as a crime, and he was ordered to leave the kingdom. The forms of justice had long been dispensed with in Portugal; and a man who had violated no allegiance, who had broken no law, who had offended in no point of honour or of duty, was marked for punishment, when those who had sinned in every point were overlooked. Junot however had little leisure to enjoy his dreams of royalty; he was roused from them by the events in Spain, to which it is now necessary to recur.
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CHAPTER III.
AFFAIR OF THE ESCURIAL. SEIZURE OF THE SPANISH FORTRESSES. TUMULTS AT ARANJUEZ. FERDINAND MADE KING IN HIS FATHER’S STEAD.
Affair of the Escurial.♦
The six months which had now elapsed since the treaty of Fontainebleau had been the most eventful in Spanish history. On the 30th of October, a few days after the signature of that treaty, and a few weeks after Prince Ferdinand had written to Buonaparte, a proclamation was issued from the Escurial, in which the King of Spain accused his eldest son of conspiring to dethrone him. ♦Ferdinand accused of plotting to dethrone his father, and attempting his mother’s life.♦ “God,” said he, in this extraordinary paper, “who watches over his creatures, does not permit the consummation of atrocious deeds when the intended victims are innocent; thus his omnipotence has saved me from the most unheard-of catastrophe. An unknown hand has discovered a conspiracy carried on in my own palace against my person. My life was too long in the eyes of my successor, who, infatuated by prejudice, and alienated from every principle of Christianity that my parental care had taught him, had entered into a project for dethroning me. Being informed of this, I surprised him in my room, and found in his possession the cipher of his correspondence and of the instructions he188 ♦1807. November.♦ had received from the vile conspirators. The result has been the detection of several malefactors, whose imprisonment I have ordered, as also the arrest of my son.” In a letter to Buonaparte, written the day before this proclamation was published, the King made a more horrible charge against the Prince, whom he accused of having attempted the life of his mother. “An attempt so frightful,” said he, “ought to be punished with the most exemplary rigour of the laws. The law which calls him to the succession must be revoked: one of his brothers will be more worthy to replace him on my throne and in my heart ... I thought that all the plots of the Queen of Naples would have been buried with her daughter!” This alluded to an opinion that the Prince’s late wife had first instigated him to cabal against his father. She doubtless detested Godoy and her infamous mother-in-law, and they therefore would not fail to indispose the King toward her.
The persons chiefly implicated in this accusation were the Duke del Infantado and D. Juan Escoiquiz, formerly tutor to the Prince, and author of an heroic poem upon the conquest of Mexico: the latter had acted as Ferdinand’s agent with the French Ambassador; and the former had received from him an appointment with a blank date and a black seal, authorizing him to take the command of the troops in New Castille upon the event of the King’s death. Six days after the first proclamation another was189 issued, in which two letters from the Prince were contained. The first was in these terms, addressed to the King: ♦Ferdinand confesses himself faulty, and entreats forgiveness.♦ “Sire and father, I am guilty of failing in my duty to your majesty; I have failed in obedience to my father and king. I ought to do nothing without your majesty’s consent, but I have been surprised. I have denounced the guilty, and beg your majesty to suffer your repentant son to kiss your feet.” The other was to the Queen, asking pardon for the great fault which he had committed, as well as for his obstinacy in denying the truth; and he requested her mediation in his favour. In consequence of these letters, the King said, and of the Queen’s entreaty, he forgave him, “for the voice of nature unnerved the hand of vengeance.” The Prince, he added, had declared who were the authors of this horrible plot, and had laid open every thing in legal form, consistent with the proofs which the law demanded in such cases. The Judges therefore were required to continue the process, and submit their sentence to the King, which was to be proportioned to the magnitude of the offence, and the quality of the offenders. Meantime, at the request of his Council, he ordered a public thanksgiving for the interposition of Divine Providence in his behalf.
This mysterious affair has never been clearly elucidated: it has been believed to be partly the work of Godoy, partly the intrigue of French agents: but there seems to be no ground for the latter supposition; and whatever part Godoy190 may have taken in it, he was clearly acting on the defensive. It is one of those transactions in which some disgrace attaches to all the parties concerned. The King cannot be acquitted of extreme rashness in so precipitately accusing his son, and bringing so perilous a subject before the public; nor of extreme credulity in advancing the shocking and most improbable charge of having attempted his mother’s life. On the other hand, the fact that Ferdinand so soon afterwards actually did dethrone his father, renders it very difficult to exculpate him from having attempted it at this time: if he did not, it was only because the opportunity did not invite him, not from any sense of duty. In the lame justification which he afterwards published of himself and his partizans, it is said that the letter by which he requested pardon of his father was brought to him by Godoy for signature; and that he signed it because he would not refuse that new proof of filial respect to his august parents. But the letter was more than a mark of filial respect; it professed repentance, it implored forgiveness, and it impeached his friends.
Buonaparte stood in no need of an intrigue of this kind, with its plot and counter-plot; his plan had already been formed and his means prepared: and Godoy was at that time held in such close dependence upon Buonaparte by his hopes and fears, that he would not have ventured upon so bold a measure without his concurrence, likely too as it was to draw down his displeasure. The191 secret denunciation may probably have come from the Queen, who realized in her feelings toward her son all that has ever been feigned in tragedy of unnatural mothers. There is a point at which any evil passion becomes madness, and it was afterwards evinced that her passion had reached that height. Fearing and hating her son, it may well be supposed that she would narrowly watch his conduct; enough might be discovered to excite a well-founded suspicion of his intentions; and the more atrocious part of the accusation might be prompted by her wickedness or her fears. If Buonaparte had instigated the proceedings against Ferdinand, they would have been carried to greater lengths; he was not a man to have drawn back in deference to popular opinion, even if at that time there had been any channel by which the popular feeling of the Spaniards could have been expressed. ♦His conduct.♦ But on this occasion he acted as a friendly sovereign would have done. Without any appearance of interfering publicly, he instructed the Ambassador, Beauharnois, to mediate in favour of the Prince, and put a stop to proceedings which could only bring disgrace upon the royal family: thus keeping aloof from all parties, he made them all look to him with trembling dependence, while he steadily pursued his plans for the destruction of all. He did not however neglect to take advantage of the circumstance for furthering those nefarious plans; but on the receival of the dispatches, affecting the most violent anger that a192 suspicion of his ambassador should have been entertained, ordered 40,000 men to Spain, to be prepared, as he afterwards said, for every event, and to support the army of Portugal, and to counteract the policy of England, by which he pretended to believe these intrigues were put in motion.
Meantime Junot took possession of Lisbon. One part of the secret treaty having been thus fulfilled, Godoy was anxiously expecting to be installed in his new kingdom of the Algarves, where he flattered himself with the thought of being secure from Ferdinand’s resentment, to which in his present situation he would otherwise be exposed upon the King’s death. He relied upon the good offices of Joachim Murat, Grand Duke of Berg, who had married one of Buonaparte’s sisters, the widow of General Le Clerc. With him he communicated through D. Eugenio Izquierdo, his agent at Paris; and if money to any amount should be necessary to expedite his wishes, the treasure which he had amassed during his administration enabled him to disburse it at command. Murat however informed him that the business was now become very delicate, owing to the extraordinary attachment which the Spaniards manifested toward the Prince of Asturias, the consideration due to a princess of the royal family, and the part taken by her relation, the Ambassador Beauharnois. Godoy now fully believed that the projected marriage was agreeable to Buonaparte, and193 ♦1807. December.♦ yielding to every new circumstance with the facility of weakness, persuaded Charles to write and solicit an alliance which he had so lately dreaded. But Buonaparte assumed an air of displeasure towards Izquierdo, and kept him at a distance, in order to cut off the direct mode of communication; and he set off for Italy, giving to his journey an affected importance, which excited the expectation of all Europe. There carrying into execution those parts of the secret treaty which were to his own advantage, ♦The Q. of Etruria expelled from Tuscany.♦ he expelled from Tuscany the widow Queen of Etruria and her children; and seized the public funds of a court who were ignorant of the very existence of the compact by virtue of which they were called upon to surrender not only what he had given them, but those dominions which they had possessed before he and his family were banished from Corsica. It was in vain for this poor Queen to demand time for dispatching a courier to her father’s court, or to plead that no communication had been made to her upon a subject in which the rights and interests of her son were vitally concerned; she was desired in reply to hasten her departure from a country which was no longer hers, and to find consolation in the bosom of her family. On the journey they informed her that she was to receive a part of Portugal as a compensation. This only increased her affliction, for she neither wished for, she says, nor would accept of dominion over a state belonging to any other sovereign, ♦Memoir of the Q. of Etruria, p. 20.♦ still less over one which194 belonged to a sister and a near relation of her own. ♦1807 December.♦ To this trial the Queen of Etruria was not exposed: upon reaching her parents and inquiring respecting the treaty, she was told that they also had been deceived, and that no such treaty was in existence!
From Italy Buonaparte answered the King of Spain’s letters; assured him that he had never received any communication from the Prince of Asturias, nor had had the slightest information of the circumstances respecting him which those letters imparted; nevertheless, he said, he consented to the proposed intermarriage. In a letter afterwards written to Ferdinand himself, he acknowledged the receipt of that letter which he now denied. Holding out these hopes to the Prince, and yet, at the same time, by his long silence and his reserve towards Izquierdo, keeping him, his father, and the favourite, equally in suspense and alarm, he was, meantime, marching ♦Troops marched into Spain.♦ his armies into Spain. That they should enter it had been stipulated by the secret treaty of Fontainebleau; and the court was not in a state to insist upon the condition that the two contracting powers were to come to a previous agreement upon that point. It was essential to his views that he should make himself master of the principal fortresses; and his generals were instructed to obtain possession of them in whatever manner they could. The wretched court, fearing they knew not what, were now punished by their own offences; the treaty into which they had entered195 for the destruction of Portugal was turned against themselves; ♦1808.♦ and they had neither sense nor courage to take those measures for their own security which the people would so eagerly have seconded; on the contrary they gave the most positive orders that the French should be received every where, and treated even more favourably than the Spanish troops. Thus were the gates of Pamplona, St. Sebastian, Figuieras, and Barcelona thrown open to them.
Feb. 9.♦
The next object of these treacherous guests was to get possession of the citadels. Pamplona was the first place where the attempt was made. General D’Armagnac having taken up his quarters in the city, received orders from Marshal Moncey, whose head-quarters were at Burgos, to make himself master of the citadel in any manner, and at whatever cost. Moncey had commanded the French army in Biscay in the year 1794, and at that time when the republican soldiers were accustomed to boast of acts of sacrilegious rapacity, left even among the people whom he had invaded the reputation of a just and generous and honourable man. It was his ill fortune now to be in the service of Buonaparte, and to be employed in acts like this! D’Armagnac first tried a stratagem; he requested permission from the Marquis de Vallesantoro, captain-general of Navarre, to secure two Swiss battalions in the citadel, under pretence that he was not satisfied with their conduct: the Marquis however perceived that such196 ♦1808 February.♦ a permission would put one of the strongest bulwarks of Spain in the power of the French, and made answer that he could not consent without an express order from the court. Where there was prudence enough to prompt this answer, a certain degree of precaution might have been looked for, which nevertheless was wanting. The French soldiers were permitted every day to enter the citadel and receive their rations there, and this with such perfect confidence on the part of the garrison, that even the forms of discipline were not observed at such times. One night, during the darkness, D’Armagnac secretly introduced three hundred grenadiers into the house he occupied, which was opposite the principal gate of the citadel. Some of the ablest and most resolute men were selected to go as usual for the rations, but with arms under their cloaks. The ground happened to be covered with snow, and some of the French, the better to divert the attention of the Spaniards, pelted each other with snow-balls; and some running, and others pursuing, as if in sport, a sufficient number got upon the drawbridge to hinder it from being raised; the signal was then given, some of the party who had entered seized the arms of the Spaniards, which were not, as they ought to have been, in the hands of the guard; others produced their own concealed weapons to support their comrades; the grenadiers from the general’s house hastened and took possession of the gate, the rest of the197 division was ready to follow them, and the first news which the inhabitants of Pamplona heard that morning was, that the French, whom they had received and entertained as friends and allies, had seized the citadel. When all was done, D’Armagnac addressed a letter to the magistrates, informing them, that, as he understood he was to remain some time in Pamplona, he felt himself obliged to insure its safety in a military manner; and he had therefore ordered a battalion to the citadel, in order to garrison it, and do duty with the Spanish troops: “I beseech you,” he added, “to consider this as only a trifling change, incapable of disturbing the harmony which ought to subsist between two faithful allies.”
The Spanish court had by its own folly and its treachery towards Portugal, reduced itself to so pitiable a state of helpless embarrassment, that it dared not resent this act of unequivocal insult and aggression. Not to perceive that some hostile purpose was intended, was impossible; but Charles and his minister were afraid to remonstrate, or to express any feeling of displeasure, or to prepare for resistance, or even to take any measures for guarding against a like act of treason on the part of their formidable ally in the other strong holds, upon the security of which so much depended. This wretched court contented itself with repeating instructions to the commanders and captains-general, on no account to offend the French, but to act in perfect accord with198 them, and by all means preserve that good understanding which so happily subsisted between the two governments! And when representations were repeatedly made of the suspicions which were entertained, and the danger which all the measures of the French gave so much reason for apprehending, the answers of the court were written in vague and empty official language, from which nothing could be understood, except that the government was determined to let the whole responsibility fall upon its officers, and to be answerable itself for nothing! While D’Armagnac secured Pamplona, General Duhesme had been instructed in like manner to get possession of ♦Seizure of Barcelona.♦ Barcelona, where he was quartered. Immediately on his arrival he requested that his troops might do duty in the city jointly with the Spaniards, and occupy with them the principal posts, assigning candidly as a reason for this suspicious request, his own personal security in the disturbed state of public feeling which was then apparent; and as a farther reason, the probability that such a proof of perfect amity and confidence would more than any other measure tend to satisfy and tranquillize the people. The Conde de Espeleta, captain-general of Catalonia, was so strictly charged in his instructions to offer no displeasure to the French, that he could not refuse his assent to this insidious proposal. If there had been any doubt of the intention which it covered, that doubt was speedily removed; the usual guard at the principal gate of the citadel was twenty men,199 but Duhesme stationed a whole company of chasseurs there.
A people so intelligent, so active, and so high-minded, as the Catalans, were neither to be deceived nor intimidated; and if the inhabitants had not been restrained by obedience to their own government, Barcelona might certainly have been preserved. Duhesme felt himself in danger, and the Spanish troops, as well as the inhabitants, sometimes expressed an impatience, which at any moment might have produced a perilous conflict. The French reported that their passports from Madrid were arrived, and that they were to march for Cadiz as speedily as possible; on the morrow they were to be reviewed preparatory to their march. This welcome news completely deceived the inhabitants, and no surprise was excited by the beat of drum and the movement of battalions at the time appointed. Some regiments were drawn up upon the esplanade which separates the citadel from the town, and a battalion of Italian light troops were stationed upon the road leading from the custom-house to the principal gate of the citadel. At two in the afternoon, an hour when the people, satisfied with the spectacle, had mostly left the streets and returned to their dinner and their siesta, General Lechi came to review this body of Italians, and passed on, followed by his aides-de-camp and his staff, into the citadel. The French who were on duty received him under arms, according to military etiquette, and the200 Spaniards did the same. Under pretence of giving some orders to the officer of the guard, Lechi and his suite halted on the drawbridge, and occupying it by that manœuvre, covered the approach of the infantry. The Italians defiled under cover of the ravelin which defended the gate, and knocked down the first Spanish centinel, whose voice when he would have given the alarm was drowned by the beating of the French drums under the archway. Lechi then advanced; the Spanish part of the guard could make no resistance, their French comrades being ready to act against them in the first moment when the treason was discovered; and immediately afterwards overpowering numbers were upon them. Four battalions followed the first, and the invaders were completely masters of the place. The Spanish governor, Brigadier Santilly, indignant at a treachery against which he should have taken some precautions, presented himself to Lechi as a prisoner of war: he was received however with perfect courtesy, and all protestations of friendship and alliance, which General Lechi, with an effrontery worthy of his master and his cause, made no scruple of repeating in the very act of breaking them. Upon the alarm of this aggression the Spanish and Walloon guards who belonged to the garrison hastened to their post; they were not permitted to enter the citadel till night, by which time the French had secured themselves in possession of the place. Having been admitted, they ranged themselves201 in arms opposite the French, and in that menacing position the night was passed, and the following morning, till orders came to quarter themselves in the town; and the French were then left sole masters of the place.
While one division of these treacherous allies surprised the citadel, another advanced upon Monjuic, a fort upon a hill which commands the town. An Italian colonel, by name Floresti, commanded this latter division. Monjuic is one of the strongest fortresses in Spain: it had a sufficient garrison, and the commander, D. Mariano Alvarez, was a man of the highest and most heroic patriotism. When he was summoned to open the gate, he demurred, saying he must receive instructions from his government. Floresti insisted that his orders were peremptory, and must be executed. He and his men were standing upon ground which was undermined, and Alvarez was strongly inclined, instead of admitting them, to fire the train. Could he have foreseen what a spirit was about to display itself in the Peninsula, this he would undoubtedly have done; but the spirit of Spain was still overlaid by its old wretched government; and the responsibility at such a time of involving his country in direct hostilities with France was more than even the bravest man would venture to take upon himself.
At St. Sebastian’s General Thouvenot requested leave to place his hospital in the fort and in the Castle of S. Cruz, and to deposit202 there the baggage of the cavalry corps which was in his charge. Both the Spanish commanders did their duty by returning a refusal, and transmitting an account of their conduct to the court; ... the court returned for answer, that there was no inconvenience in acceding to the wishes of the French general; and this fortress was thus, by the imbecility of Charles and his ministers, delivered up to the French. ♦March 3.♦ There still remained the strong and important fortress of Figuieras. Colonel Pie had been left in the town with 800 men, and with instructions to get possession of the fort. He attempted to win it by the same stratagem which had been practised at Barcelona; but the Spaniards also knew and remembered that example, and raised the drawbridge in time. Here however the governor seems to have acted with more facility than had been shown elsewhere; two days after the treacherous attempt had been frustrated, he consented to let Pie introduce two hundred conscripts, whom he pretended he wished to secure; ♦March 18.♦ ... two hundred chosen men marched in under this pretext; the rest followed them, and the French then obtained from a government which dared deny them nothing, the keys of the magazines, and an order which removed the Spaniards from the garrison.
The government of Spain had not virtue enough to know the strength which it possessed in such a people as the Spaniards; feeling nothing but its own imbecility, it had not had203 courage to prevent these aggressions, and consequently dared not resent them; and as the French seized these places in the name of their Emperor as an ally, this wretched court consented to the occupation of them upon the same plea. Symptoms of a far different spirit appeared in Barcelona; ♦Feb. 29.♦ and the Count of Espeleta, captain-general of Catalonia, found it necessary to issue a proclamation, calling upon all fathers of families, and heads of houses, to preserve tranquillity, and thus co-operate with the intentions of their rulers; and declaring that the late transactions did in no way obstruct or alter the system of government, neither did they disturb public nor private order. His proclamation was posted in all parts of the city. Duhesme, however, soon gave the inhabitants new cause for alarm, by calling upon the captain-general to fill the magazines, and establish depots for the subsistence of his troops. ♦March 18.♦ The Count of Espeleta returned for answer to this requisition, “that the French general might consider the whole city as his magazine: that, as he had no enemy to dread, and was quartered there as an ally, the measures which he proposed to take could only serve to create suspicion and distrust: and that the Emperor would be ill pleased to hear that he had alarmed, with fearful forebodings, a city which had afforded him so hospitable a reception. Your Excellency,” he pursued, “will be pleased to request the opinion of his Imperial Majesty respecting your204 determination, before you carry it into effect, and to accompany your request with this explanation of mine; as I shall also lay the business before the King my master, without whose orders I cannot give to your Excellency what the forts in possession of the Spanish troops have not. Meanwhile I wish to impress upon your mind, that it will serve no good purpose to supply the forts with stores of provisions; that such an intention is pointed and offensive: and that it will neither be in the power of your Excellency, nor of myself, to remedy the consequences of the feeling which such a measure may excite among the inhabitants.”
When the French troops first began to enter Spain, various reports were circulated to account for so extraordinary a measure. The occupation of Portugal had been the first pretext; and when Junot had taken possession of that country with one army, the possibility that the English would attack him there was a sufficient plea for having another near at hand to support him. An English expedition against Ceuta had been talked of; it was pretended that they meant to make a descent upon the southern coast of Spain, and therefore French troops were to occupy the whole of that coast. The recovery of Gibraltar was another project, and another one an invasion of the opposite shore, which would exclude the English from the ports of Barbary, and give France entire command of the Mediterranean. Buonaparte, in his dreams of ambition, had205 sometimes looked that way, and had inquired of those who were best able to answer the question, what force would be sufficient for the conquest of Morocco. But he was resolved first to be master of the Peninsula, and the measures which he had now taken were such as could no longer leave a doubt in any reasonable mind of his intention. The occupation of four important fortresses, which were considered as the keys of Spain, astonished the Spaniards. Never before had the public mind been so agitated, but they knew the weakness of the King and the incapacity of his counsellors; they had none to look to who should direct their willing hands; and though no people could be better disposed to stand forth in defence of their country, they remained in a state of helpless and hopeless astonishment.
Godoy is said to have been the first person about the court whose eyes were opened to the real designs of Buonaparte. They flashed upon him as soon as he learnt the seizure of Pamplona; and he ordered the Spanish General Laburia, who had been stationed at Irun that he might provide every thing for the French troops, to demand from the French commander in chief an explanation of his conduct in having taken possession of that fortress. An answer was returned, half mockery, half insult, that the citadel had been occupied in order to secure the public tranquillity. Godoy had been the tool of Buonaparte, not the accomplice: he might have foreseen such a reply; but no means were left206 him of resenting the aggression, or repairing the follies of which he had been guilty. Buonaparte seems at this time to have intended that the royal family should fly to their American empire; he might then take possession of the kingdom as left to him by their abdication; and there were no means of ultimately securing Spanish America also, so likely as by letting this family retire there; both countries would needs be desirous that the intercourse between them should continue; nor were there any Spaniards who would with less reluctance submit to hold it in dependence upon him, than those persons who had given so many proofs of abject submission to his will. For the purpose of increasing the fear of Charles and his ministers, he wrote an angry letter, complaining, in the severest terms of reproach, that no farther measures had been taken for negotiating the proposed marriage. The King replied, that he was willing it should take place immediately. He probably considered Buonaparte to be sincere in his intentions of forming this alliance, and never having been fit for business, and now, perhaps, for the first time really feeling its cares, a natural wish for repose began to be felt, and a thought of abdication passed across his mind. “Maria Louisa,” said he to the Queen, in the presence of Cevallos, and of all the other Ministers of State, “we will retire to one of the provinces, where we will pass our days in tranquillity, and Ferdinand, who is a young man, will take upon himself the207 burden of the government.” This was a thought which the example of his predecessors might readily suggest to a King of Spain. But it was not this which the Corsican desired; ... that tyrant perceived his victim was not yet sufficiently terrified, and therefore Izquierdo, who had been kept at Paris in a state of perpetual suspense and agitation, was now commanded to return to Spain. No written proposals were sent with him, neither was he to receive any; and he was ordered not to remain longer than three days. Under these circumstances he arrived at Aranjuez, and was immediately conducted by Godoy to the King and Queen. What passed in their conferences has never transpired; but, soon after his departure from Madrid, Charles began to manifest a disposition to abandon Spain, and emigrate to Mexico. If he were capable of feeling any compunctious visitations, how must he have felt at reflecting that he had assisted in driving his kinsman and son-in-law to a similar emigration; that he was now become the victim of his own misconduct; and, envying the security which that injured Prince had obtained, was himself preparing, in fear and in peril, to follow his example!
But there was a wide difference between the circumstances of Spain and Portugal, making that a base action in the sovereign of the former kingdom, which for the last half century would have been the wisest measure that the House of Braganza could have adopted. This seems to208 have been felt, for the intention was neither avowed at the time, nor acknowledged afterwards. The ostensible intention was, that the royal family should remove to Seville, and that a camp should be formed at Talavera. Solano was summoned from his Utopian experiments in Portugal, and ordered to march to Badajoz without delay, that he might be ready to meet the court with a sufficient escort, and protect their embarkation; and Junot was requested to part with the Spanish troops who were at Lisbon, that they might be stationed in the southern provinces, which it was pretended were in danger from the English. This pretence did not impose upon Junot; neither could preparations for such a removal be made as easily at Madrid and Aranjuez as at Lisbon. Great agitation prevailed in the metropolis: the French were now rapidly advancing thither, and the intentions of the royal family were suspected; secretly perhaps divulged by those friends of Ferdinand in the ministry to whom they had necessarily been intrusted. Things were in this state when Godoy, as commander in chief, sent an order to Madrid for the Royal Guards, and all the other corps which were stationed there, to repair immediately to Aranjuez; at the same time he desired the Council of Castille would issue a proclamation to assure the people that this was merely a measure of precaution, for the purpose of preventing any disputes between the French and Spanish soldiery, and that the alliance between the King209 and the Emperor of the French remained unalterable. The Council demurred at this, and dreading the consequences of the intended flight, which they clearly perceived these troops were to protect, they sent a memorial to the King, representing the imminent danger to which, by such a measure, his royal person, his whole family, and the whole nation, would be exposed. This remonstrance produced no effect, but the Council escaped the infamy of asserting a direct falsehood to the people, which they had been instructed to do; and the troops obeying their orders left Madrid before a reply from Aranjuez could be received, and without any attempt being made to calm or to deceive the populace.
These movements revived the hopes of the Prince’s party, who were also strengthened by the natural course of events, for men who had hitherto fawned on the favourite were now ready to forsake him, and imagining that the Prince’s rise would be the consequence of Godoy’s fall, hastened to offer their servilities and services to the rising sun. They remonstrated with the King upon the extreme impolicy of his intentions; and observing to him that Buonaparte had left even his greatest enemies, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia, upon their thrones, they represented how impossible it was to believe that he would think of dethroning a sovereign with whom he was in alliance, and with whose family he was about to connect his210 own by marriage. ♦Vacillation of the King. Mar. 16.♦ With such men as Charles IV. the last counsellor will always have the most weight; yielding to arguments which might have staggered a stronger mind, he suddenly changed his purpose, and issued a proclamation to tranquillize the people, and to disclaim any intention of leaving the country. The army of his dear ally, he said, was traversing his kingdom in peace and friendship toward those points which were menaced by the enemy: and the junction of his life-guards was not to protect his person, nor to accompany him upon a journey, which had been mischievously represented to be necessary. Surrounded by his loyal and beloved vassals, what had he to fear? or if it were required, could he doubt of the strength which their generous hearts would offer him? But they had only to remain quiet, and conduct themselves still as they had hitherto done towards the troops of their good King’s ally. This paper was read by the people with delight; they crowded to the palace and to the gardens to manifest their joy: their loyal acclamations brought the King and his family to the balcony, and it is said that Charles was evidently affected by the marks of enthusiastic attachment which his subjects expressed, believing as they did, and as undoubtedly it was intended they should24211 believe, that he engaged himself by this declaration, not to forsake the country. But the paper was hardly dry upon the walls of Aranjuez where it was posted up, before some fresh alarm produced a second change in this poor, perplexed, intimidated sovereign. ♦Mar. 17.♦ On the morning of the 17th of March the emigration was finally resolved upon, and the hour of eleven that night was fixed for commencing their flight.
Ferdinand and his brother, the Infante D. Carlos, opposed this resolution, and entreated their parents to desist from what they called so rash and perilous a project. It is affirmed, that the former took an opportunity of saying to one of the body guards, the journey was to be that night, and that he was resolved not to go. His partizans meantime were not idle. Notwithstanding the proclamation of the preceding day, the people of Madrid were not satisfied; the proofs of the court’s intention were unequivocal; carriages and horses had been embargoed; loaded carts had set off; and relays of horses were stationed on the road to Seville. From the metropolis the populace flocked to Aranjuez; there the baggage was packed up for removal, and it was now beyond a doubt that their government was on the point of abandoning them. Godoy relied upon the soldiers; he had been accustomed to defy the opinion of the people, and it has been said, at this critical moment,212 when Ferdinand, trusting to his interest with Buonaparte, and perhaps still more to his favour with the mob, opposed with more vehemence his father’s intentions, that the favourite with a threatening gesture told him, if he would not go voluntarily he should be carried in bonds. But insolent as the favourite was, it is not credible that at such a time he should have dared to insult the Prince with such a menace; his wish would rather have been to get rid of Ferdinand by leaving him in Spain. Indeed these transactions are perplexed with various and contradictory relations, which it is impossible to reconcile; many persons had an interest in misrepresenting them; the circumstances themselves were confused and tumultuous, and the event resulted perhaps more from accident, than from any preconcerted scheme or intended purpose. An alarm was given late at night, whether wantonly or in design, by one25 of the body213 guards, who fired a pistol: others instantly assembled, and the mob gathered round Godoy’s house, and endeavoured to force their way in. His own soldiers were faithful to him, and some of the life-guards fell in this attempt. Don Diego Godoy, brother to the favourite, came with the regiment which he commanded to his assistance, and ordered them to fire upon the people; they refused to obey, and suffered their commander to be disarmed and bound hand and foot. The tumult increased, and some cries were uttered, by which it appeared that the dethronement of Charles was desired as well as the death of Godoy. Ferdinand was at that hour the idol of the unreflecting multitude, and not a thought was expressed or felt of effecting any other change than that of removing the one king to make room for another. When the house of the favourite was at length forced, he himself was not to be found. In their indignation the people committed his furniture to the flames; many valuable ornaments were destroyed, but nothing was pilfered; and the insignia of his various orders, rich with gold and jewels, were carefully preserved and delivered to the King. In the height of their fury also they had compassion upon the wife and daughter of Godoy, the former perhaps had been made an object of214 popular favour because of the scandalous life of her husband, and they were conducted safely to the palace with a kind of triumph, but in a state of feeling which may well be conceived. The uproar continued through the night. At the earliest break of day Ferdinand appeared in the balcony, and by his presence some degree of order was restored. The populace were weary, if they were not satisfied; the troops ranged themselves under their respective banners, guards were posted at the door of the house which had been ransacked, and quiet was apparently re-established. At seven in the morning the King issued a decree, saying, that as he intended to command his army and navy in person, he dismissed the Prince of the Peace from his rank of generalissimo and chief admiral, and permitted him to withdraw whithersoever he pleased. He also notified this in a letter to Buonaparte, wherein, as if the real cause of the dismission could possibly be concealed, it was said that leave had been granted to the minister to resign these offices because he had long and repeatedly requested it: “but,” the King added, “as I cannot forget the services the Prince has rendered me, and particularly that of having co-operated with my invariable desire to maintain the alliance and intimate friendship that unite me to your imperial and royal Majesty, I shall preserve my esteem for him.”
The people were not to be appeased by a measure so obviously designed to save the215 favourite from their hatred, and give him an opportunity of effecting his escape. There were no seditious movements during that day and the ensuing night; but the cause of alarm and agitation continued. Godoy, in the first moment of danger, had taken shelter in a garret, among a heap of mats, in one of which he wrapt himself. There he remained about two and thirty hours; till, unable longer to endure the intolerable thirst produced by the feverishness of fear, on the morning of the 19th he left his hiding-place, and came forth to meet his fate, whatever it might be. It would have been a dreadful one, if the soldiers had not first perceived him, and afforded him some protection against an infuriated populace. Notwithstanding the guard under which he was immediately placed, the raging mob fell upon him, and he was led away prisoner. He had pistols when he had hid himself, and he has been reproached for not using them either against himself or his assailants; but though at such a time he could have little hope of life, he had a Catholic sense of the value of what little interval might be granted him, and he cried out for a confessor when death appeared to be at hand. That cry may sometimes avail with a Catholic mob, when it would be vain to entreat for any other mercy. He was, however, beaten26 and wounded, and his escort would216 hardly have been able to have saved his life, if the King had not sent Ferdinand to save him. Under his protection ... under the protection of the man whom he had most injured, and whom he justly regarded as his greatest enemy, he was deposited safely in the guard-house; and the Prince then in the name of his father satisfied the people, by assuring them that the fallen minister should be brought to condign punishment, according to the laws. The hope of seeing him publicly executed induced them to forego the immediate fulfilment of their vengeance, which would have been an inferior gratification. They dispersed accordingly, and there was another interval in the storm.
It broke out with renewed violence about middle day, when a carriage with six mules drew up to the guard-house. A report immediately spread that the culprit was to be removed to Granada, for the purpose of screening him from justice: the mob presently collected; they cut the traces and broke the carriage to pieces. They were once more quieted by the presence of Ferdinand, who repeated in his father’s name a solemn promise that Godoy should be punished in due course of justice. How far these repeated commotions arose naturally from the strange circumstances of the kingdom and the court, or how far they may have been217 excited by intriguing men, who hoped for employment under a new reign, and by those who with warm hearts and heated imaginations promoted the work of revolution for its own sake, it is impossible to ascertain; even those who were present have not known what opinion to form. But whatever the moving causes of these tumults may have been, the effect was, that on the evening of that day Charles, in the presence of Ferdinand, his ministers, and the principal officers of the court, resigned the throne. One of the guards immediately spread the news, and never was any intelligence more rapidly diffused. The abdication was publicly announced by a proclamation from Charles, stating that the infirmities under which he laboured (for he suffered much from rheumatic pains) would not permit him longer to support the burthen of public affairs; and that as it was necessary for the recovery of his health that he should enjoy the tranquillity of a private life in a more temperate climate, he had, after the most serious deliberation, determined to abdicate the crown in favour of his very dear son. He therefore by this decree of “free and voluntary abdication” made known his royal will, that the Prince of Asturias should be acknowledged and obeyed as king and natural lord of all his kingdoms and dominions. The news of these events was received throughout the kingdom with the most enthusiastic delight. At Madrid the rabble manifested their joy by entirely destroying the houses of Godoy, of his218 brother, his mother, and his more conspicuous adherents; his portraits and his escutcheons were burnt wherever they could be found. In many places Te Deum was performed as a thanksgiving for the favourite’s fall; in others, bull-fights were given with all the barbarity of the Spanish custom, horses always, and men oftentimes, being sacrificed in those abominable pastimes. At Salamanca the monks and students danced in the market-place.
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CHAPTER IV.
MURAT ENTERS MADRID. THE ROYAL FAMILY INVEIGLED TO BAYONNE. TRANSACTIONS AT THAT PLACE.
March.
Ministry formed by Ferdinand.♦
The first act of Ferdinand VII. evinced either his delusion with respect to the designs of Buonaparte, or his fear of offending him; it was to dispatch instructions that Solano’s troops, which were on their march to Talavera, should remain under Junot’s orders; and that the French, who were approaching Madrid, should be received as friends and allies. The new King reappointed the five Secretaries of State, whose offices terminated with the former reign. D. Pedro Cevallos, who was one, sent in his resignation; perhaps he wished to withdraw as much as possible from increasing difficulties and dangers, against which there appeared no remedy; and he was conscious that some degree of unpopularity attached to him because of his connexion with Godoy. Ferdinand, however, by a public decree, refused to accept his resignation: it had been proved to him, he said, that though Cevallos had married a cousin of the Prince of the Peace, he never participated in the projects of which that man was accused; and he was therefore a servant of whom the King would not deprive220 himself. It was affirmed by the Prince and his friends that Godoy had actually aspired to the throne; an accusation too absurd for any but the vulgarest credulity of an inflamed people. This wretched minion now felt that there are times when despotism itself proves even-handed as justice. He was sent prisoner to the Castle of Villa Viciosa: with that measure wherewith he had dealt to others, it was now meted to him; a judicial inquiry into his conduct was ordered, ♦Godoy’s property confiscated without a trial.♦ and before any trial, ... before any inquiry, the whole of his property was confiscated. Processes were also instituted against his brother, and many of his creatures. The decree which announced this declared Ferdinand’s intention of speedily coming to the capital to be proclaimed; expressing however his wish that the inhabitants would previously give him proofs of their tranquillity, since he had communicated to them his efficient edict against the late favourite. By the same proclamation the Duque del Infantado, a nobleman of the highest character, was appointed to the command of the Royal Spanish Guards, and to the presidency of Castille. All those persons who were confined in consequence of the affair which happened at the Escurial (thus the conspiracy was spoken of) were recalled near his royal person. D. Miguel Jose de Azanza, a man of high character, who had held the important office of viceroy of Mexico, was made minister of finance; D. Gonzalo de O’Farril, who had recently returned from a military command221 in Tuscany, was first appointed director general of the artillery, and presently afterwards minister of war. The Marquis Caballero was retained in the council; and, true to the maxims and spirit of the vile system which he had so long supported, he contrived to give a character of ungraciousness to the best act of the new government. Next to the punishment of Godoy, what all men most desired was the release of Jovellanos; an order was immediately issued for this, but it passed through Caballero’s hand, and he, instead of wording it in those honourable terms which were designed by the new King, expected by the people, and required by the case, expressed the royal pleasure as if it were an act of grace conferred upon a pardoned criminal, not an act of justice to an irreproachable and injured man. The new government suspended the sale of certain church property, upon which the fallen minister had ventured in the plenitude of his power; and they issued an edict for destroying wolves, foxes, and other animals, which had been preserved about the royal residences to gratify Charles’s passion for the chase. These measures were intended to court popular favour, and to cast a reproach upon the late reign. Some vexatious imposts were taken off; and a part of the police establishment of Madrid, which had been peculiarly odious, was abolished. The people regarded these acts as unequivocal proofs of the new Monarch’s excellent intentions; and the accession of Ferdinand was considered by those222 who were ignorant of the difficulties by which he was beset, and of the perilous circumstances of the country, as the commencement of a Saturnian age, and as the point of time from which the regeneration of Spain would be dated.
Meantime Joachim Murat, brother-in-law of Buonaparte and Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves, had arrived in Spain to take the command of all the French forces in that country. As soon as his arrival was known, Charles and Godoy dispatched an officer of artillery, by name Velarde, to congratulate him, on the part of the King, and to take care that nothing was wanting for the subsistence and accommodation of his troops. Murat reached Aranda, on the Duero, on the 17th, the day when the first disturbances broke out at Aranjuez; and there he desired Velarde would write to the court and inform them that his instructions were to march rapidly towards Cadiz; but that he should perhaps take it upon himself to stop some days at Madrid, though he had no orders to that effect: he should not, however, proceed farther than St. Augustine’s without having determined with the Spanish government the number of troops which were to enter the capital, and the time and the manner, so that they might be no charge to the inhabitants. He added, that he was in momentary expectation of dispatches from his master; that he should very soon be able to inform the Spanish nation what were the Emperor’s views; that he could now positively announce his intention of going to223 Madrid, and that probably in the course of eight days he would have crossed the Pyrenees. Velarde’s letter, which communicated this intelligence, was addressed to the Prince of the Peace; but it was received by the new ministers, and it increased their perplexities and alarms.
They informed the people however by a proclamation, that their King had notified the happy event of his accession to the French Emperor, and assured him, that far from changing the political system of his father toward France, he would endeavour to draw closer the bonds of friendship and strict alliance, which so fortunately subsisted between the French Emperor and Spain. This communication, it was said, was made in order that the council of Madrid might act conformably to the King’s sentiments, by taking measures for restoring tranquillity in the metropolis, as well as for receiving the French troops who were about to enter that city, and for administering to them every requisite assistance. They were to endeavour also to convince the people that these troops were coming as friends, and for purposes advantageous to the King and to the nation. The very fact that it was thought necessary to tell the people this, shows that they were not so besotted as to believe it. These were strange times, when a Spanish King informed the people of his measures, and, as it were, appealed to popular opinion; ... but stranger events were at hand.
All the foreign ministers congratulated224 Ferdinand upon his accession, except Beauharnois, from whom, after the part which he had taken concerning the expected marriage and throughout the affair of the Escurial, congratulation might first have been expected; he withheld this act of recognition, because he had not been furnished with the necessary instructions. ♦The French enter Madrid.♦ Murat was now advancing toward Madrid, and the general anxiety was heightened by the more unexpected intelligence that Buonaparte himself, he who made and unmade princes with a breath, was on the way to Bayonne. He supposed that the royal family were at this time on the coast and on the point of embarkation, and that the people, in their fear of anarchy, would receive the French commander with open arms as their deliverer. The occurrences at Aranjuez were altogether unexpected; and as soon as he was informed of them, Murat accelerated his march. The approach of such an army, the silence of the French Ambassador, the mysteriousness of Buonaparte, and his journey to Spain, perplexed and alarmed Ferdinand. He had communicated his accession to this Emperor in the most friendly and affectionate terms; ... fear could suggest no other. Lest this should be deemed insufficient, he appointed a deputation of three grandees to proceed to Bayonne, and compliment him in his name; and another grandee was sent, in like manner, to compliment Murat, who had already reached the vicinity of Madrid. This worthy agent was fully in his master’s confidence; he225 assured Ferdinand that Buonaparte might be every moment expected; and he spoke publicly of his coming. Orders were therefore given for preparing apartments in the palace suitable for such a guest; and the King, whose fears made him restless, wrote again to Buonaparte, saying how much he desired to become personally acquainted with him, and to assure him, with his own lips, of his ardent wishes to strengthen more and more the alliance which subsisted between them. ♦Mar. 23.♦ Murat, evidently for the purpose of displaying his forces, reviewed them before the walls; then made his entrance into Madrid, preceded by the imperial horse-guards, and by his staff, and followed by all the cavalry, and by the first division of foot under General Mounier; two other divisions were encamped without the city, and a detachment proceeded to take possession of Toledo. Ferdinand made his public entry on horseback the following ♦Mar. 24.♦ day, amid the ringing of bells and the discharge of artillery, but with no other parade than that which, under happier circumstances, would have been the most grateful of all spectacles; ... a concourse of all the people of the capital and its vicinity, rejoicing in his presence, and testifying, by their acclamations, that they expected from him the regeneration of their country. But never did poor prince succeed to such a crown of thorns.
The conduct of the French Ambassador had shown what was to be expected from the French226 General. Murat declared that until the Emperor Napoleon had acknowledged Ferdinand VII. it was impossible for him to take any step which might appear like such an acknowledgment: he therefore must be under the necessity of treating with the royal family. But Murat was better acquainted than Beauharnois with his master’s designs; as if taking the deposed King and Queen under his protection, he sent a numerous body of troops to Aranjuez to guard them; and he caused it to be understood that the French would interpose in behalf of Godoy. Both these measures might have been taken with honourable designs; but when the French General, Grouchy, ♦General Grouchy made Governor of Madrid.♦ was made governor of Madrid, a sort of military government established there, and patroles instituted to preserve the peace, under the joint superintendence of a French officer and a Spaniard, sufficient indications were given of an intention to occupy the capital as the frontier fortresses had been occupied. A legitimate government which should have had no other cause of disquietude, would have been perplexed at such a crisis; but the attention of Ferdinand and his ministers was distracted by personal considerations: instead of feeling like the sovereign of a proud and ancient people, the new King was in the situation of one who had to defend a bad title, and that not by an appeal to arms, but tremblingly before a superior and a judge.
A declaration concerning the affair of the Escurial was made public on the last day of the227 month, for the purpose of proving that neither Escoiquiz, nor the Duque del Infantado, nor the other persons implicated in the charge of conspiracy, had been guilty of any misconduct. It was acknowledged that the Prince had in his own hand-writing commissioned Infantado to assume the command of the troops in New Castille, in case of his father’s demise, and the alleged reason was a fear lest Godoy should continue at such a time to make an improper use of his influence and power. Such a pretext was too shallow to obtain belief in any calm or considerate mind: the King’s age and state of health rendered it probable that he might live many years, and in the event of his death, no man doubted but that Godoy, who held his power only upon favouritism, must instantly become the wretch that this revolution made him. As for his aspiring to the throne himself, it is impossible that he should even for a moment have entertained so frantic a thought, and almost as impossible that they who made the charge against him should themselves have believed it.
In the deed of abdication Charles called it his own free and voluntary act, and especial care was taken by the new administration to represent it as such. He had certainly remembered the examples of Charles V. and Philip V. and a thought of imitating them had passed across his mind in moments when difficulties pressed upon him, and he was sick of the cares of government. This is certain: it is probable also that the Prince’s party228 might not have formed the plan of sending him into retirement unless they had known that he himself had entertained, however transiently, a wish of retiring. To talk even among themselves of deposing the King, would have had a startling sound; and have brought into the prospect scaffolds and executioners as well as places and power. But it was easy to persuade both themselves and Ferdinand that their object was so to act as to make his father carry into effect that wish and wise intention, which, without some such external motive, he would for ever want resolution to effect for himself. They may have reasoned thus, and have meant well, and have acted with a patriotic purpose; nevertheless the act itself bore marks of deposition27, not less decided than the abdication of James in England.
These circumstances tallied well with Buonaparte’s designs, and they were dexterously improved by Murat. Even before he entered Madrid, General Mouthion was dispatched to Aranjuez with a letter to the Queen of Etruria, which229 contained assurances to the deposed King of Buonaparte’s support. A snare was laid for the imbecile Charles, and he rushed into it. However compulsory the act of abdication might have been, it was now as much his interest as that of his family, that he should acquiesce in it. But actuated by a sense of his wrongs, and still more perhaps by the Queen, who, trembling for her paramour, hated her son with all the virulence of an adulterous mother, he committed his last and consummating folly, by appealing to the very tyrant, whose open and undisguised aggressions had driven him, not a week before, to the resolution of abandoning his throne and seeking refuge in America. He assured Mouthion that the revolution had been preconcerted and brought about by money; that his son and Caballero were the chief agents; that he had signed the act of abdication only to save the Queen’s life and his own, knowing that if he had refused they would both have been murdered in the course of the night. The conduct of the Prince of Asturias was more shocking, he added, inasmuch as having perceived his desire to reign, and being himself near threescore years of age, he had agreed to surrender the crown to him on his marriage with a French princess, an event which he, the King, ardently desired. The Prince, he added, chose that he and the Queen should retire to Badajoz, though he had remonstrated against the climate as injurious to his health, and entreated permission to choose another place, his wish being to obtain leave of230 the Emperor to purchase an estate where he might end his days. The Queen said she had begged her son at least to postpone their departure for Badajoz, but even this was refused, and they were to set out on the following Monday. This fact alone would evince how little the inclinations of Charles were consulted throughout these transactions. The part of Spain where Badajoz stands is notoriously unhealthy during the summer months; and to have fixed upon that place for the residence of the deposed monarch, and persisted in the choice after he had objected to it on the score of his health, implied in the new government an equal want of feeling and of sense.
Having made these complaints, Charles delivered into Mouthion’s hands a formal protest, declaring that the decree of abdication was compulsory, and therefore invalid. He charged him also with a letter for the Emperor. “Sir, my brother,” he said, “you will not without some interest behold a King, who having been forced to resign his crown, throws himself into the arms of a great monarch his ally, placing every thing at the disposal of him who alone can make his happiness and that of all his family, and of his faithful and beloved subjects. I abdicated in favour of my son only under the pressure of circumstances, when the noise of arms and the clamours of a rebellious guard made me sufficiently understand that my choice was between life and death, and that my death would231 have been followed by the Queen’s. ♦1808. April.♦ I have been compelled to resign; but taking hope this day, and full of confidence in the magnanimity and genius of the great man who has already shown himself my friend, I have resolved to remit myself in every thing to him, that he may dispose as he thinks good both of us and our fate, that of the Queen and of the Prince of the Peace.” Having consigned this letter to Mouthion, who may be suspected of having dictated the latter expressions, he renewed his complaints. His situation, he said, was one of the most deplorable. They had seized the Prince of the Peace and would put him to death, for no other crime than that of having been at all times attached to his sovereign. There were no solicitations which he had not made to save the life of his unhappy friend, but he found every one deaf to his prayers and bent upon vengeance; and the death of Godoy would draw after it his own, for he should not survive him.
No King ever placed his favour more unworthily than Charles, but there was a sincerity in his friendship which almost amounts to virtue, and would have done honour to a better monarch. The Queen’s attachment also, which is more easily explained, had a character of enduring passion and self-abandonment seldom to be found in one at once so vicious and so weak. From this time she wearied Murat with letters, written in the most barbarous French and most confused manner, wherein she expressed her fears and her232 resentments. Ferdinand, she said, was the enemy of the French, though he declared the contrary. Infantado was very wicked; the priest Escoiquiz one of the most wicked; and San Carlos, the most crafty of all, had received all that he had from the King at the solicitation of the poor Prince of the Peace, whom he called his relation. She had no other support than the Grand Duke and the Emperor, those two sacred and incomparable persons.... But the Prince of the Peace made the burthen of every letter. “Nothing interests us,” she said, “but the safe condition of our only and innocent friend the Prince of the Peace, the friend of the Grand Duke; even in his prison when he exclaimed on the horrid treatment they were giving him, he called always upon his friend the Grand Duke. Before this conspiracy he wished for his arrival, and that he would deign to accept of his house as a residence.... He had presents to make him.... We are in constant fear of their killing or poisoning him. Let the Grand Duke cause troops to go without telling why, and without giving a moment of time to fire a pistol at him separate the guard that is set over him, which has no other glory in view, no other desire but to kill him, ... that innocent friend, so devoted to the French, to the Grand Duke and the Emperor, the poor Prince of the Peace. They heap crimes on this innocent Prince, our common and only friend, to inflame the public the more, and make them believe it is right to inflict on him all233 possible infamy. Afterwards they will come to me; ... they will make his head be cut off in public, and afterwards mine, for they say so.... He suffers because he is a friend of the Grand Duke, of the Emperor, and of the French; the Grand Duke and the Emperor are they alone who can save him, and if he be not saved and given to us, the King my husband and I will die.” Every letter was filled with these anxious solicitations: of the throne there seemed to be neither care nor thought; with the mob at Aranjuez before her eyes, and the recollection of Marie Antoinette in her heart, this wretched woman was sick of royalty; she asked only an allowance for the King, herself, and Godoy, upon which they might live all three together, in a situation suiting their health; ... a corner wherein they might quietly finish their days; ... some place near France, to be within reach of help against the bloody hands of his enemies. Her feelings toward Ferdinand were not less strongly expressed than her attachment to Godoy. “My son,” she says, “has a very bad heart: his character is bloody; his counsellors are bloody; they take pleasure only in making wretchedness, and his heart has no feeling for father or mother. He will make his enmity to the French appear when he thinks he can see occasion.... I fear they will make some attempt against them; ... the people are gained with money. When the Grand Duke shall have placed the poor Prince of the Peace in safety, let rather strong measures234 be taken, for otherwise intrigues will go on increasing, above all, against the poor friend of the Grand Duke and me; and the King my husband is not secure.”
Charles’s protest and his appeal to Buonaparte were concealed from Ferdinand, and the correspondence with Murat was carried on by means of the Queen of Etruria, who having witnessed all which had passed at Aranjuez, and being therefore a competent judge how far the abdication of her father was voluntary, took part decidedly against her brother. Murat’s intention was to frighten him into the toils; an alarm that should have made him start, would have ruined the plot. The interest which this Grand Duke affected for Godoy, his refusal to acknowledge the new government, and the respect which he paid to Charles, all tended to this end. The rumour of Buonaparte’s coming was carefully spread abroad; fresh couriers were said to have arrived: ... the Emperor had left Paris, and might speedily be expected in Madrid. Packages came marked as his, his hat and his boots were shown, Murat gave minute directions concerning the Emperor’s bath, and accepted a table of twenty covers for him, and another for his suite. Preparations were made for processions to do honour to the august visitor, and for balls at the Palace of the Buen Retiro. The soldiers were told that he would lose no time in putting himself at the head of his armies in Spain; ♦April 2.♦ they were ordered to put themselves in a state to appear before235 him; and in this proclamation, which appeared in a Madrid gazette extraordinary, the ominous notice was given, that they would immediately be supplied with cartridge. It was hinted that it would be a delicate compliment to the Emperor, if the Infante, Don Carlos, (Ferdinand’s next brother,) would set off to receive him on the way. His Highness, Murat said, could not fail to meet him before he had proceeded two days upon his road. This was readily agreed to, and the Infante, accompanied by the Duke del Infantado, departed upon this fatal journey. ♦Ferdinand is urged to go and meet the Emperor.♦ Having secured this victim, Murat endeavoured to entice Ferdinand himself into the snare: what had at first been hinted at, and advised as a mark of attentive consideration, was now pressed upon him as a thing of importance; a measure which would be attended with the happiest consequences to himself and the kingdom. The young King hesitated; it was more than courtesy required, more than an ally was entitled to expect, and perhaps he felt that it was more than a King of Spain ought to perform. Cevallos constantly advised him not to leave his capital till he had received certain intelligence that Buonaparte had passed the Pyrenees, and was approaching Madrid; and even then he urged him to proceed so short a way, that it should not be necessary for him to sleep out of his capital more than a single night. His advice prevailed for a time against the repeated solicitations of Murat and the ambassador Beauharnois. It became236 necessary, therefore, to introduce a new actor in this detestable plot.
During the interval which elapsed before another agent could appear, Murat informed Cevallos that the Emperor would be gratified if the sword of Francis I. were presented to him; and he desired that this might be intimated to the new King. It might be supposed that this was designed not merely to gratify the French nation, but also to lower Ferdinand in the opinion of the Spaniards, if Buonaparte and his agents had ever taken the nobler feelings of our nature into their calculation. But it was a mere trick for the Parisians; and neither they nor the tyrant himself felt that France was far more dishonoured by the circumstances under which the sword was recovered, than by the ♦March 31.♦ manner in which it had been lost. Accordingly this trophy of Pescara’s victory, which had lain since the year 1525 in the royal armoury at Madrid, was carried in a silver basin, under a silken cloth laced and fringed with gold, to Murat’s head-quarters, in a coach and six, preceded by six running footmen, and under the charge of the superintendent of the arsenal; the grand equerry and the Duke del Parque following in a second equipage with the same state. A detachment of the guards escorted them, and the sword was presented by the Marquis of Astorga to Murat; he, it was said, having been brought up by the side of the Emperor, and in the same school, and illustrious for his military237 talents, was more worthy than any other person could be to be charged with so precious a deposit, and to transmit it into the hands of his Imperial Majesty. The people of Madrid passively beheld the surrender of this trophy; it was the act, however compulsory, of their lawful king, the king of their choice; the compulsion was neither avowed on the one side, nor confessed on the other; from the imputation of beholding it with indifference, they amply redeemed themselves. Murat, upon receiving it, pronounced a flattering eulogium upon the Spanish nation, ... that nation which he was in the act of plundering, and which he came to betray and to enslave.
In spite of the patroles and rounds, and military government, the suspicions of the people began to manifest themselves more and more, and their poor Prince was compelled, while he concealed his own fears, to exert his authority for suppressing theirs. ♦April 3.♦ By a new edict, it was enacted, that no liquors should be sold after eight in the evening; master-manufacturers and tradesmen were ordered to give notice to the police if any of their workmen or apprentices absented themselves from their work; fathers of families were enjoined to keep their children and domestics from mixing with seditious assemblies, and to restrain them by good example, good advice, and the fear of punishment. The King, it was said, was grieved to perceive that the imprudence or malevolence of a few238 individuals attempted to disturb the good understanding between the people of Madrid and the troops of his intimate and august ally; and, as this conduct arose, perhaps, from a ridiculous and groundless misapprehension of the intention of those troops who were quartered in that city, and in other parts of the kingdom, he affirmed, that his subjects ought to set aside every fear of that nature, for the intention of the French government accorded with his own; and so far from concealing any hostile prospects, or the slightest invasion, had no other object than the great measures requisite against their common enemy. If, however, any person, after this declaration, should be rash enough, either by words or actions, to aim at disturbing the friendship between the two nations, the guilty would be most rigorously punished, without remission and without delay.
In thus attempting to quiet the just alarm of the people, Ferdinand’s ministers affected a security which they were far from feeling. Murat had fixed his head-quarters in Godoy’s house, within two hundred steps of the palace; not like a visitor or the representative of a friendly power, but as the general of an army with his staff, a numerous guard, and pieces of field artillery, evidently brought there rather for use than for parade. He had ten thousand men in the city, and forty thousand surrounding it, horse and foot, in perfect discipline, and provided with every thing, as if they were the next hour to239 take the field. Their communication with Bayonne was kept open by thirty thousand more, all of whom, if they were needed, might within a few days arrive to support the main body of the army: there was Junot with a force estimated at thirty thousand men in Portugal, ready to co-operate; while of the Spanish army the flower had been sent under Romana to the North, some were under the French orders in Italy; the rest under their power in Portugal; there remained three thousand troops in Madrid, and a single Swiss regiment in Toledo, of which the fidelity was suspected. The privy council, rather that it might be said they had made the inquiry than for any hope of profiting by it, demanded from the minister of war, Olaguer Feliu, an account of the number of troops in Spain, and their present situation. His answer was, that neither he, nor those in his department, had been permitted to meddle with these things; Godoy was the only person who knew; but that he believed, according to the general opinion, that except the scanty garrisons in the sea-ports and at S. Roque, the few troops which remained in the Peninsula were in Portugal under Junot.
A thought of the safest course in this exigence seems to have passed across the mind of Escoiquiz, ... that Ferdinand should escape from Madrid to Algeziras, where there were more troops than in any other part of his dominions, and from whence he could always240 command a sure retreat to Gibraltar. But this thought was speedily dismissed; resistance was never seriously contemplated: perplexed and helpless as Ferdinand and his counsellors were, they willingly deceived themselves as to the impending danger, and there came at this time ♦Dispatches from Izquierdo.♦ dispatches from Izquierdo, the favourite’s agent at Paris, which contributed greatly to deceive them. These letters stated the result of his conferences since he returned from Aranjuez, with Duroc, the grand marshal of the imperial palace, and with Talleyrand. An arrangement, they said, between the French and Spanish governments, might arrest the course of events, and lead to a solemn and definitive treaty upon these bases: 1st, That there should be a perfect reciprocity of free commerce for French and Spaniards in their respective colonies; each granting to the other this privilege, to the exclusion of all other nations. 2ndly, Portugal being possessed by France, France necessarily required a military road to that country; and the continual passage of troops through Spain, to garrison it and defend it against England, would be a constant occasion of expense, of disputes, and unpleasant consequences, which might all be avoided, France giving the whole of Portugal to Spain, and receiving an equivalent in the Spanish provinces adjacent to her own empire. 3rdly, The succession of the throne must be regulated once for all: and, lastly, there must be an offensive and defensive alliance. Upon these grounds, the241 French negotiators said, an arrangement might be concluded which would terminate happily the actual crisis between France and Spain. Izquierdo remarked, in transmitting these propositions, that when the existence and honour of the state and the government were thus matter of discussion, the decision must come from the Sovereign and his council; nevertheless, that his ardent love for his country had compelled him to make some observations to Talleyrand upon each of these points. Upon the first he had observed, that to open the commerce of the Spanish Americas to France was in reality to divide them with that power; and, moreover, that unless the pride of England were effectually beaten down, such a measure would render peace more distant than ever, while till peace was made, the communications of both countries with those colonies would be cut off. He added, that even if French commerce were permitted, French subjects could not be allowed to settle there, in derogation of the fundamental laws. With regard to Portugal, he reminded Talleyrand of the secret treaty of Fontainebleau, the sacrifice of the King of Etruria, the little that Portugal was worth, if separated from its colonies, and its utter uselessness to Spain: then for the cession of the Pyrenean provinces, he had dwelt upon the horror which the loss of their laws, liberties, privileges, and language, would excite in the people, and their abhorrence at being transferred to a foreign power; adding, that as a Navarrese242 himself he never could sign a treaty for ceding Navarre to France, and by such an act draw upon himself the execration of his countrymen. But Izquierdo, who was but too well assured that the French government demanded in such negotiations as these nothing which it was not determined to obtain, qualified his objections by hinting, that if there were no other remedy, a new kingdom or viceroyalty of Iberia might be erected, and given to the King of Etruria, or some other Infante of Castille. In reply to the point of succession, he stated what the King had commanded him to say, and in a manner which he supposed would counteract whatever calumnies had been invented by the malignant in one country, and infected public opinion in the other: ... these expressions probably allude to Charles’s intention of withdrawing from the government, and to the reports that Godoy was seeking to set aside Ferdinand from his inheritance. Lastly, with something of a Spaniard’s feeling, he asked Talleyrand if it was expected that Spain must be put upon a footing with the states of the Confederacy of the Rhine, and obliged to furnish her contingent, covering this tribute with the decorous name of a treaty offensive and defensive? Being at peace with France, she needed not the help of France against any other enemy, as Teneriffe, and Ferrol, and Buenos Ayres, might bear witness. Izquierdo added, in his dispatch, that the marriage was a thing determined; that there would be no difficulty as to the title of243 Emperor, which the King was to take; that he had been asked whether the royal family were going to Andalusia, and replied according to the truth, that he knew nothing of their intentions. He had in vain solicited that the French troops should evacuate Castille, and he requested that not a moment might be lost in replying to this communication, for the least delay in concluding an arrangement might produce fatal consequences.
If these dispatches had been written for the purpose of deceiving those into whose hands they fell, they could not have been better adapted to that intent. Under Godoy the foreign minister knew as little concerning the state of foreign negotiations, as the minister at war knew of the state of the army; and when the bearer of these papers, finding the favourite in prison, delivered them to the new ministers, they thought they had now obtained an insight into the real cause of all the alarming movements of the French. Well might France think that demands so extravagant as these could only be obtained by force; and this would explain the seizure of the fortresses, and the advance of an army to Madrid. To men who had feared the whole evil which was intended, it was a relief to imagine that Buonaparte designed to take only the provinces beyond the Ebro, or perhaps only Navarre; propositions which would have roused the nation to arms, were yet so far short of the danger they apprehended, that they contemplated the required244 cessions with something like complacency, and flattered themselves, that by a constant friendship toward France, and the feeling which the marriage would produce between the two courts, the terms might possibly be mitigated; ... at all events, that by yielding for the present they should obtain the restitution of Barcelona and the other fortresses; and that what with the war which ere long must be renewed in the north, and the thousand chances to which the game of politics is subject, they should find opportunity when they had recovered strength, to throw off this temporary yoke.
Such were their dreams when General Savary was announced as envoy from the Emperor, and demanded audience in that capacity. Of course it was immediately granted. At this audience he professed that he was sent merely to compliment Ferdinand, and to know whether his sentiments with respect to France were conformable to those of the King his father; if it were so, the Emperor would forego all consideration of what had passed; would in no degree interfere with the interior concerns of the kingdom; and would immediately recognize him as King of Spain and of the Indies. To this the most satisfactory answer was given. It neither was, nor could have been the intention of the Prince’s party to offend France; the only hope which they had hitherto entertained of regenerating their government, had been by allying themselves with Buonaparte, and availing themselves245 of his power. One of the charges which were current against Godoy among the people, was that of a secret understanding with the English, and that he intended to deliver Ceuta into their hands, and fly with all his treasures under their protection. Nothing could be desired more flattering than the language of Savary during this audience; and he concluded it by asserting that the Emperor was already near Bayonne, and on his way to Madrid. No sooner, however, had this envoy left the audience-chamber, than he began, as if in his individual capacity, to execute the real object of his mission. It would be highly grateful and flattering to his Imperial Majesty, he said, if the King would meet him on the road: and he asserted repeatedly, and in the most positive terms, that his arrival might be expected every hour.
The pressing instances of Savary upon this subject, while he repeatedly and positively asserted this falsehood, were accompanied with such intermixture of flattery and intimidating hints, as might best operate upon a man like Ferdinand placed in such circumstances. Murat failed not to enforce the same assurances, the same falsehoods, and the same menaces; and the ministers therefore determined upon consenting to what they dared not refuse. The immediate fear before their eyes was that Buonaparte might espouse the cause of the father against the son, in which case the least evils to be apprehended were the renovation of the Escurial-cause, the disheritance of246 the Prince, and for themselves that condign punishment which in that case they would not only suffer, but be thought to have deserved. They knew how vain it was to rely upon the popular favour, even if the people of Madrid had not been under the French bayonets; it was but for Buonaparte to prevent the Queen from taking part in public business, and to remove Godoy from the government. Charles was not personally disliked, and his restoration would then be hailed with as much apparent joy as had lately been manifested for his deposal.
This resolution was made public by Ferdinand in the form of a communication to the president of the council. “He had received,” he said, “certain intelligence, that his faithful friend and mighty ally, the Emperor of the French and King of Italy, was already arrived at Bayonne, with the joyful and salutary purpose of passing through this kingdom, to the great satisfaction of himself (the King), and to the great profit and advantage of his beloved subjects. It was becoming the close friendship between the two crowns, and the great character of the Emperor, that he should go to meet him; thus giving the most sure and sincere proofs of his sentiments, in order to preserve and renew the good harmony, confidential friendship, and salutary alliance which so happily subsisted, and ought to subsist between them. His absence could last only a few days, during which he expected, from the love and fidelity of his dear subjects, who had hitherto conducted247 themselves in so praiseworthy a manner, that they would continue to remain tranquil; that the good harmony between them and the French troops would still be maintained; and that those troops should be punctually supplied with every thing necessary for their maintenance.” On the same day he appointed his uncle, the Infante Don Antonio, president of the high council of government, as well, it was said, on account of the ties of blood, as because of the distinguished qualities with which he was endowed, to transact all pressing and necessary business which might occur during his absence. In this decree he stated, that he should go to Burgos, evidently implying an intention at that time of not proceeding farther.
Deceived, or fain to act as if he were deceived himself, Ferdinand thought to deceive his father. He wrote to him, saying, that a good understanding subsisted between the Emperor and himself, as General Savary had testified; and for this reason he thought it fit that his father should give him a letter for the Emperor, to congratulate him on his arrival, and assure him that Ferdinand’s sentiments toward him were the same as his own. Charles, in reply, ordered the messenger to be told, that he was gone to bed, ... being determined not to write such a letter unless he were compelled to it, as he had been to the abdication. The son, without any such testimonials, began, on the morning of the 11th of April, his ill-omened journey. Savary, affecting248 the most assiduous attention, solicited the honour of accompanying him; ... he had just, he said, received information of the Emperor’s approach, and it was not possible that they should proceed farther than Burgos before they met him. They reached Burgos, and Buonaparte was not there, neither were there any tidings of his drawing near. Savary, who had followed the young King in a separate carriage, urged him to proceed to Vittoria. Ferdinand hesitated; but the same protestations and urgent entreaties on the part of the French envoy, and the same anxiety and secret fear which had induced him to come thus far, made him again consent; yet so reluctantly, that the Frenchman, on their arrival at Vittoria, thinking it would be useless to renew his solicitations, left him there, and continued his journey to Bayonne, there to arrange matters with his master for securing the prey, who was now already in the toils. At Vittoria, Ferdinand received intelligence that Buonaparte had reached Bourdeaux, and was on his way to Bayonne. In consequence of this advice, the Infante Don Carlos, who had been waiting at Tolosa, proceeded to the latter place, whither the Emperor had invited him: he reached that city some days before him; and when this modern Cæsar Borgia arrived there, he found one victim in his power. It is said that Don Carlos soon discovered the views of Buonaparte; and, having communicated his fears to one on whom he relied as a Spaniard, and a man of honour, drew up, with his advice, a249 letter to Ferdinand, beseeching him, as he valued the independence of his country and his personal safety, not to proceed to Bayonne; but this person was in the tyrant’s interest, and intercepted the messenger.
While Ferdinand, meantime, was chewing the cud of reflection at Vittoria, without those opiates of falsehood and flattery which Savary had continually administered, D. Mariano Luis de Urquijo waited upon him: one of the persons who had suffered under Godoy’s administration, and who had hitherto been regarded as one of the most enlightened Spaniards and truest friends of his country. The new King had annulled the proceedings against him, and he now came to offer his homage and his thanks, and his advice in this critical position of affairs. He told the King’s counsellors that Buonaparte certainly intended to extinguish the dynasty of the Spanish Bourbons; that the language of the Moniteur concerning the tumults at Aranjuez, the movement of his troops, the seizure of the fortresses, and the whole scheme of his policy, made this evident. Fearing and believing this, he asked them what they could propose to themselves from this journey? how they could suffer a king of Spain thus publicly to degrade himself by going towards a foreign state without any formal invitation, without any preparations, without any of the etiquette which ought in such cases to be observed, and without having been recognized as King, for the French studiously called him250 still Prince of Asturias? To these reasonable questions the poor perplexed ministers could only reply, that they should satisfy the ambition of the Emperor by some cessions of territory, and some commercial advantages. He made answer, that perhaps they might give him all Spain. The Duke del Infantado appeared to feel the force of Urquijo’s remonstrances, but asked if it were possible that a hero like Napoleon could disgrace himself by such an action as this apprehended treachery. Urquijo answered, that both in ancient history and in their own they might find that great men had never scrupled at committing great crimes for great purposes, and posterity nevertheless accounted them heroes. The Duke observed, that all Europe, even France itself, would be shocked at such an act; and that Spain, with the help of England, might prove a formidable enemy. To this Urquijo replied, that Europe was too much exhausted to engage in new wars; and that the separate interests and ambitious views of the different powers prevailed with each of them more than a sense of the necessity of making great sacrifices in order to destroy the system which France had adopted since her fatal revolution. Austria was at this time the only power capable of opposing Buonaparte, if Spain should rise against him; but if Russia and Germany and the rest of Europe were on the opposite side, Austria would be vanquished; the Spanish navy would be destroyed, and Spain251 would become nothing more than a theatre of war for the English against the French; in which, moreover, the English would never expose themselves unless they had something to gain, for England was not capable of making head against France in a continental war: the end would be the desolation of Spain and its conquest. As little reason was there to rely upon any disgust which might be felt in France at the injustice of its Emperor. In France there was no other public spirit but what received its impulse from the government. The French would be flattered if their Emperor placed a member of his family on the throne of Spain; they would perceive in such a change great political and commercial advantages to themselves; and the numerous classes who had a deep interest in the revolution, all who had taken part in it, all who had grown up in its principles, ... the men of letters, the Jews, and the protestants, would regard with satisfaction an event which, by completing the destruction of the house of Bourbon, gave them a farther security against the dreaded possibility of its restoration in France. What, then, he asked, was to be done? Nothing could be hoped from arming the nation; the internal state of Spain rendered it impossible to form a government capable of directing its force, and popular commotions must in their nature be of short duration: an attempt of this kind would produce ruinous consequences in the Americas, where the inhabitants would wish to throw off a252 heavy yoke, and where England would assist in just revenge for the imprudence with which Spain had promoted the insurrection in her colonies. He advised therefore, as the only means which offered any hope of extricating the new King from the danger which awaited him, that he should escape from the French, in whose hands he already was in fact a prisoner. This might be done at midnight, through the window of one of the adjoining houses; the Alcaide of the city would provide means for conducting him into Aragon. Meantime Urquijo offered to go to Bayonne as ambassador, and make the best terms he could with the Emperor: a business so ill begun, so ill directed, and in every way so inauspicious, could not end well; but it might be expected that when Napoleon saw the King had escaped the snare, and was in a situation where he could act for himself, he would find it prudent to change his plans.
These forcible representations were strengthened by D. Joseph Hervas, son of the Marquis de Almenara; he was the brother-in-law of General Duroc, and the intimate friend of Savary, with whom he had travelled from Paris. Through these connexions he had obtained, if not a certain knowledge of Buonaparte’s intentions, such strong reasons for suspecting them, as amounted to little less; and he communicated his fears to Ferdinand’s counsellors, and besought them, while it was yet possible, to save him from the snare. These warnings were in vain. But though253 Ferdinand’s counsellors could not be made to apprehend the real danger, that poor Prince felt his first apprehensions return upon him with additional force; disappointed of seeing Buonaparte, disappointed of hearing from him, he compared this mortifying neglect with the conduct of Murat and the ambassador, and as if to relieve his mind by complaining, wrote to the tyrant in ♦April 14.♦ a tone which confessed how entirely he was at his mercy. Elevated to the throne, he said, by the free and spontaneous abdication of his august father, he could not see without real regret that the Grand Duke of Berg and the French ambassador had not thought proper to felicitate him as King of Spain, though the representatives of other courts with which he had neither such intimate nor such dear relations, had hastened so to do. Unable to attribute this to any thing but the want of positive orders from his Imperial Majesty, he now represented with all the sincerity of his heart, that from the first moment of his reign he had never ceased to give the Emperor the most marked and unequivocal proofs of attachment to his person; that his first order had been to send back to the army of Portugal the troops which had left it to approach Madrid; and his first care, notwithstanding the extreme penury of the finances, to supply the French troops, making room for them by withdrawing his own from the capital.... He spoke of the letters he had written, the protestations he had made, the deputations he had sent.254 “To this simple statement of facts,” said he, “your Majesty will permit me to add an expression of the lively regret I feel in seeing myself deprived of any letters from you, particularly after the frank and loyal answer which I gave to the demand that General Savary came to make of me at Madrid in your Majesty’s name. That general assured me that your Majesty only desired to know if my accession to the throne would make any change in our political relations. I answered by reiterating what I had already written, and willingly yielding to this general’s intreaties that I should come to meet your Majesty to accelerate the satisfaction of being personally acquainted with you, I have in consequence come to my town of Vittoria, without regarding the cares indispensable from a new reign, which required my residence in the centre of my states. I therefore urgently intreat your Majesty to put an end to the painful situation to which I am reduced by your silence, and to relieve by a favourable answer the disquietude which too long an uncertainty may occasion in my faithful subjects.”
From this time Ferdinand had no longer to complain of Buonaparte’s silence: an answer was brought to Vittoria by Savary. It began by acknowledging the receipt of that letter which the Prince had written respecting the projected marriage before the affair of the Escurial, and the receipt of which Buonaparte had formerly denied. “Your Highness,” said he, (for the255 title of King was carefully withheld,) “will permit me, under the present circumstances, to address you with frankness and sincerity. I expected that, on my arrival at Madrid, I should have persuaded my illustrious friend to make some necessary reforms in his dominions, which would give considerable satisfaction to the public feeling. The removal of the Prince of the Peace appeared to me indispensable to his happiness and the interests of his people. I have frequently expressed my wishes that he should be removed; and, if I did not persevere in the application, it was on account of my friendship for King Charles, and a wish, if possible, not to see the weakness of his attachments. O wretchedness of human nature! imbecility and error! such is our lot. The events of the North retarded my journey, and the occurrences at Aranjuez supervened. I do not constitute myself judge of those events: but it is very dangerous for Kings to accustom their subjects to shed blood, and to take the administration of justice into their own hands. I pray God that your Highness may not one day find it so. It would not be conformable to the interests of Spain to proceed severely against a Prince who is united to one of the Royal Family, and has so long governed the kingdom. He has no longer any friends; as little will your Royal Highness find any, should you cease to be fortunate.... The people eagerly avenge themselves for the homage which they pay us.”
256 This was the language of one who felt that he held his power by no other tenure than that of force, and reconciled himself to that tenure by a base philosophy, ... thinking ill of human nature because he could not think well of himself. What followed was more remarkable. “How,” said he, “could the Prince of the Peace be brought to trial without implicating the King and Queen in the process of exciting seditious passions, the result of which might be fatal to your crown? Your Royal Highness has no other right to it than what you derive from your mother. If the cause injures her honour, you destroy your own claims. Do not give ear to weak and perfidious counsels. You have no right to try the Prince; his crimes, if any are imputed to him, merge in the prerogative of the crown. He may be banished from Spain, and I may offer him an asylum in France.”
With respect to the abdication, Buonaparte said, that, as that event had taken place when his armies were in Spain, it might appear in the eyes of Europe and of posterity as if he had sent them for the purpose of expelling a friend and ally from his throne. As a neighbouring sovereign, it became him, therefore, to inform himself of all the circumstances before he acknowledged the abdication. He added, “I declare to your Royal Highness, to the Spaniards, and to the whole world, that, if the abdication of King Charles be voluntary, and has not been forced upon him by the insurrection and tumults257 at Aranjuez, I have no difficulty in acknowledging your Royal Highness as King of Spain. I am therefore anxious to have some conversation with you on this subject. The circumspection which I have observed on this point ought to convince you of the support you will find in me, were it ever to happen that factions of any kind should disturb you on your throne. When King Charles informed me of the affair of the Escurial, it gave me the greatest pain, and I flatter myself that I contributed to its happy termination. Your Royal Highness is not altogether free from blame: of this the letter which you wrote to me, and which I have always wished to forget, is a sufficient proof. When you are King, you will know how sacred are the rights of the throne. Every application of an hereditary prince to a foreign sovereign is criminal.” The proposed marriage, Buonaparte said, accorded, in his opinion, with the interests of his people; and he regarded it as a circumstance which would unite him by new ties to a house whose conduct he had had every reason to praise since he ascended the throne.
A threat was then held out.... “Your Highness ought to dread the consequences of popular commotions. It is possible that assassinations may be committed upon some stragglers of my army, but they would only lead to the ruin of Spain. I have learnt, with regret, that certain letters of the Captain-General of Catalonia have been circulated at Madrid, and that they have258 had the effect of exciting some irritation.” After this menace, Buonaparte assured the young King that he had laid open the inmost sentiments of his heart, and that, under all circumstances, he should conduct himself towards him in the same manner as he had done towards the King his father; and he concluded with this hypocritical form, ... “My Cousin, I pray God to take you into his high and holy keeping.”
This letter might well have alarmed Ferdinand and his counsellors; but there came at the same time letters from the persons who had been sent forward to Bayonne, urging him to show no distrust of Buonaparte, but to hasten forward and meet him, as the sure and only means of averting the fatal effects of his displeasure, and securing his friendship. They had now indeed advanced too far to recede; and their thoughts were rather exercised in seeking to justify to themselves the imprudence which they had already committed, than in devising how to remedy it. They persuaded themselves that Buonaparte was not ambitious of adding territory to the French empire; that his conduct, even toward hostile powers, was marked by generosity and moderation; and that his leading maxims of policy were, not wholly to despoil his enemies, but to aggrandize and reward his allies at their expense, and with what he took from them to form states more or less considerable for his relations, whose interest it would be to observe his system and support his empire. The259 instances of Holland and Naples might indeed seem not very well to agree with this view of his conduct; but it was obvious, they said, that while Holland remained under a republican form it would unavoidably connive with England, and the Dutch themselves were desirous of the change; and with regard to Naples, Napoleon could not possibly act otherwise than he had done, after the conduct of that court. Such was the miserable reasoning with which Ferdinand’s advisers flattered themselves at the time, ♦Escoiquiz. Idea Sencilla, c. 3.♦ and which they have since offered to the world as their justification; instead of fairly confessing, that in consequence of the events at Aranjuez they had placed themselves in a situation in which there was no alternative for men of their pitch of mind but to surrender at discretion to Buonaparte.
All of them were not thus deluded. Cevallos would fain have gone no farther; and the people of Vittoria, more quick-sighted than their Prince, besought him not to proceed. On the other hand, General Savary assured him with the most vehement protestations, as Murat had done before, that the Emperor did not wish to dismember Spain of a single village; and he offered to pledge his life, that within a few minutes after his arrival at Bayonne he would be recognized as King of Spain and the Indies. The Emperor, to preserve his own consistency, would begin by giving him the title of Highness; but he would presently give him that of Majesty; in three260 days every thing would be settled, and he might return to Spain. General Savary, if these persuasions had proved ineffectual, was prepared to use other methods not less congenial to his own character and his master’s; for not only were there troops in the neighbourhood of Vittoria surrounding this ill-fated Prince, to intercept his retreat, if he should attempt it; but soldiers were ready that night to have seized him, and a French aide-de-camp was in the apartment waiting for the determination. ♦Escoiquiz, 41.♦ Confused and terrified as Ferdinand was, and feeling himself in the power of the French, the only ease he could find was by endeavouring implicitly to believe their protestations of friendship. ♦Apr. 19.♦ Accordingly the next morning he renewed his journey, though the people, finding their cries and entreaties were of no avail, even cut the traces of his coach, and led away his mules.
He proceeded, and crossed the stream which divides the two kingdoms. Scarcely had he set foot on the French territory, before he remarked, that no one came to receive him; a neglect more striking, as he had travelled so far to meet the Emperor. At St. Jean de Luz, however, the mayor made his appearance, attended by the municipality. Too humble to be informed of Buonaparte’s designs, and probably too honest to suspect them, he came to the carriage and addressed Ferdinand, expressing, in the most lively manner, the joy he felt at having the honour of being the first person to receive a sovereign,261 the friend and ally of France. Shortly afterwards he was met by the grandees, who had been sent to compliment the Emperor: their account was sufficiently discouraging; but he was now near Bayonne, and it was too late to turn back. The Prince of Neufchatel (Berthier) and Duroc, the marshal of the palace, came out to meet him, and conduct him to the place which had been appointed for his residence, ... a place so little suitable to such a guest, that he could not for a moment conceal from himself, that it marked an intentional disrespect. Before he had recovered from the ominous feeling which such a reception occasioned, Buonaparte, accompanied by some of his generals, paid him a visit. Ferdinand went down to the street door to receive him; and they embraced with every appearance of friendship. ♦Buonaparte receives him with an embrace.♦ The interview was short, and merely complimentary; Buonaparte again embraced him at parting. The kiss of Judas Iscariot was not more treacherous than this imperial embrace.
Ferdinand was not long suffered to remain uncertain of his fate. Buonaparte, as if to prove to the world the absolute callousness of his heart, ... as if he derived an unnatural pleasure in acting the part of the deceiver, ... invited him to dinner, ... sent his carriage for him, ... came to the coach steps to receive him, ... again embraced him, and led him in by the hand. Ferdinand sate at the same table with him as a friend, a guest, and an ally; and no sooner had he returned to his own residence, than General Savary, the same man262 who, by persuasions and solemn protestations, had lured him on from Madrid, came to inform him of the Emperor’s irrevocable determination, that the Bourbon dynasty should no longer reign in Spain; that it was to be succeeded by the Buonapartes; and therefore, Ferdinand was required, in his own name, and that of all his family, to renounce the crown of Spain and of the Indies in their favour.
On the following evening Escoiquiz was summoned to Buonaparte’s cabinet in the Palace of Marrac, which had been built as a residence for the Queen-dowager, Mariana of Neuburg, widow of that poor prince Charles II. A curious conversation ensued. The Corsican began by saying, that from the character which he had heard of this canon, he had long wished to talk with him respecting Ferdinand. “All Europe,” said he, “has its eyes upon us. My armies being at this time in Spain, it will be believed that the violent proceedings at Aranjuez, which have given to all courts the evil example of a son conspiring against his father and dethroning him, were my work. I must avoid this imputation, and make the world see that I am not capable of supporting an attempt equally unjust and scandalous. Consequently I could never consent to acknowledge Prince Ferdinand as King of Spain, unless his father, who has sent in a formal protest against the pretended abdication, should in full liberty renew that abdication in his favour. But on the other hand, the interests of my empire263 require that the house of Bourbon, which I must ever regard as the implacable enemy of mine, should no longer reign in Spain. This is your interest also; rid of a dynasty whose latter kings have caused all those evils by which the nation is so exasperated, it will enjoy a better constitution under a new race; and being by these means intimately connected with France, it will be always secure of the friendship of the only power whose enmity could endanger it. Charles himself, knowing the inability of his sons to hold the reins of government in times so difficult, is ready to cede to me his own rights and those of his family. I will therefore no longer suffer the Bourbon family to reign; but for the esteem which I bear toward Ferdinand, who with so much confidence has come to visit me, I will recompense him and his brothers as far as possible for what my political interests require that they should lose in their own country. Let him cede all his claims to the crown of Spain, and I will give him that of Etruria, in full sovereignty for himself and his heirs male in perpetuity, and advance him as a donation a year’s revenue of that state, to establish himself in it. I will give him also my niece in marriage. If this proposition be accepted, the treaty shall immediately be made with all solemnities; but if not, I will then treat with the father, and neither the Prince nor his brothers shall be admitted as parties, nor can they expect the slightest compensation. To the Spanish nation I shall secure their264 independence and total integrity under the new dynasty, with the preservation of their religion, laws, and customs; for I want nothing for myself from Spain, not even a village. If your Prince does not like this proposal, and chooses to return to Spain, he is free! he may go when he pleases! but he and I must fix a time for his journey, after which hostilities shall commence between us.”
Escoiquiz replied to this extraordinary speech by entering into an elaborate apology for the transactions at Aranjuez, to which Buonaparte listened with great patience, observing only from time to time, that however these arguments might appear to those persons who were intimately acquainted with the character of Charles and his Queen, it must ever be impossible to make the rest of the world believe that an abdication made under such circumstances of public and notorious force, was in any thing different from a deposal. But be that as it might, the interests of his house and of his empire required that the Bourbons should no longer reign in Spain; and then, Escoiquiz says, taking him by the ear, and pulling it with the best humour in the world, he added, “If all which you say were true, canon, I should still repeat ... bad policy. Exposed as I am every moment to a renewal of the war in the north, I should never have my back secure while the Bourbons occupied that throne; and Spain, with a man of talent at its head, could give me the greatest annoyance.” The canon again entered into a long reply, showing how completely the265 court of Spain had abandoned the Bourbons of France and of Naples, imputing the wish to join with Prussia wholly to Godoy, and observing that a marriage into the august imperial family would secure the attachment of Ferdinand. All Europe, he said, had fixed their eyes upon Bayonne; the Spaniards were looking with inconceivable impatience for the return of their young and beloved monarch, flattering themselves that Buonaparte would be to him both as father and mother, ... for it had been Ferdinand’s fate only to know his parents by the unnatural hatred which they had borne towards him. There would be no bounds to their gratitude, if, according to his imperial promise, he should honour the capital with his presence, bringing back with him the young King. The whole nation would receive him on their knees, would bless him, and would never forget his goodness; and Spain, thus restored to strength, would become a more efficient ally to France than she had ever yet been, and afford her the only means for reducing England to reason. But if the Emperor persisted in his present intentions the Spaniards would vow an inextinguishable hatred against him. Experience might show how deeply such feelings took root in the Spanish heart. An age had now elapsed since the war of the succession, and yet the rancour which had then been felt in Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, against the Bourbon family, against France, and even against the Castilians, had never been wholly allayed till the recent accession266 of Ferdinand. But if this feeling had arisen in a question merely of doubtful right, what would it be if the people saw themselves deprived of a King whom they adored, to have a stranger set over them in his place? The Spaniards must be exterminated before such a King could be established upon his throne.
To this Buonaparte replied, that he was assured of the only power which could give him any uneasiness; the Emperor of Russia, to whom he had imparted his plans at Tilsit, having approved of, and given his word not to oppose them. As for the Spaniards themselves, they would make little or no opposition. The nobles and the rich would certainly remain quiet for fear of losing their property, and would exert all their influence to quiet the people. The clergy and the friars, whom he would make responsible for any disorder, would for their own sake, and for the like motives, do the same. The populace might excite tumults here and there, but a few severe chastisements would make them return to their duty. Countries in which there were many friars were easily subdued; ... he had had experience of this: and if the opposition were general, the result must be the same, even if it should be necessary to sacrifice 200,000 men. Escoiquiz made answer, that in that case the new dynasty would be placed upon a volcano; ... 200,000 or 300,000 men would be required to keep the provinces down, and the Monarch would reign in the267 midst of carcasses and ruins, over a race of indignant slaves, ready upon the slightest occasion to break their chains. And of what utility would such an alliance prove? Spain, ruined, deserted, and deprived of her colonies, would become a burden to France. Buonaparte upon this observed, that the canon was proceeding too fast in taking it for granted that Spain would lose her colonies: he on his part had well-founded hopes of preserving them. “Do not suppose,” said he, “that I have been sleeping. I have communications with Spanish America, and have sent frigates to those coasts to maintain them.” Escoiquiz replied, that America even now was held by no other bond than the slight thread of habit; the least disgust, even under Ferdinand himself, would break the connexion, and beyond all doubt the whole of the colonies would separate themselves from the mother country rather than acknowledge the new dynasty. What too would be the effect of such a measure upon the European powers, and how might England be expected to act? Would not England regard it as the most favourable of all events? would it not at once open the whole commerce of America to her, and with the treasure from thence derived, enable her to purchase all the people of Europe, and arm them against France: and even to stir up domestic movements against the Emperor, which would be yet more perilous, for money was the most powerful of engines? Buonaparte then put an end to the conference by observing268 that they did not agree in the principles upon which they reasoned; that he would think again upon the matter, and on the morrow communicate his irrevocable determination.
On the morrow accordingly Escoiquiz was again summoned, and the irrevocable determination was announced that the Bourbon dynasty must cease to reign upon the Spanish throne: that if Ferdinand would accede to the proposed exchange, Etruria should be given him; but that if he refused, the King his father would make the cession, Etruria would remain annexed to France, and he would lose all compensation. Escoiquiz, after touching again upon his yesterday’s argument, began to lament the disgrace which would fall upon the advisers of Ferdinand, and especially upon himself as being supposed to have most influence with him. For even, he said, if it should be known that the Prince, before he consulted them, had determined upon this journey, and yielding to the solicitations of the embassador had given his word to set out, the nation would always accuse them for not having dissuaded him from it. Buonaparte seems in these conferences to have considered Escoiquiz not as a statesman, but as a good easy man of letters, whom a little flattery would win to his wishes. He argued with him, therefore, in the same temper as on the preceding day; and giving him another pull by the ear, said to him at last with a smile, “So, then, canon, you will not enter into my ideas.” The269 canon replied, “On the contrary, I wish with all my heart that your Majesty would enter into mine, ... though it should be at the cost of my ears,”—for the Emperor was pulling there somewhat too forcibly.
But Buonaparte, when he found that Ferdinand was not to be cajoled into the cession, laid by the semblance of these gracious manners, and proceeded in the temper of a tyrant to effect the usurpation which he had begun. Cevallos was now summoned to the palace, to discuss the terms of the renunciation with the French minister for foreign affairs, M. Champagny. The Spaniard assumed a firm and manly tone; he complained of the perfidy which had been practised, protested in Ferdinand’s name against the violence done to his person, in not permitting him to return to Spain; and, as a final answer to the Emperor’s demand, declared that the King neither could nor would renounce his crown; he could not prejudice the individuals of his own family, who were called to the succession by the fundamental laws of the kingdom: still less could he consent to the establishment of another dynasty, it being the right of the Spanish nation to elect another family whenever the present should become extinct.
M. Champagny replied, by insisting on the necessity of the renunciation, and contending that the abdication of the father-king had not been voluntary. Of this assertion, which was as ill-timed as it was irrelevant, Cevallos readily270 availed himself, expressing his surprise that, while they condemned the abdication of Charles as not having been his own free act, they, at the same time, were endeavouring to extort a renunciation from Ferdinand. He then entered into details designed to prove that no violence had been done to the father-king, either by the people, the prince, or any other person, and that he had retired from government by his own unbiassed will. But Cevallos protested against acknowledging the smallest authority in the Emperor to intermeddle with matters which exclusively belonged to the Spanish government; following, he said, in this respect, the example of the cabinet of Paris, which rejected, as inadmissible, the applications of the King of Spain in behalf of his ally and kinsman Louis XVI. It was of little consequence that Ferdinand’s minister triumphed in argument. M. Champagny abruptly turned the subject, by saying that the Emperor never could be sure of Spain while it was governed by the Bourbon dynasty; for that family must necessarily regret to see its elder branch expelled from France. Cevallos answered, that, in a regular system of things, family prepossessions never prevailed over political interests, of which the whole conduct of Charles IV. since the treaty of Basle was a proof. Every reason of policy induced Spain to maintain a perpetual peace with France, and there were reasons why the continuance of that system was not of less importance to the271 Emperor. The generosity and loyalty of the Spaniards were proverbial; from that loyalty they had submitted to the caprices of despotism; and the same principle, if they saw their independence and the security of their sovereign violated, would call forth their well-known valour. If so atrocious an insult were committed, France would lose the most faithful and useful of her allies; and the Emperor, by the artifices with which he entrapped the King to Bayonne, in order there to despoil him of his crown, would have so effectually stained his own character, that no confidence hereafter could be placed in treaties with him; and war with him could be concluded by no other means than that of total destruction and extermination.
Buonaparte was listening to this conference. He lost patience now, and ordering Cevallos into his own cabinet, the violence of his temper broke out. He called that minister traitor, for continuing to serve the son in the same situation which he had held under the father; he accused him of having maintained, in an official interview with General Moutheon, that Ferdinand’s right to the crown stood in no need of his recognition, though it might be necessary to the continuance of his relations with France: and he reproached him still more angrily for having said to a foreign minister at Madrid, that, if the French army offered any violation to the integrity and independence of the Spanish sovereignty, 300,000 men would convince them272 that a brave and generous nation was not to be insulted with impunity. The tyrant then entered upon the business of the renunciation, which he was determined should be made; and finding that Cevallos still insisted upon the rights of his master, the reigning dynasty, and the people of Spain, he concluded the conversation by these remarkable and characteristic words: “I have a system of policy of my own. You ought to adopt more liberal ideas; to be less susceptible on the point of honour; and not sacrifice the prosperity of Spain to the interest of the Bourbon family.”
Having found Cevallos so little inclined to yield, Ferdinand was informed that he must appoint another person to carry on the negotiation. While he was deliberating whom to choose, one of the French agents insinuated himself into the confidence of Escoiquiz, and persuaded him to pay a visit to Champagny, from whom he received the propositions of Buonaparte in writing. These, which were to be considered as the tyrant’s definitive demands, from which he would not recede, and which were the most favourable he would grant, declared his irrevocable determination that the Bourbon dynasty should no longer reign in Spain, and that one of his brothers should possess the throne. The complete integrity of that kingdom and all its colonies was to be guaranteed, together with the preservation of religion and property. If Ferdinand agreed to renounce his rights in his own name,273 and that of his family, the crown of Etruria should be conferred upon him according to the Salic law; and the Emperor’s niece be given him in marriage immediately, if he chose to demand her, upon the execution of the treaty. If he refused, he should remain without compensation, and the Emperor would carry his purposes into effect by force.
Escoiquiz was of opinion that Ferdinand would do well to yield to a force which he could not resist, and save what he could from the wreck. He argued that it was their business to mitigate the evil as far as possible, saving always the honour of the King and the interests of Spain; and that as Ferdinand was yet but a youth, he might hope, in some of those changes which are incident to human affairs, to regain what he now lost. The cession which was demanded would be palpably invalid, and would not prevent the Spanish nation from making any exertions which their loyalty and spirit might prompt. By accepting Etruria he would secure to himself the kingly title and kingly treatment from Buonaparte; for though he would certainly be detained in France as long as Spain resisted, still it would be with all outward marks of honour; he would be kept like a slave in fetters of gold, not imprisoned in some castle where misery and ill-treatment would put an end to him and his brothers. If Spain should make a successful stand, by the help of England, which might be expected, and perhaps that of other powers also, Etruria would274 be always something in possession, the exchange of which would facilitate his return to his lawful throne: but if unhappily, after all efforts, Spain should succumb in the strife, her disherited princes would still remain with an honourable and princely asylum. It was moreover especially to be considered, that if Ferdinand refused to treat with the Emperor Napoleon, and cede his rights as King of Spain, the cession would beyond all doubt be made by his father, and Ferdinand would then be dealt with in the character of an undutiful and rebellious son. These arguments did not prevail; the majority of Ferdinand’s advisers, notwithstanding all that had passed, could not be persuaded that Buonaparte meant seriously to depose him; they continued to believe that all these measures were only designed to extort a cession of territory, and that if Ferdinand continued firm in his refusal, he need not sacrifice the provinces on the left of the Ebro, nor even Navarre, but that some of the colonies would suffice. They urged this persuasion so strongly, that Escoiquiz, without altering his own opinion, assented to theirs. But all these discussions were made known to Buonaparte by one of their own number, who was sold to the tyrant.
Ferdinand therefore now invested Don Pedro de Labrador, honorary counsellor of state, in whose talents he had great reliance, with full powers, instructing him to present them to the French minister for foreign affairs, and to demand275 his full powers in return, that the proposals of Buonaparte might be communicated in an authentic manner. ♦April 27.♦ The instructions given him, which were drawn up by Cevallos, were to ask M. Champagny if King Ferdinand were at full liberty? for if he was, he would return to his dominions, and there give audience to the plenipotentiary whom the Emperor might depute; if he were not, all acts at Bayonne were nugatory, and could have no other effect than to stain the reputation of Buonaparte before the whole world. Ferdinand, he was charged to say, was resolved not to yield to the Emperor’s demands: neither his own honour, nor his duty to his subjects, permitting him. He could not compel them to accept of the Buonaparte dynasty, much less could he deprive them of their right to elect another family to the throne, when the reigning one should be extinct. It was not less repugnant to his feelings to accept of the throne of Etruria as a compensation; that country belonged to its lawful sovereign, whom he would not wrong, and he was contented with the kingdom which providence had given him.
When Labrador presented his powers, and required the usual return, M. Champagny replied, these things were mere matters of form, and wholly unconnected with the essential object of which they were to treat. Buonaparte, indeed, had determined to force from Ferdinand the form of a voluntary renunciation, but he and his ministers considered all other forms as useless. The276 Frenchman proceeded to talk of the propositions: Labrador declared he could discuss no subject till the previous formalities had been observed; and asked if the King were at liberty? M. Champagny made answer, undoubtedly he was. Then, said the Spaniard, he ought to be restored to his kingdom. But M. Champagny replied, that, with respect to his return, it was necessary he should come to a right understanding with the Emperor, either personally or by letter. Already, Ferdinand had had sufficient reason to feel himself a prisoner; this language was such as could leave no doubt. But that the violence might be apparent and notorious, Cevallos ♦April 28.♦ addressed a note to the French minister of state, saying, that the King had left Madrid with the intention of meeting the Emperor at Burgos, on the assurances which the Grand Duke of Berg, the ambassador Beauharnois, and General Savary, had given of his approach; and that, in consequence of the agitation of the public mind in Spain, it was impossible to answer longer for the tranquillity of the people, especially as they were apprized that their King had now been six days at Bayonne. He had, in the most solemn manner, promised them on his departure that he would speedily return. This, therefore, he was about to do; he now made known his intentions, that they might be communicated to the Emperor, whose approbation they would doubtless meet; and he should be ready to treat, in his dominions, on all convenient subjects, with any277 person whom it might please his Imperial Majesty to authorize. No answer was returned to this dispatch; but the spies within the palace and the guards without were doubled. A guard at the door even ordered the King and his brother one night to retire to their apartments. Ferdinand’s mind was not yet so subdued to his fortunes as to brook this insult. He complained bitterly of it; and the Governor in consequence soothed him with courteous language, and expressed his disapprobation of such conduct. The act, however, was repeated; and, not choosing to expose himself a third time to insults, which he had no means of resenting, he abstained from going out.
Buonaparte had expected that Ferdinand would more easily be intimidated into compliance; in that case he would have recognized the validity of the father’s abdication; which, in fact, he did virtually acknowledge, while treating with the son for his renunciation. He now found it necessary to alter his plan of proceedings, and ordered Murat to send off Charles and the Queen as expeditiously as possible to Bayonne. There was no danger of exciting any popular commotion by removing them; but the deliverance of Godoy was also to be effected; and artifice must be employed for this, unless he resorted immediately to force, which it was his purpose to avoid till the whole of the royal family were in his hands. The release of the fallen favourite had been requested of Ferdinand during his stay at Vittoria. He replied, that he had promised his278 people to publish the result of a process, on which the honour of many of his subjects, and the preservation of the rights of the crown, depended. Throughout the whole extent of Spain, he said, there was not a single district, however small, which had not addressed complaints to the throne against that prisoner: the joy at his arrest had been general, and all eyes were fixed upon the proceedings. Nevertheless, he gave his royal word, that, if, after a full examination of the case, Godoy should be condemned to death, he would remit that punishment in consequence of the Emperor’s interposition. At the time when Ferdinand returned this answer to Buonaparte, he received advices from the Junta of government that Murat had required them to release Godoy; threatening, if they refused, to deliver him by force, and put his guards to the sword if they offered the slightest resistance. They were informed, in reply, of the answer which had been sent to Bayonne, and were instructed to tell the Grand Duke, if he renewed his applications, that the business was in treaty between the two sovereigns, and that the result depended exclusively on the decision of the King.
The French have at all times had less public faith than any other nation in Europe; but whether under their old monarchy, their democracy, or the absolute tyranny in which that democracy had its natural end, they have effectually protected their agents and partizans in other countries. Godoy had been the creature279 of France, and Buonaparte was resolved to save him: he treated, therefore, the letter of Ferdinand with contempt; and, having recourse to direct falsehood, sent information to Murat, that the Prince of Asturias had put the prisoner entirely at his disposal, and ordered him to demand and obtain the surrender of his person. ♦Apr. 20.♦ A note was accordingly delivered to the Junta, in Murat’s name, by General Belliard, demanding the prisoner. This, he said, was only a new proof of the interest which the Emperor took in the welfare of Spain; for his Imperial Majesty could not recognize as King any other than Charles IV.; and, by removing the Prince of the Peace, he wished to deprive malevolence itself of the possible belief, that that monarch would ever restore him to confidence and power. One member of the government, Don Francisco Gil, protested against yielding to the demand, because it was not authorized by Ferdinand their King: the others deemed it wiser to submit, and the Infante D. Antonio declared, that it depended upon their compliance in this point whether his nephew should be King of Spain. ♦Memoria de Azanza y O’Farrel, p. 25.♦ The Marquis de Castellar, therefore, to whose custody Godoy had been committed, was instructed to deliver him up, and he was removed by night. Had the people been aware that this minister was thus to be conveyed away from their vengeance, that indignation which soon afterwards burst out would probably have manifested itself now, and Godoy would have perished by their hands.280 He was immediately sent under a strong escort to Bayonne.
In obtaining the release of this wretch, Buonaparte had probably no other view at the time, than of preserving that uniform system of protection towards his agents, which pride as well as policy dictated. But when he found his designs unexpectedly impeded by the firmness which Ferdinand and his counsellors then displayed, he perceived that Godoy might yet be useful; and when Charles arrived at Bayonne, the favourite was restored to him, and reinstated as minister, that he might, by a last act of office, consummate his own infamy, and complete the destruction of the dynasty which had raised him, and the country which had given him birth. Willing to be revenged on Ferdinand, and now also hating Spain, Godoy, who had hitherto seconded the projects of Buonaparte, because he was duped by the hopes of aggrandizement, now forwarded them with equal eagerness for the sake of vengeance. It was necessary that Charles should be induced to treat his son as an enemy, a rebel, and a traitor; and that, while he punished him as such for having accepted his abdication, he should be made to resume the crown, solely for the purpose of transferring it to a stranger; and that stranger one from whose treacherous and unprovoked aggressions he himself but a few weeks before had attempted to fly to America, abandoning his kingdom. To this resolution, monstrous as it was, the281 unhappy King was brought; nor was compulsion needful; the ascendancy of the favourite was sufficient to make him fancy it his own act and deed. Fear might have extorted the renunciation; but the manner in which he personally treated his son sprung evidently from his own feelings, thus exasperated.
Ferdinand had now only to choose between degradation and destruction. He made, however, one effort in behalf of himself and of Spain, and addressed his father in a letter not less dignified than respectful, in which he at the same time asserted his right to the crown, and his readiness to restore it. ♦May 1.♦ The King, he said, had admitted that the proceedings at Aranjuez were in no degree occasioned or influenced by him; and had told him, that the abdication had been voluntary, and that it was the happiest act of his life. He still declared, that it was an act of his own free-will; but professed that it had been made with the mental reservation of a right to resume the crown whenever he thought proper; and now he reclaimed it, avowing at the same time, that he would neither return to the throne nor to Spain. The fundamental laws of the kingdom conferred the crown upon himself, he said, upon his father’s free resignation of it. His father had freely resigned; and yet now reclaimed his power, without any intention of retaining it. Here, then, he required an act of duty which the son could not perform, without violating the duty which he owed to his282 subjects. But both might be reconciled; and Ferdinand would willingly restore the crown to his father, on condition, 1. That they both returned to Madrid; 2. That a Cortes should be assembled there; or, if Charles objected to so numerous a body, that all the tribunals and deputies of the kingdom should be convoked; 3. That the renunciation should be executed in due form, in the presence of the council, and the motives stated which induced him to make it: these, Ferdinand said, were the love which he bore to his subjects, and his anxiety to secure their tranquillity, and save them from the horrors of a civil war; 4. That the King should not be accompanied by individuals who had justly excited the hatred of the whole nation; and, 5. That, if the King persisted in his present intention, neither to reign in person nor to return to Spain, Ferdinand should govern in his name: “there is no one,” said he, “who can have a claim to be preferred before me. I am summoned thereto by the laws, the wishes, and the love of my people, and no one can take more zealous and bounden interest in their welfare.”
May 2.♦
In the answer to this letter, the dictation, as well as the purposes of Buonaparte, is apparent. Charles began, by declaring, that Spain could be saved by the Emperor alone. Since the peace of Basle, he had seen that the essential interests of his people were inseparably connected with the preservation of a good understanding with France; and he had spared no283 sacrifices to preserve it. Spain had been forced by the aggression of England into the war, and having suffered more by it than any other state, the consequent calamities had been unjustly attributed to his ministers; nevertheless he had the happiness of seeing the kingdom tranquil within, and was the only one among the Kings of Europe, who sustained himself amid the storms of these latter times. That tranquillity Ferdinand had disturbed: misled by the aversion of his first wife towards France, he thoughtlessly participated in the prejudices which prevailed against the minister and his parents. “It became necessary for me,” said Charles, “to recollect my own rights, as a father and a King. I caused you to be arrested; ... I found among your papers the proof of your crime. But I melted at seeing my son on the scaffold of destruction. I forgave you; and, from that moment, was compelled to add to the distresses which I felt for the calamities of my subjects, the afflictions occasioned by dissensions in my own family.”
The part which followed must have been designed by Buonaparte to conceal the manifest proofs of his own hand, which appear in the rest of the letter. The Emperor of France, it was here said, believing that the Spaniards were disposed to renounce his alliance, and seeing the discord that prevailed in the royal family, inundated the Spanish provinces with his troops, under various pretences. While they occupied284 the right bank of the Ebro, and appeared to aim only at maintaining the communication with Portugal, the King was not alarmed; but when they advanced towards the capital, then he felt it necessary to collect his army round his person, that he might present himself, in a manner becoming his rank, before his august ally ... all whose doubts he should have removed. For this purpose, his troops were ordered to leave Portugal and Madrid, not that he might abandon his subjects, but that he might support with honour the glory of the throne. Sufficient experience had also convinced him, that the Emperor of the French might entertain wishes comformable to his particular interest, and to the policy of the vast system of the continent, which might be inconsistent with the interests of the Spanish Bourbons. Ferdinand availed himself of these circumstances, to accomplish the conspiracy of the Escurial. Old, and oppressed by infirmity, his father was not able to withstand this new calamity; ... he repaired, therefore, to Buonaparte, not as a King, not at the head of his troops, not with the pomp of royalty, but as an unhappy and abandoned prince, who sought refuge and protection in his camp. To that Emperor he was indebted for his own life, and for the lives of the Queen, and of the minister whom he had appointed and adopted into his family. Every thing now depended upon that great monarch. “My heart,” said Charles, “has been fully unfolded to him. He285 knows the injuries I have received, and the violence which has been done me; ... he has declared that you shall never be acknowledged as King; and that the enemy of his father can never acquire the confidence of foreign states. He has, in addition to this, shown me letters written with your own hand, which clearly prove your hatred of France.
“Things being thus situated,” he continued, “my rights are clear, and my duties are much more so. It is incumbent upon me to prevent the shedding the blood of my subjects; to do nothing at the conclusion of my career, which should carry fire and sword into every part of Spain, and reduce it to the most horrible misery. If, faithful to your primary obligations, and to the feelings of nature, you had rejected perfidious counsels, and placed yourself constantly at my side, for the defence of your father; if you had waited the regular course of nature, which would have elevated you in a few years to the rank of royalty, I should have been able to conciliate the policy and interests of Spain, with those of all. For six months, no doubt, matters have been in a critical situation; but notwithstanding such difficulties, I should have obtained the support of my subjects. I should have availed myself of the weak means which yet remained to me, of the moral aid which I should have acquired, meeting always my ally with suitable dignity, to whom I never gave cause of complaint; and an arrangement would have286 been made which would have accommodated the interests of my subjects with those of my family. But in tearing from my head the crown, you have not preserved it for yourself; you have taken from it all that is august and sacred in the eyes of mankind. Your behaviour with respect to me ... your intercepted letters, have put a brazen barrier between yourself and the throne of Spain; and it is neither your own interest, nor that of the country, that you should reign in it. Take heed how you kindle a fire which will unavoidably cause your complete ruin, and the degradation of Spain! I am King by the right derived from my forefathers; my abdication was the result of force; I have nothing to receive from you; nor can I consent to the convocation of the Cortes ... an additional absurdity, suggested by the inexperienced persons who attend you. I have reigned for the happiness of my subjects, and I do not wish to bequeath them civil war, mutiny, popular Juntas, and revolution. Every thing ought to be done for the people, and nothing by the people: to forget this maxim, were to become an accomplice in all the crimes that must follow its neglect. I have sacrificed the whole of my life to my people; and in the advanced age to which I have arrived, I shall do nothing in opposition to their religion, their tranquillity, and their happiness. I have reigned for them; I will constantly occupy myself for their sakes; I will forget all my sacrifices; and when at last I shall be287 convinced that the religion of Spain, the integrity of her provinces, her independence, and her privileges are preserved, I shall descend to the tomb, forgiving those who have embittered the last years of my life.”
However suspicious were the circumstances under which the decree of abdication appeared, the probabilities that that decree was obtained by compulsion were not in the slightest degree strengthened by the testimony of Charles at Bayonne, where he was in far stricter duresse, and far greater danger, than at Aranjuez. But, in every line of this letter, the language of Buonaparte may be recognized: his dread and hatred of popular assemblies ... the tone and manner of his philosophy ... his perpetual reference to force, as that to which all things must bow; and there is one of those direct, plain, palpable, demonstrable falsehoods, of which no other man, who ever affected greatness, so often and so impudently availed himself. If Ferdinand originally intended to supplant his father, it was by the help of France that he hoped to effect it. The only act of conspiracy proved against him and his party was, that they had attempted to form such an alliance. For this very act, Buonaparte, in his letter to Vittoria, had censured him; and yet, one reason here assigned for depriving him of the crown, is his hatred of France.
Ferdinand’s answer to this extraordinary paper was, like his former letter, honourable to himself and his advisers. He calmly reminded his288 father of the inconsistencies in the charges thus adduced against him. Concerning the affair of the Escurial, he said, eleven counsellors, chosen by the King himself, had unanimously declared their opinion, that there was no ground for the accusation; nor could such an opinion have been obtained by undue means, wholly without influence as he was at that time, and virtually a prisoner. The King spoke of the distrust occasioned by the entrance of so great a foreign force into Spain: ... might he be told, that no alarm need have been given by troops entering as friends and allies? He said, that his own troops were collected at Aranjuez to support the glory of the throne: ... might he be reminded, that he had given orders for a journey to Seville, and the troops were intended to keep open that road? Every person believed there was an intention of emigrating to America, manifest as it was that the royal family were going to the coast of Andalusia; and it was this universal belief which occasioned the tumults at Aranjuez. In those tumults, the King knew that his son had taken no other part than by his own command, to protect from the people the object of their hatred, who was believed to be the proposer of the journey. The Emperor, in a letter to Ferdinand, had said, his motive was to induce the King to make certain reforms, and separate from his person the Prince of the Peace, whose influence was the cause of every calamity. The universal joy which his arrest produced289 throughout the whole nation, evidently proved that this was indeed the case. As to the rest, Charles himself was the best witness that, in the tumults at Aranjuez, not a word was whispered against him, nor against any one of the royal family: ... on the contrary, he was applauded with the greatest demonstrations of joy, and heard the loudest professions of fidelity to his august person. On this account, the abdication surprised every one, and no person more than Ferdinand himself. No one expected, or would have solicited it.... “Your Majesty,” said Ferdinand, “yourself communicated your abdication to your ministers, enjoining them to acknowledge me as their natural lord and sovereign. You communicated it verbally to the diplomatic body, professing that your determination proceeded from your own will, and that you had before determined upon it. You yourself told it to your beloved brother, adding, at the same time, that the signature which your Majesty had put to the act of abdication was the happiest transaction of your life; and, finally, your Majesty told me personally, three days afterwards, I should pay no attention to any assertion that the abdication had not been voluntary, inasmuch as it was in every respect free and self-originating.”
He proceeded to comment upon the charge of his hatred towards France. Wherein had it appeared? Were not the various letters which, immediately after the abdication, he addressed290 to the Emperor, so many proofs that his principles, with respect to the relations of friendship and strict alliance happily subsisting between the two countries, were those that the King had impressed upon him? Had he not shown his unbounded confidence in the Emperor, by going to Madrid the day after the Grand Duke of Berg had entered that city with a great part of his army, and garrisoned it; so that, in fact, to go there, was to deliver himself into his hands? Had he not, in conformity to the principles of alliance, and to his father’s wish, written to request a princess of the house of Buonaparte in marriage? Had he not sent a deputation to Bayonne to compliment the Emperor in his name? then persuaded his brother the Infante Don Carlos to set off, that he might pay his respects to him on the frontier? lastly, had he not left Madrid for the same purpose himself, on the faith of the assurances given him by the French ambassador, by the Grand Duke, and by General Savary, who had just arrived from France, and who solicited an audience, to tell him that the Emperor only expected he should follow the same system towards France which his father had adopted, in which case he was to be acknowledged as King of Spain, and all the rest would be forgotten? How any of his letters, proving an enmity towards France, should have come into the Emperor’s hands, he could not comprehend, knowing, as he did, that he had never written any.
291
Ferdinand then referred to his former proposals. “I signified,” said he “my willingness to renounce the crown in your favour, when the Cortes should be convened; and if not convened, when the council and deputies of the kingdom should be assembled; not because I thought this was necessary to give effect to the renunciation, but because I judged it convenient to avoid injurious novelties, which frequently occasion divisions and contentions, and wished every thing might be attended to which concerned your dignity, my own honour, and the tranquillity of the realm. If your Majesty should not choose to reign in person, I will govern in your royal name, or in my own; for no one but myself can represent your person, possessing, as I do, in my favour, the decision of the laws, and the will of the people; nor can any other person have so much interest in their prosperity. I repeat again, that, in such circumstances, and under such conditions, I am ready to accompany your Majesty to Spain, there to make my abdication in the form expressed. But in respect to what you have said of not wishing to return to Spain, with tears in my eyes, I implore you, by all that is most sacred in heaven and earth, that in case you do not choose to re-ascend the throne, you will not leave a country so long known to you, in which you may choose a situation best suited to your injured health, and where you may enjoy greater comforts and tranquillity of mind than in any other.
292 “Finally, I beg your Majesty most affectionately, that you will seriously consider your situation, and that you will reflect on the evil of excluding our dynasty for ever from the throne of Spain, and substituting in its room the imperial family of France. It is a step which we cannot take without the express consent of all the individuals who have, or may have, a right to the crown; much less without an equally-expressed consent of the Spanish people, assembled in Cortes in a place of security; and besides, being now in a foreign country, it would be impossible for us to persuade any one that we acted freely; and this consideration alone would annul whatever we might do, and might produce the most fatal consequences. Before I conclude, your Majesty will permit me to say, that the counsellors whom you call perfidious have never advised me to derogate from the love, respect, and honour, which I have always professed to your Majesty, whose valuable life I pray God to preserve to a happy and good old age.”
Interview between Charles and Ferdinand in presence of Buonaparte.♦
On the day after this letter was written, Buonaparte had an hour’s conference with Charles; at the conclusion of which, Ferdinand was called in by his father, to hear, in the presence of this tyrant, and of the Queen, expressions, says Cevallos, so disgusting28 and humiliating, that I do293 not dare to record them. While all the rest were seated, he was kept standing, and his father ordered him to make an absolute renunciation of the crown, under pain of being treated as an usurper, and a conspirator against the lives of his parents. His household also were threatened to be proceeded against as men guilty of treason. ♦May 6.♦ ♦Ferdinand’s renunciation.♦ Overcome by the sense of their danger, and of his own, the poor pitiable Prince submitted, and delivered in a renunciation, couched in such terms as at once to imply compulsion, and reserve the condition of his father’s return to Spain. “His former renunciation,” he said, “he had believed himself bound to modify with such conditions as were equally required by the respect due to the King, the tranquillity of his dominions, and the preservation of his own honour.” These modifications, to his great astonishment, had excited indignation in the King, who, without any other grounds, had thought proper, in the presence of Buonaparte and of his mother, to revile him with the most humiliating appellations, and294 to require from him an unconditional renunciation, on pain of being treated, with all those of his council, like a traitor. “Under these circumstances,” said he, “I make the renunciation which your Majesty commands, that you may return to the government of Spain in the same state as when you made your voluntary abdication in my favour.”
Ferdinand was not aware, when he executed this form of renunciation, that his father was no longer qualified to receive it. The tyrant had not waited for this preliminary to conclude his mock negotiations with Charles. This wretched puppet addressed an edict on the 4th to the supreme Junta at Madrid, nominating Murat lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and in that quality, president of the government: the reason assigned was, that one same direction might be given to all the forces of Spain, in order to maintain the security of property and public tranquillity against enemies, as well exterior as interior. All persons, therefore, were enjoined to obey the Grand Duke’s orders. A proclamation to the people accompanied this edict. They were told that their King was occupied in concerting with his ally the Emperor whatever concerned their welfare, and they were warned against listening to perfidious men, who sought to arm them against the French, and the French against them. All those who spoke against France were said to be men who thirsted for the blood of the Spaniards, enemies of that nation, or agents of295 England, whose intrigues would involve the loss of the colonies, the separation of provinces, and a series of years of calamity for the country. “Trust to my experience,” said this poor mouthpiece of a perfidious and remorseless tyrant; “and obey that authority which I hold from God and my fathers! Follow my example, and think that, in your present situation, there is no prosperity or safety for the Spaniards, but in the friendship of the great Emperor, our ally.” On the same day, Charles addressed a letter to the supreme council of Castille and the council of Inquisition, informing them that having resolved, in the present extraordinary circumstances, to give a new proof of affection towards his beloved subjects, he had abdicated all claims upon the Spanish kingdoms, in favour of his friend and ally, the Emperor of the French. The treaty of resignation, he said, stipulated for the integrity and independence of those kingdoms, and the preservation of the Catholic faith, not only as the predominant, but as the sole and exclusive religion in Spain. The councils were ordered to make every exertion in support of the Emperor, and, above all, with their utmost care to preserve the country from insurrections and tumults.
The preamble to the treaty of resignation stated, that the object of the two contracting princes was to save Spain from the convulsions of civil and foreign war, and to place it in the only position, which, under its present296 extraordinary circumstances, could maintain its integrity, guarantee its colonies, and enable it to unite all its means to those of France, for the purpose of obtaining a maritime peace. By the first article, Charles ceded all his rights to the throne of Spain and the Indies, having only had in view, he said, during his whole life, the happiness of his subjects, and constantly adhering to the principle, that all the acts of the sovereign ought to be directed to that object solely. This cession was represented as the only means which could re-establish order; and it was covenanted, 1. that it took place only on condition that the integrity of the Spanish kingdom should be maintained; that the prince whom it might please the Emperor to place on the throne should be independent; and that the limits of Spain were to undergo no alteration: 2. that the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, should be the only one in Spain; no reformed religion should be tolerated, still less should infidelity: these things were to be prevented or punished according to the established usage. 3. All property confiscated since the revolution at Aranjuez should be restored; and all decrees which had been passed against the friends of Charles were declared null and void. 4. Charles having thus secured the prosperity, the integrity, and the independence of his kingdom, (such was the monstrous language of this convention!) the Emperor engaged to grant an asylum in his states to him, the Queen, the Prince of the297 Peace, and such of their servants as might choose to follow them, who should enjoy in France a rank equivalent to that which they possessed in Spain. 5, 6, 7, 8. The palace of Compeigne, with its parks and forests, should be at the disposal of King Charles during his life, and a civil list of 80,000,000 reales should be paid him in monthly payments; after his death the Queen should have a revenue of 2,000,000 for her dowry. An annual rent of 400,000 livres should be granted to each of the Infantes, in perpetuity, reverting from one branch to another, in case of the extinction of one, according to the civil law, and to the crown of France, in case of the extinction of all the branches. It was to be understood that this civil list and these rents were to be looked for exclusively from the treasury of France. The Infantes were, however, by a subsequent article, to continue to enjoy the revenues of their commanderies in Spain. 9, 10. The Castle of Chambord, with its parks, forests, and farms, was given by the Emperor to King Charles, in full property, being in exchange for all the allodial and particular property appertaining to the crown of Spain, but possessed personally.... This convention was signed by General Duroc, grand master of the palace, on the part of Buonaparte, and on the part of Charles by Godoy, under his titles, Spanish and Portugueze, of Prince de la Paz, and Count of Evora-monte. Thus did this man, the last and worst of that298 succession of favourites who have been the curse of Spain, consummate his own crimes, and, as far as in him lay, the total degradation of his country; rejoicing probably in the vengeance which he was taking upon a nation by whom he was so righteously abhorred. Having done his work, he passed on into France, to live out the remainder of his days, neglected and despised, and to leave behind him a name more infamous than any in Spanish history. One proclamation more was issued in the name of Charles, calling upon all his former subjects to concur in carrying into effect the dispositions of his “dear friend the Emperor Napoleon,” and exhorting them to avoid popular commotions, the effect of which could only be havoc, the destruction of families, and the ruin of all.
Ferdinand had hitherto renounced his right in reference to his father only. A farther renunciation was demanded from him: it was not tamely yielded; and in his last conference with him upon the subject, Buonaparte bade him choose between cession and death. He was informed that he might return to Spain, and that a convoy of French soldiers should escort him to any part of the Peninsula which he might choose. But he was also told, that France would immediately make war upon him, and never suffer him to reign; for it was the duty of the Emperor to maintain the rights of his crown, and those which had been ceded to him by299 Charles, and to destroy the projects of the partizans of England.
That Ferdinand should at length have yielded, is not to be severely condemned; it is rather to be admired that he should have resisted so long. Even had he been of a more heroic frame, than his family and education were likely to produce, imprisonment, and death, by some dark agency, were all he could expect from farther opposition. Thus intimidated, he authorized Escoiquiz to treat with Duroc for the surrender of his own rights, and those of his brothers and his uncle Don Antonio, who had now been sent from Madrid, rather as prisoners than in any other character. ♦May 10.♦ The preamble declared, that the Emperor of the French and the Prince of Asturias having differences to regulate, had agreed to these terms: 1. That Ferdinand acceded to the cession made by his father, and renounced, as far as might be necessary, the rights accruing to him as Prince of Asturias. 2. The title of royal highness, with all the honours and prerogatives which the Princes of the Blood enjoyed, should be granted to him in France: his descendants should inherit the titles of Prince and Serene Highness, and hold the same rank as the prince-dignitaries of the empire. 3, 4. The palaces, parks, and farms of Navarre, with 50,000 acres of the woods dependent on them, should be given to him, free from incumbrance, in full property for ever; and pass, in default of his heirs, to those of his brother and uncle, in300 succession: and the title of Prince should be conferred, by letters patent and particular, upon the collateral heir to whom this property might revert. 5, 6. Four hundred thousand livres of appanage on the treasury of France, payable in equal monthly portions, should be settled on him, with reversion, in like manner, to the Infantes, and their posterity; and a life-rent of 600,000 should be given the Prince, the half remaining to the Princess, his consort, if he left one to survive him. 7. The same rank and titles should be assigned to the Infantes and their descendants as to the Prince; they should continue to enjoy the revenues of their commanderies in Spain (as had been agreed in the convention with Charles), and an appanage of 400,000 livres (as also there stipulated) should be settled on them in perpetuity, with reversion to the issue of Ferdinand. No mention was made in the treaty of the Queen of Etruria and her son, a boy of eight years old, who, by the doubly-villanous treaty of Fontainebleau, was to have been made King of Northern Lusitania. Involved in the common ruin of their house, they also had been escorted to Bayonne; and the whole of this unhappy family, now that the mockery of negotiation was at an end, were sent into the interior of France.
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CHAPTER V.
INSURRECTION AND MILITARY MURDERS AT MADRID. SUBMISSION OF THE CONSTITUTED AUTHORITIES TO THE PLEASURE OF BUONAPARTE. ASSEMBLY OF NOTABLES CONVOKED BY HIM AT BAYONNE.
April.♦
Thus had Buonaparte succeeded in dispossessing the Bourbon dynasty of the throne of Spain. Having, under pretence of a treaty, secured the passes of the Pyrenees, seized the three strong places upon the frontier, and the important city of Barcelona, marched his armies into the heart of the kingdom, and occupied the capital itself, he had now drawn the royal family within his reach, serpent-like, by the fascination of fear, and compelled them to sign the act of their abdication and disgrace. The train of perfidy whereby he had thus far accomplished his purpose is unexampled even in the worst ages of history. The whole transaction was a business of pure unmingled treachery, unprovoked, unextenuated, equally detestable in its motive, its means, and its end. The pretext that there existed an English party in Spain was notoriously false. Those Spaniards who felt and lamented the decline of their country had rested their hopes of its regeneration upon him. There302 was not any possible way by which he could so surely have confirmed the alliance between France and Spain, secured the affection of the Spanish people, and strengthened his own immediate individual interest (if the vulgarest ambition had not blinded him), as by connecting his own family with the royal house in marriage, in conformity with Ferdinand’s desire, and directing him and his ministers how to bring about those reforms which would restore to health and strength a country that was still sound at heart. No other mortal has ever in any crisis of the world had it in his power to produce such great and extensive good as this opportunity invited, without risk, effort, evil, or any contingent inconvenience. He had only to say, let these things be, and the work of progressive reformation would have begun in Spain and in the Spanish Indies, while he, like a presiding deity, might have looked on, and have received the blessings of both countries for his benignant influence.
The artifices which he had employed were of the basest kind. Never perhaps had any plot of perfidious ambition been so coarsely planned. His scheme was to use falsehood and violence without remorse; to repeat protestations enough for deceiving the Prince, and employ force enough for intimidating the people. The former object had been accomplished ... and Murat, perceiving a spirit in the Spaniards which neither he nor his master had expected, was looking for an303 opportunity29 to effect the latter. His measures, as soon as he entered Madrid, were intended to make them understand that they were no longer an independent nation, but that they must learn obedience to a military yoke. A French governor of the city had been appointed, a French patrole established, and notice was given that every house would be called upon to contribute great coats for the French troops, their own not having arrived. The Junta of government were made to feel the misery of their degrading and helpless situation; a situation in which they were compelled to witness and sanction the most grievous injuries and the most intolerable insults to their country. While Ferdinand was at Vittoria, Murat sent for the war-minister O’Farrill, to complain to him that some of the French soldiers had been30murdered, that the304 people of Madrid openly manifested their dislike of the French, that the guards displayed a similar disposition, that an hundred thousand muskets had been collected in Aragon, and that Solano had not received the promised instructions to put himself under Junot’s command. O’Farrill vindicated the Junta from these accusations, some of which were groundless, and others arose from causes over which they had no control; but Murat cut him short, told him he had received orders from the Emperor to acknowledge no other sovereign in Spain than Charles IV. and put into his hands a proclamation in the name of that King, declaring that his abdication had been compulsory, and requiring again from his subjects that obedience which they owed to him as their lawful monarch. O’Farrill replied, that none of the constituted authorities would obey the proclamation, and still less would the nation: then, said Murat, the cannon and the bayonet shall make them. But he appeared to hesitate in his resolution of immediately publishing and enforcing it, when the Spanish minister represented to him that the fate of Spain did not necessarily depend upon that of Madrid, nor the Spanish monarchy upon that of Spain; and that it never could be good policy for the Emperor to act in a manner so suitable to the wishes of the English. The result of the conference was, that the Junta agreed to receive King Charles’s reclamation, to305 forward it to Ferdinand from whom they held their authority, and await his answer. Before that answer could arrive, Charles and the Queen were summoned to Bayonne.
From the time when Ferdinand began his inauspicious journey, Cevallos had every night dispatched an account of their proceedings to the Junta; after his arrival at Bayonne it was soon found that his couriers were intercepted. Cevallos complained to M. Champagny, and was told in reply, that as the Emperor acknowledged no other King than Charles IV. he could not admit in his dominions any act in the nature of a passport given by Ferdinand; but the letters which, for this reason, had been detained, had been put into the French post-office, and would be safely delivered, as would any others which he might think proper to send either by the ordinary post or the French courier. Cevallos therefore from that time sent duplicates of his dispatches by various conveyances, and succeeded in informing the Junta that Ferdinand was actually a prisoner, and in conveying an order to them from Ferdinand, whereby they were enjoined to do whatever they deemed expedient for the service of the King and the kingdom, and authorized to act with as full power as if he himself were on the spot. Nothing could be more intelligible than such an order. Nevertheless, such was the timidity of the better members, and the faithlessness of others, that instead of acting upon it, they306 dispatched two confidential persons to inquire of Ferdinand whether he would empower them to transfer their authority to certain other persons, whom he should nominate, who, in case the Junta should be completely under constraint, might remove to some place where they could act at freedom? whether it was his will that hostilities should be commenced, and when, and how? whether they should prevent the entrance of more French troops by closing the passes of the Pyrenees? and whether he thought it advisable to convoke a Cortes, addressing a decree for that purpose either to the Council, or to any Chancery or Audience in the kingdom, which might be free from the control of the French? If the Cortes were to be assembled, they asked likewise what subjects it should proceed to discuss?
Public affairs, in the most momentous times, have often been conducted with a degree of folly seldom discovered in the management of private concerns; and this folly has so effectually done the work of treason, that it has sometimes been mistaken for it. But it is scarcely possible, even upon this plea, to excuse the Junta. When every hour was of importance, they dispatched a messenger four hundred miles to ask Ferdinand’s opinion upon points, on every one of which he would have asked theirs had he been in Madrid; all which they were better able to determine than he could be, and on which, in fact, he required that information which they307 possessed. When it is considered how preposterous it was to propose that the passes should be closed while the French commanded them, and how perfectly they must have known that Ferdinand was in no condition to plan the opening of a campaign, a suspicion may well be entertained of the sincerity of the persons who propounded such questions. Shrinking from responsibility, and appalled at danger, they referred every thing to Ferdinand, and suffered events to take their course. Meantime, if their own statement on such a point may be received, they secretly prepared orders for the Spanish troops to leave Madrid, even by dispersing, or by encouraging their desertion, if there should be no other way; for assembling soldiers at appointed places, collecting stores and ammunition, destroying the means of transport near the fortresses and cantonments which the enemy occupied, and spoiling the arms and artillery which could not be secured. Such orders were certainly not in accord with the feelings of the men who say that they prepared them: but they would have accorded entirely with the spirit of the nation. ♦Agitation of the public mind.♦ From the time of Ferdinand’s departure, the anxiety and agitation of the people in Madrid had hourly increased. They knew that he expected to meet Buonaparte at Burgos, and the tidings that he had passed the frontier, and proceeded to Bayonne, excited in them as much alarm as wonder. Every evening an extraordinary courier arrived from that city; the308 intelligence which he brought was never published in the Gazette, but circulated as extracts from private correspondence: the first account detailed nothing but the honours with which Ferdinand had been received by the Emperor; subsequent ones were each more unsatisfactory than the last; and the intentions of the tyrant became more and more apparent, till it could no longer be doubted that Ferdinand was to be deprived of his crown.
On the last day of April, Murat presented to the Infante Don Antonio a letter from his brother King Charles, requiring him to send off to Bayonne the Queen of Etruria31 with her children, and the Infante Don Francisco de Paula, Ferdinand’s youngest brother, ... the other was already in the snare. The Junta were assembled at the time, and proposed to make the demand known to Ferdinand, and await his pleasure; but Murat replied, that this was unnecessary; the Queen of Etruria was her own mistress, and Don Francisco being a minor, was bound to obey his father. The Junta then said they would consult the Queen, who might certainly go if she were so pleased, but to the departure of the young Infante they could not consent. The Queen of Etruria will be remembered hereafter among those high-born sufferers309 whose strange and undeserved afflictions are recorded as examples of the instability of fortune. Her only desire was to return to Tuscany; but she loved her parents, and declared herself ready to obey their summons without hesitation, not expecting farther perfidy from Buonaparte, even after the perfidious manner in which she had been despoiled. With regard to the Infante, the Junta were informed by Murat that he must go also, or force would be used to make him. ♦The Junta deliberate concerning the Infante.♦ These poor pageants of authority summoned to their assistance in this new perplexity the chief persons of all the different councils, and held a meeting that night, less with the hope of coming to any salutary and dignified determination, than for the sake of finding in the exposure of their own helplessness an excuse to themselves and others for passive submission. One person proposed, that if force were employed to remove the Infante, it should be resisted, and O’Farrill was then called upon to relate what means of resistance could be calculated upon. He entered into a mournful statement. There were 25,000 French in, and immediately about Madrid, and they occupied the Buen Retiro and the heights of the Casa del Campo, which were the strongest positions; besides this force they had 10,000 men in Aranjuez, Toledo, and at the Escurial. The Spanish troops in Madrid were only 3000, and the people were unarmed and had never been disciplined in any militia service; therefore to attempt resistance would be to deliver up310 the city to be sacked. The effect of this representation, which might have dismayed firmer hearts than those to which it was addressed, was strengthened by the opportune arrival that night of D. Justo Maria de Ibar Navarro, whom Ferdinand had dispatched to apprize the Junta of his situation, and his resolution not to accede to any thing incompatible with the dignity of the throne, and with his own just rights; but while the event was undecided, he charged them carefully to preserve a good understanding with the French, and to avoid any thing which might increase his difficulties and even his personal danger. They agreed upon the necessity of observing these instructions, glad that they were thus instructed to do nothing, where they were incapable of perceiving what they ought to do.
May 1.♦
The courier who was expected on that evening did not arrive. Great multitudes assembled the next day at the Puerta del Sol, and in the streets near the post-office, anxiously waiting for the news which he would bring. During the whole day it was apparent that some dreadful crisis was coming on. The French made an ostentatious display of their troops and their artillery, and on the part of the Spaniards the ordinary duties and diversions of the Sabbath seemed to be suspended in the general agitation that prevailed. Nothing was concerted among them; no one knew what was to be done, nor what was to be hoped, but that some great311 calamity might be looked for; and every man read in the manner and countenance of others an apprehension and a feeling of indignation like his own. Murat appeared in the streets at noon, and was received with hisses and outcries. Evening came, and the courier was not arrived. The French garrison were under arms all that night, and their commanders, “cool spectators of these things,” according to their own relation, saw the crisis approaching, and saw it with pleasure. ♦May 2.♦ ♦Departure of the Queen and the Infante.♦ The following morning had been fixed for the departure of the Queen of Etruria and the Infante D. Francisco de Paula, and many persons, chiefly women, collected before the Palace to see them set off. Among the many rumours, true and false, with which the city was filled, it was reported that the Infante D. Antonio had been ordered by Murat to join his brother and nephew at Bayonne, and leave him to act as regent during his absence; that the Infante had refused to obey, and that in consequence of his refusal Murat had recalled some troops to Madrid which had been ordered to a different station, intending to seize the Infante, and assume the government. Enough had transpired to make this report probable: one of the carriages which drove up to the gate was said to be for D. Antonio; and some of the populace being determined that the last of the royal family should not be taken from them without resistance, and that one especially who had been left to represent the King, cut the traces, and312 forced it back into the yard. Being however assured that D. Antonio was not to leave Madrid, they permitted it again to be yoked and brought out. This occasioned so much stir that Murat sent an aide-de-camp to inquire into the cause; the people were disposed to treat him roughly, but some Spanish officers interfered and rescued him from their hands. The carriages, with the Queen of Etruria and her children, and her brother D. Francisco, then set out; the latter, a lad of fourteen, is said to have wept bitterly, and to have manifested the fear and reluctance with which he undertook the journey. Men are never so easily provoked to anger as when their compassion is excited. Just at this time, while their hearts were full, the aide-de-camp whom they had maltreated returned with a party of soldiers, and a scene of bloodshed presently began, ... in what manner never will be known.
The indignation and hatred of the Spaniards, which had so long been repressed, now broke forth. As fast as the alarm spread, every man of the lower ranks who could arm himself with any kind of weapon, ran to attack the French. There is no other instance upon record of an attempt so brave and so utterly hopeless, when all the circumstances are considered. The Spanish troops were locked up in their barracks, and prevented from assisting their countrymen. Many of the French were massacred before they could collect and bring their force to act: but313 what could the people effect against so great a military force, prepared for such an insurrection, and eager, the leaders from political, the men from personal feelings, to strike a blow which should overawe the Spaniards and make themselves be respected? The French poured into the city from all sides, their flying artillery was brought up, in some places the cavalry charged the populace, in others the streets were cleared by repeated discharges of grape-shot. The great street of Alcala, the Puerta del Sol, and the great square, were the chief scenes of slaughter. In the latter the people withstood several charges, and the officer who commanded the French had two horses killed under him: General Grouchy also had a horse wounded. The infantry fired volleys into every cross street as they passed, and fired also at the windows and balconies. The people, when they felt the superiority of the French, fled into the houses; the doors were broken open by command of the generals of brigade, Guillot and Daubrai, and all within who were found with arms were bayoneted; and parties of cavalry were stationed at the different outlets of Madrid to pursue and cut down those who were flying from the town. A part of the mob, seeking an unworthy revenge for their defeat, attacked the French hospital; and some of the Spaniards who were employed within, encouraged at their approach, fell upon the sick and upon their medical attendants. But these base assailants were soon put to flight.
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At the commencement of the conflict Murat ordered a detachment of 200 men to take possession of the arsenal32. Two officers happened to be upon guard there, by name Daoiz and Velarde, the former about thirty years of age; the latter, some five years younger, was the person who had been sent to compliment Murat on his arrival in Spain. Little could they have foreseen, when they went that morning to their post, the fate which awaited them, and the renown which was to be its reward! Having got together about twenty soldiers of their corps, and a few countrymen who were willing to stand by them, they brought out a twenty-four pounder in front of the arsenal, to bear upon the straight and narrow street by which the enemy must approach, and planted two others in like manner to command two avenues which led into the street of the arsenal. They had received no instructions, they had no authority for acting thus, and if they escaped in the action, their own government would without doubt either pass or sanction a sentence of death against them for their conduct; never therefore did any men act with more perfect self-devotion. Having loaded with grape, they waited till the discharge would take full effect, and such havoc did it make, that the French instantly turned back. The possession of the315 arsenal was of so much importance at this time, that two columns were presently ordered to secure it: they attempted it at the cost of many lives, and the Spaniards fired above twenty times before the enemy could break into the neighbouring houses, and fire upon them from the windows. Velarde was killed by a musket-ball. Daoiz had his thigh broken; he continued to give orders sitting, till he received three other wounds, the last of which put an end to his life. Then the person to whom he left the command offered to surrender: while they were making terms a messenger arrived bearing a white flag, and crying out that the tumult was appeased. About two o’clock the firing had ceased every where, through the personal interference of the Junta, the council of Castille and other tribunals, who paraded the streets with many of the nobles, and with an escort of Spanish soldiers and imperial guards intermixed. It might then have been hoped that the carnage of this dreadful day was ended; the slaughter among the Spaniards33316 had been very great; this however did not satisfy Murat; conformably to the system of his master, the work of death was to be continued in cool blood. ♦Executions by sentence of a military tribunal.♦ A military tribunal under General Grouchy was formed, and the Spaniards who were brought before it were sent away to be slaughtered with little inquiry whether they had taken34 part in the struggle or not. Three317 groupes of forty each were successively shot in the Prado, ... the great public walk of Madrid. Others, in like manner, were put to35 death near the Puerta del Sol, and the Puerta del S. Vicente, and by the Church of N. Señora de la Soledad, one of the most sacred places in the city. In this manner was the evening of that second of May employed by the French at Madrid. The inhabitants were ordered to illuminate their houses, a necessary means of safety for their invaders, in a city not otherwise lighted; and through the whole night the dead and the dying might be seen distinctly as in broad noon-day, lying upon the bloody pavement. When morning came the same mockery of justice was continued, and fresh murders were committed deliberately with the forms of military execution during several succeeding days.
On the night of the third, the Comte de Laforest, and M. Freville, had a private conference with the Infante D. Antonio; and the Infante, whether inveigled by their persuasions, or influenced by his own fears after the dreadful scenes which had been exhibited, informed the Junta in the course of that night, that he should set off at daybreak for Bayonne, to share the fate of his318 family. They represented to him, that his presence in Spain would be infinitely more useful to the interest of the Bourbons, than it could possibly be in Bayonne; but he replied that his word was given, and his resolution fixed, and accordingly at daybreak he departed. ♦Murat claims a place in the Junta.♦ Murat had shown some little degree of respect toward this personage; as soon as he was gone, he informed the Junta that he should think proper to assist at their deliberations in future. O’Farrill and Azanza protested against his intrusion, and would have retired from the nominal authority which they held; they soon however assented to the will of the majority, pleading in excuse for their assent an unwillingness to appear as if they consulted their own interests alone, and a fear lest others should imitate the example of resignation, and then the capital of the kingdom would be left at the discretion of a hostile power, without any native authorities to protect it; ... a poor apology this, when they were mere instruments of that power.
May 5.♦
Murat now affected to soothe and conciliate the people. He told them in his proclamations that thenceforth their tranquillity would be undisturbed, a blessing which they would owe to the loyalty of their character, and which would be assured to them by the confidence that the laws inspire; for in obedience to the dictates of humanity, he said, the military commission was suppressed. From this time every inhabitant, whatsoever his rank, who might have given cause319 for being seized by the French troops, provided36 he had not borne arms against them, should be immediately delivered over to his proper judges, and tried by them: even in the excepted case, a judge nominated by the competent tribunal of the land should assist in regulating the process against the accused, till sentence was pronounced. No countrymen, or strangers, or ecclesiastics, should be molested on account of their dress. This alluded to an order which had been issued, prohibiting the cloak, lest arms should be concealed under it; but the cloak is so universally worn by the Spaniards, that the prohibition was thus modified on the third day after it had been issued, and repealed altogether on the following. Carriers, it was said, who were employed in bringing provisions to the town, should from that time be subjected to no vexation, neither should their carriages and beasts be detained; and only half the cattle of the muleteers should be put in requisition even in the most urgent necessity, and then they should be paid for at the regulated price, and not detained longer than three or four days. At those gates where carriers had suffered arbitrary detention in order to be searched and stript of their arms, instructions should be given to prevent abuse: but it was necessary, the edict said, to repeat the injunction320 against introducing fire-arms or other prohibited weapons: these were to be deposited at the gate.
The Holy Office, as that execrable tribunal impiously styled itself, which has been the disgrace and the bane of every country wherein it was established, lent its last aid toward the degradation of Spain. ♦May 6.♦ Four days after the insurrection, a circular letter was addressed by the Inquisitor-general, in the name of the Supreme Council, to all its subordinate tribunals. That insurrection, the anniversary of which, hopelessly as it began, and disastrously as it terminated, will be celebrated in after ages by the Spaniards as a day of proud and pious commemoration, ... one of the most solemn in their calendar, ... was called by the Inquisition a disgraceful tumult, occasioned by the evil intentions or the ignorance of thoughtless men, who under the mask of patriotism and loyalty were preparing the way for revolutionary disorders. The melancholy consequences which had already occurred, rendered, it was said, the utmost vigilance necessary on the part of all the magistracies and respectable bodies, to prevent the renewal of such excesses, and to preserve tranquillity; the nation being indeed bound to this good behaviour, not only by its own interests, but by the laws of hospitality toward a friendly army which injured no one, and which had given the greatest proofs of good order and discipline. It became therefore the duty of the well-informed to321 enlighten the people, ... to deliver them from their dangerous error, and to show them, that tumultuary proceedings could only serve to throw the country into confusion, by breaking those bonds of subordination upon which the peace of the community depends, ... by destroying the feelings of humanity, and by annihilating all confidence in government, from which alone the direction and impulse of patriotic feeling ought to proceed. “These most important truths,” said the address, “can by no persons be impressed upon the minds and hearts of the people with more effect, than by the ministers of the religion of Jesus Christ, which breathes nothing but peace and brotherly love among men, and subjection, honour, and obedience to all that are in authority: and as the Holy College ought to be, and always has been, the first to give an example to the ministers of peace, it accords with our duty and office to address this letter to you, that you may co-operate in the preservation of the public tranquillity. You are required to notify the same to all the subordinate officers of your respective courts, and also to the commissioners of districts, that all and each of you may with all possible zeal, vigilance, and prudence, co-operate in the attainment of so important an object.”
On the 7th the decree arrived from Bayonne, by which Charles announced the reassumption, of his authority, and appointed Murat lieutenant-general of the kingdom. A proclamation came with it, exhorting the Spaniards to trust in the322 experience of their old King, to obey the authority which he had received from God and his ancestors, to imitate his example, and to believe that there could be no prosperity or salvation for Spain, save in the friendship of her ally the great Napoleon. The next courier brought Ferdinand’s act of resignation to the Father-king, and dispatches whereby the Junta were discharged from their allegiance to him, and instructed to obey the orders of Charles IV. They were thus relieved from a situation in which, if it would have been difficult for any men to have acted well, it was scarcely possible to have acted worse: for they had never been ignorant of Ferdinand’s real situation, and they had received from him discretionary powers which would have authorized the most patriotic and determined measures.
A day or two after the reassumption of the Father-king had been announced in Madrid, there arrived Ferdinand’s answer to the preposterous questions which the Junta had proposed. However great the previous and the subsequent errors of this unhappy Prince, he was not wanting on this occasion to himself or to his country. He told the Junta that he was not in a state of freedom, and being therefore incapable himself of taking measures either for his own preservation or that of the monarchy, he invested them with full power to remove whithersoever they might deem most advisable, and exercise all the functions of sovereignty in his name, as323 representatives of his person. He instructed them to commence hostilities as soon as they should know that he was proceeding into the interior of France, which he would not do unless he were compelled; and he enjoined them to prevent in the best manner they could the introduction of more French troops into the Peninsula. This was the substance of one decree. A second, which accompanied it, was directed to the Junta, and as they had suggested, to any chancery or audience of the kingdom, in case they should not be in a situation to act when it arrived. In this Ferdinand declared it to be his royal will that the Cortes should be assembled in whatever place might be deemed most convenient; that they should occupy themselves exclusively at first in attending to the levies and subsidies necessary for the defence of the kingdom, and that their sittings should be permanent.
These decrees were dated on the 5th, a few hours only before Ferdinand was confronted with his parents, and exposed to those outrages and threats which extorted from him his renunciation. The messenger took a circuitous route, and travelled on foot, for the sake of security; he did not reach Madrid therefore till after Charles’s reassumption of the crown had been officially announced there; and the Junta gladly perceived that the instructions which enjoined them to obey the orders of the father, discharged them from the duty of obeying the son in this instance, Ferdinand being no longer324 King, and they no longer his servants. By proposing the questions they had gained time for events to take their course, and relieve them, as they vainly hoped, from responsibility and danger. Other hope or motive in proposing them they could have none: and having so far succeeded, they concealed the dispatches for a time, and afterwards destroyed them. To have acted upon them now, they alleged, would have endangered Ferdinand37 as well as themselves.
The abdications both of the son and father had now been made public, and the people of Madrid, the blood of their townsmen still fresh in their streets, and the yoke upon their necks, read the address by which their late sovereign enjoined them to submit to the will of the Emperor Napoleon. That no colour of authority for the intended usurpation might be wanting, the names of Ferdinand, his brother Don Carlos, and the Infante Don Antonio, were affixed to a proclamation from Bourdeaux, condemning the325 spirit of resistance which had shown itself, absolving the people from all duties towards them, and exhorting them to obedience to France. In this address, the Infantes were made to say, that, “being deeply sensible of the attachment displayed towards them by the Spaniards, with the utmost grief they beheld them on the point of being plunged into anarchy, and threatened with all the dreadful calamities consequent thereupon. Aware that these might proceed from the ignorance in which the people were, both as to the principles of the conduct pursued by their highnesses, and the plans formed for the benefit of their country, they found themselves under the necessity of making an effort to open their eyes, by salutary counsel, in order to prevent any obstruction to the execution of those plans; and thus to give them the dearest proof of their affection. The circumstances under which the Prince assumed the government; the occupation of several provinces, and of all the frontier fortresses, by French troops; the actual presence of more than 60,000 of that nation in the capital and its environs; and many other circumstances known only to themselves, convinced them that, surrounded by difficulties, they had only chosen, among various expedients, that which was likely to produce the least evil; and, as such, they resolved upon the journey to Bayonne. On their arrival, the Prince, then King, was unexpectedly apprised that his father had protested against his act of abdication. Having accepted the326 crown only under the impression that the abdication was voluntary, he was no sooner informed of such a protest than his filial duty instantly determined him to give back the throne. But a short time after, the King his father abdicated it in his own name, and that of his whole race, in favour of the Emperor of the French, in order that the Emperor, consulting the good of the nation, should determine the person and race which should hereafter occupy it. In this state of things, considering that any attempt of the Spaniards for the maintenance of their rights could tend only to make streams of blood flow, and to render certain the loss of at least a great part of her provinces, and all her colonies: ... being further convinced, that the most effectual means of preventing these evils was, that their royal highnesses, for themselves, and all connected with them, should assent to the renunciation; taking also into consideration, that the Emperor engaged, in this case, to maintain the independence and integrity of the Spanish monarchy, and its colonies, without retaining the smallest of its dominions for himself, or separating any part from the whole; that he engaged to maintain the unity of the Catholic religion, the security of property, and the continuance of the existing laws and usages which have for so long a time preserved the power and honour of the Spanish nation ... they conceived that they were affording the most undoubted proof of their affection towards it, by327 sacrificing their individual and personal interests for the benefit of that nation, and by this instrument assenting, as they already had assented in a particular treaty, to the renunciation of all their rights to the throne.... They accordingly released the Spaniards from all their duties in this respect, and exhorted them to consult the interest of their country, by conducting themselves peaceably, and by looking for their happiness to the power and wise arrangements of the Emperor Napoleon.... The Spaniards might assure themselves that, by their zeal to conform to those arrangements, they would give their Prince and the two Infantes the strongest proof of loyalty, in like manner as their royal highnesses gave them the greatest example of paternal affection, by renouncing their rights, and sacrificing their own interests for the happiness of the Spaniards, the sole object of their wishes.”
When the Emperor Napoleon had resolved upon dethroning the Spanish Bourbons, it was his wish to have made Lucien Buonaparte King of Spain, the ablest of his brethren, and the only one who was unprovided with a kingdom. His first elevation to the consulship, which was the passage of the Rubicon in his career, had been chiefly brought about by Lucien’s intrepidity and talents. But Lucien, who fancied himself the abler, as in some respects he was indeed the wiser man, had not obtained that ascendancy in his brother’s councils to which he thought328 himself in many ways entitled; as a lover of constitutional freedom, he heartily disapproved the system which Napoleon pursued, and was therefore in some degree estranged from him, though the bond of fraternal feeling had not been broken. Having in his diplomatic employments found means to amass a princely fortune, he was then residing at Rome, happy in his family and in his pursuits, collecting pictures, and busy in the composition of a long and elaborate poem. This condition of honourable and enviable privacy Buonaparte hoped he might be induced to relinquish for the throne of Spain and of the Spanish Indies. But Lucien knew something of Spain and of the Spaniards, whereas the Emperor had neither taken into consideration the nature of the country nor the character of the people; and even if the injustice and odium of the usurpation had not determined his refusal, the insecurity of such a throne might have decided him, and the certainty that he who accepted it must submit to be the mere instrument of Napoleon’s ambition. The choice therefore then fell upon his brother Joseph, who was reigning not without some popularity at Naples, over a kingdom which had long been grievously misgoverned, and which had submitted in fair war to the right of conquest. He too, by Lucien’s earnest advice, declined the odious elevation; but while he pursued his journey to Bayonne, whither he had been summoned, intending to persist in his refusal, the Emperor,329 who would take no denial from him, proceeded in his arrangements, well knowing that he would submit to that ascendancy which so few were capable of resisting.
May 13.♦
Murat, who was the person intended to succeed at Naples, intimated to the Spanish Junta whom they were to expect for their new King, and procured from them an address upon that subject to the Emperor. Convinced, they said, that the condition of Spain required the closest connexion with the political system of the empire, which he governed with so much glory, they considered the resignation of the Bourbons as the greatest proof of kindness to the Spanish nation which their sovereign had ever given. “Oh! that there were no Pyrenees!” exclaimed these sycophants and slaves. “This was the constant wish of good Spaniards; because there could be no Pyrenees, whenever the wants of both countries should be the same, when confidence should be restored, and each of the two nations have received, in the same degree, the respect due to its independence and worth. The interval which yet separates us from this happy moment cannot now be long. Your Imperial Majesty, who foresees all things, and executes them still more swiftly, has chosen for the provisional government of Spain, a Prince educated for the art of government in your own great school. He has succeeded in stilling the boldest storms, by the moderation and wisdom of his measures. What have we not, therefore, to330 hope, now that all Spaniards unite in devoting to him that admiration to which he has so many claims! The Spanish monarchy will resume the rank which belongs to it among the powers of Europe, as soon as it is united by a new family compact to its natural ally. Whoever the Prince may be whom you destine for us, chosen from among your illustrious family, he will bring that security which we need so much. The Spanish throne rises to a greater height. The consequences resulting from its relation to France, are of an importance commensurate with the extent of its possessions. It seems, therefore, that the throne itself calls for your Majesty’s eldest brother to govern it. Surely it is a happy presage, that this arrangement, which nature has confirmed, so well corresponds with the sentiments of reverence and admiration, with which the actions of this Prince, and the wisdom of his government, had inspired us.” The Council of Castille were implicated in the shame of this address. Their wisdom, it was said, obliged them to give all their support to these principles, and they united in the expression of the wish of the Supreme Junta.
May 15.♦
An address was also framed in the name of the city of Madrid, to Murat, as “Lieutenant-general of the kingdom of Spain.” “That city,” it said, “thinking it certain that the Emperor of the French intended to place the crown upon the head of his illustrious brother Joseph Napoleon, King of Naples; and being distinguished331 for its love of its sovereigns and its obedience to them, could not omit joining its homage to that of the Supreme Junta and of the Council, and requested his Highness would notify the same to the Emperor. The city also availed itself of that opportunity to assure him of its respect and submission.” Graves could hardly yet have been dug for those who were massacred, and the places of execution were still covered with flakes of blood, when the existing authorities thus fawned upon Murat, and praised his moderation: and this address was presented in the name of the city, where mothers, widows, and orphans, were cursing him and the tyrant his master in every street, and well nigh in every house! ♦May 22.♦ A letter was also obtained from the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, the last of the Bourbons who remained in Spain. “The resignation of Charles,” he said, “and the confirmation of that act, by the Prince and the Infantes, imposed upon him, according to God’s will, the pleasing duty of laying at the Emperor’s feet the assurance of his homage, fidelity, and reverence. May your Imperial and Royal Majesty (he added) be graciously pleased to look upon me as one of your most dutiful subjects, and instruct me concerning your high purposes, that I may be furnished with the means of manifesting my unfeigned and zealous submission.”
The next demand of Murat was that the Council of Castille should send a deputation332 of its members to repeat what their address had expressed, and renew their petition that the Emperor would deign to nominate the King of Naples, Joseph Napoleon, to the throne of Spain. This also was obeyed, the Council, like the Junta of Government, being now in a state of habitual submission to his supreme commands. ♦Assembly of Notables convoked at Bayonne.♦ ♦May 25.♦ An Assembly of Notables was then, first by a circular decree from Murat, and afterwards by Buonaparte himself, in virtue of the right which had been ceded to him, convoked to meet at Bayonne on the 15th of June, charged with the wishes, the demands, and wants and complaints of those whom they represented, that they might fix the bases of the new constitution by which the monarchy was thenceforth to be governed. Till that should be effected Murat was to continue in the exercise of his power as Lieutenant-general of the kingdom; the course of justice was to proceed as usual, and the existing ministers, the council of Castille, and all other authorities, religious, civil, and military, were confirmed for as long a time as might be necessary. ♦Proclamation of Buonaparte to the Spaniards.♦ This edict was accompanied by a proclamation in that peculiar style which Buonaparte affected: “To all who shall see these presents, health! Spaniards, after a long agony your nation was perishing. I saw your evils. I am about to remedy them. Your greatness, your power, are part of mine. Your Princes have ceded to me all their rights to the crown of the Spains. I will not reign over your provinces, but I will acquire333 an eternal title to the love and gratitude of your posterity. Your monarchy is old; my mission is to rejuvenize it. I will improve all your institutions, and I will make you enjoy, if you will second me, the benefits of a reformation without destruction, without disorder, without convulsions. Spaniards, I have convoked a general assembly of deputies from your provinces and towns. I myself well know your wishes and your wants. Then I will lay down all my rights, and will place your glorious crown upon the head of one who is my other self, guaranteeing to you a constitution which conciliates the sacred and salutary authority of the Sovereign, with the liberties and the privileges of the people. Spaniards, remember what your fathers were; behold what you yourselves are become! The fault is not yours, but that of the bad administration which has governed you. Be full of hope and of confidence in the existing circumstances, for it is my wish that your latest descendants shall preserve my memory, and say of me, he was the regenerator of our country.”
But these vain promises and hypocritical professions were too late.
334
CHAPTER VI.
GENERAL INSURRECTION. PROCEEDINGS IN ASTURIAS AND GALLICIA. JUNTAS FORMED IN THE PROVINCES. JUNTA OF SEVILLE. MURDER OF SOLANO AT CADIZ; CAPTURE OF THE FRENCH SQUADRON IN THAT HARBOUR. MASSACRE OF THE FRENCH AT VALENCIA. PROCLAMATIONS OF THE PATRIOTS. MOVEMENTS OF THE FRENCH AGAINST THEM.
May.
General insurrection.♦
The seizure of the fortresses, and the advance of the French troops, had roused the spirit of the Spaniards; their hopes had been excited to the highest pitch by the downfal of Godoy and the elevation of Ferdinand; and in that state of public feeling, the slaughter at Madrid, and the transactions at Bayonne, were no sooner known, than the people, as if by an instantaneous impulse over the whole kingdom, manifested a determination to resist the insolent usurpation. Abandoned as they were by one part of the Royal Family, deprived of the rest; forsaken too by those nobles and statesmen, whose names carried authority, and on whose talents and patriotism they had hitherto relied; ... betrayed by their government, and now exhorted to submission by all the constituted authorities civil and religious which they had been accustomed to335 revere and to obey; ... their strong places and frontier passes in possession of the enemy; the flower of their own troops some in Italy, others in the north of Europe; and a numerous army of the French, accustomed to victory, and now flushed with Spanish slaughter, in their capital and in the heart of the country; under these complicated disadvantages and dangers, they rose in general and simultaneous insurrection against the mightiest military power which had ever till that time existed; a force not more tremendous for its magnitude than for its perfect organization, wielded always with consummate skill, and directed with consummate wickedness. A spirit of patriotism burst forth which astonished Europe, and equalled the warmest hopes of those who were best acquainted with the Spanish nation: for those persons who knew the character of that noble people, ... who were familiar with their past history, and their present state; who had heard the peasantry talk of their old heroes, of Hernan Cortes and of the Cid; ... who had witnessed the passionate transfiguration which a Spaniard underwent when recurring from the remembrance of those times to his own; ... his brave impatience, his generous sense of humiliation, and the feeling with which his soul seemed to shake off the yoke of these inglorious days, and take sanctuary among the tombs of his ancestors, ... they knew that the spirit of Spain was still alive, and had looked on to this resurrection of the dry bones. As no foresight could336 have apprehended the kind of injury with which the nation had been outraged, nor have provided against the magnitude of the danger, so by no possible concert could so wide and unanimous a movement have been effected. The holiest and deepest feelings of the Spanish heart were roused, and the impulse was felt throughout the Peninsula like some convulsion of the earth or elements.
The firing on the 2d of May was heard at Mostoles, a little town about ten miles south of Madrid, and the Alcalde, who knew the situation of the capital, dispatched a bulletin to the south, in these words: “The country is in danger; Madrid is perishing through the perfidy of the French. All Spaniards, come to deliver it!” ♦Alvaro Florez Estrada, p. 126.♦ No other summons was sent abroad than this, which came from an obscure and unauthorized individual, in a state of mind that would have made him rush upon the French bayonets; but this stirred up the people in the southern provinces; and in truth no summons was needed, for the same feeling manifested itself every where as soon as the details of the massacre were known, and the whole extent of the outrage which had been offered to the nation. Buonaparte was totally ignorant of the Spanish character, and in that ignorance had pursued the only course which could have provoked a national resistance. If he had declared war against Spain, at the beginning, no enthusiasm could have been raised in favour of the government, and he might have337 dictated the terms of submission as a conqueror. The opinion of his magnanimity and greatness would have gone before him; the Spaniards, prone to admire what is romantic and miraculous, and taught by their own history to disregard the injustice and the inhumanity of wars which are waged for conquest, had been dazzled by the splendour of his portentous career; and had he appeared to them as an open, honourable foe, the pretension that he was appointed to fulfil the ways of Providence, might have found among them a submissive, and perhaps a willing belief.
Asturias was the first province in which the insurrection assumed a regular form. A Junta of representatives was elected, who assembled at Oviedo, and declared that the entire sovereignty had devolved into their hands. The commander in chief in that principality, who attempted to suppress these movements, was in danger of losing his life; and the Conde del Pinar, and the poet, D. Juan Melendez Valdes, who were sent by Murat from Madrid to appease the people, were glad to escape from the indignation which their mission provoked. The first act of the Junta was to dispatch two noblemen to solicit aid from England: they put off from ♦May 25.♦ Gijon in an open boat, and got on board an English privateer which happened to be cruizing off that port. Agents also were sent to Leon and to Coruña, inviting the Leonese and338 the Gallicians to unite with them against the common enemy.
The Asturian who came to Coruña upon this mission was ordered by one of the magistrates to leave the town immediately, and not to make his errand known to any person, on pain of being arrested and treated as a criminal. On the way back he stopped at Mondoñedo, where he learnt that the Leonese were in insurrection, and met as emissary from that kingdom, one of those generous spirits who were then every where employed in rousing the nation, and preparing it for the struggle which must ensue. The people of Mondoñedo entered with ardour into the common cause; and a student from the seminary there accepted the office of deputy from that city to Coruña, notwithstanding the risk which the Asturian had run. He went with the fair pretext of asking from the provincial government what course ought to be taken by the authorities at Mondoñedo, in consequence of the events in Asturias and Leon. Coruña was in a state of great ferment when he arrived; true and false reports were received with equal belief by the populace; it was affirmed that the sale of church property which Ferdinand had suspended was to be resumed; that Buonaparte would order off all the Spanish troops to the north of Europe, and that cart-loads of chains were on the way to manacle those soldiers who should refuse to march willingly. The339 captain-general of Gallicia and governor of Coruña, D. Antonio Filangieri, believed that the only course which it behoved him to pursue in the strange and perilous state of Spain, was to preserve order as far as possible; but the very precaution which he took to prevent an insurrection became the signal for it. The festival of St. Ferdinand, King of Spain, which is commemorated on the 30th of May, had always been celebrated as the saint’s-day of Ferdinand since he was acknowledged as Prince of Asturias; and in all fortified towns the flag should have been displayed and a salute fired. Filangieri forbade this to be done, lest it should occasion a dangerous movement among the people. The omission excited them more forcibly than the ceremony would have done: it was a silent but unequivocal act of assent to the iniquitous proceedings at Bayonne; and the people understanding it as such, collected in great numbers about the governor’s house, and insisted that the flag should be hoisted. Filangieri was a Neapolitan, who might have transferred his allegiance from a Bourbon King of Spain to a Buonaparte without any sacrifice of feeling, or violation of duty. His inclinations, however, were in favour of the country which had adopted him, and he obeyed the popular voice. They then required that a regiment which he had removed to Ferrol should be recalled, that the arms in the arsenal should be distributed among the inhabitants, that Ferdinand should be340 proclaimed King, and that war should be immediately declared against France. The governor demurred at this last demand; ... they broke into his house and seized his papers, and his life would probably have been sacrificed if he had not escaped at a garden door, and found shelter in a convent.
The multitude then hastened to the arsenal, and took possession of the arms; the soldiers offered no resistance, and soon openly declared for the cause of their country. Some officers who attempted to restrain the people were hurt; some houses were attacked; a warehouse was broke open because it was said the fetters in which refractory conscripts were to be conveyed to France were deposited there, and the French Consul would have been murdered, if some humaner persons had not conveyed him in time to Fort St. Antonio, upon an island in the sea. A portrait of Ferdinand was carried in procession through the streets; and the Vivas which accompanied that popular name were followed by a fearful cry of “Down with the French and the traitors!” But order was soon restored, and in great measure by the exertions of the clergy, who possessed at this time a double influence over the people, because no class of men displayed more fervour of patriotic loyalty. The heads of the monasteries and the parochial priests assembled with the constituted authorities of the town, the Regent of the Royal Audience, and the Governor, to whom obedience341 was now restored; they formed a permanent Junta of government, they sent officers to treat with the English squadron which was then blockading Ferrol, and they dispatched advices to Santiago, Tuy, Orense, Lugo, Mondoñedo, and ♦Nellerto. Mem. t. 3, No. 140.♦ Betanzos, requiring each of those cities to send a deputy to the Junta, and make the news known throughout their respective jurisdictions. In the course of three days the whole of Gallicia was in a state of insurrection, and a communication was immediately opened with England.
At Badajoz and at Seville the first popular movements were repressed by the local authorities; but they soon broke out again with renewed violence. The Count de la Torre del Fresno was governor at Badajoz; the people collected before his palace, calling upon him to enrol them, and give them arms for the defence of the country. ♦May 30.♦ A second time he endeavoured to control a spirit which was no longer to be restrained; and the furious multitude, who perceived that to remain quiet was in fact to acknowledge the foreign King who was to be forced upon them, considered all attempts to abate their ardour as proceeding from a traitorous intention, forced their way into the house, dragged him forth, and murdered him. For in the sudden dissolution of government, by which free scope was for the first time given to the hopes and expectations of enthusiastic patriotism, the evil passions also were let loose, and the unreasonable people were sometimes hurried into excesses by their own blind342 zeal, sometimes seduced into them by wretches who were actuated by the desire of plunder, or of private revenge. Men were sacrificed to the suspicions and fury of the multitude, as accomplices and agents of the French, whose innocence in many cases was established when too late. Such crimes were committed at Valladolid, Cartagena, Granada, Jaen, San Lucar, Carolina, Ciudad Rodrigo, and many other places. But this dreadful anarchy was of short duration. The people had no desire to break loose from the laws and the habits of subordination; the only desire which possessed them was to take vengeance for their murdered countrymen, and to deliver their country from the insolent usurpation which was attempted. If any obstruction was offered to this generous feeling, they became impatient and ungovernable: otherwise, having always been wont to look to their rulers, never to act for themselves, their very zeal displayed itself in the form of obedience; they were eager to obey any who would undertake to guide them, and no person thought of stepping beyond his rank to assume the direction. ♦Juntas established every where.♦ Because Ferdinand, when he set out upon his journey to Bayonne, had left a Junta of government at Madrid, the people were familiar with that name, and Juntas, in consequence, were formed every where; those persons being every where appointed whom the inhabitants were accustomed to respect.
Though the provisional governments thus suddenly formed were altogether independent of343 each other, a certain degree of ascendancy was conceded by general consent to the Junta of Seville; that city, for its size and importance, being regarded by the Spaniards as their capital, while Madrid was in the enemy’s possession. After the magistracy had repressed the first tumultuous indications of patriotism in the Sevillians, a movement too general for them to withstand was excited by a man of low rank by name Nicolas Tap y Nuñez. He came there as a missionary to preach the duty of insurrection against the French; and at a time when every hour brought fresh excitement to the hopes and the indignation of the people, this man by his ardour and intrepidity obtained a great ascendancy, which he did not in the slightest instance abuse. When the persons in authority found it impossible to withstand the tide of popular feeling, the formation of a Junta was proposed, and the first thought of the people was, that the parochial clergy and the heads of the convents should assemble to choose the members, so little did they think of exercising any right of election themselves, and so naturally did they look up to those by whom they were wont to be directed. Some of these persons assembled, accepting unwillingly the power with which they were by acclamation invested, and confounded, if not intimidated, by their apprehensions of the French, the injunctions of the constituted authorities at Madrid, and the presence of a multitude who had given murderous proofs that their pleasure was not to344 be resisted with impunity: in this state of mind many withdrew from the meeting, and they who remained were glad to rid themselves of immediate responsibility by assenting to any nominations which were proposed. Such a choice was made as might be expected under such circumstances; some who thrust themselves forward with the qualifications of wealth and effrontery were chosen, and they to accredit their own election added others who held the highest place in public opinion for rank or talents. Among them were D. Francisco Saavedra, who had formerly been minister of finance, and P. Gil de Sevilla; both had been sufferers under Godoy’s administration, and they who were persecuted by him were for the most part entitled to respect as well as commiseration. Though the populace had thus obtained their immediate object, they still remained in a state of ferocious excitement, and their fury was directed (by private malice, it was believed) against the Conde del Aguila, one of the most distinguished inhabitants of Seville, whose collection of pictures, books, and manuscripts, was justly esteemed among the treasures of that city. The maddened and misguided rabble attacked him first with insults, then dragged him from his carriage, killed him, and exposed his body upon one of the city gates. And even when order was restored, the magistrates did not venture to institute any proceedings for bringing to justice the perpetrators or instigators of the murder.
345 Tap y Nuñez, who was for that day the Lord of Seville, assisted at the election of the Junta, and being a stranger, and ignorant of the good or ill deserts of those who were proposed, assented to all the nominations. Learning however that two members, more likely to discredit the cause of the country than to serve it, had been chosen, he went the next day to their sitting, and required that these individuals should be expelled. All hope of establishing subordination would have been lost, if a demagogue like this, however meritorious his intentions, were allowed to make and unmake the members of the government at his pleasure. The Junta therefore immediately arrested him, and sent him prisoner to Cadiz. This was a necessary act of vigour, without which no authority could have been maintained. But some merciful consideration was due to this man, because he had shown no disposition to abuse his dangerous influence, nor to aggrandize himself, when it was in his power: he was, however, made to feel, that the forms and realities of justice were as little to be looked for under the provisional government, as under the old despotism; and having been thrown into prison, there he was left to linger, hopeless of a trial, and having nothing to trust to for his deliverance but the chance that they might be weary of supporting ♦Espanol. t. 1, p. 13.♦ him there, or that his place might be wanted for another.
The vigour which they had shown in thus asserting their authority was not belied by their346 subsequent conduct. Their first measure was to establish in all towns within their jurisdiction, containing 2000 householders, corresponding Juntas, who were to enlist all the inhabitants between the ages of sixteen and forty-five, and embody them. Funds were to be raised by order of the Supreme Junta, by taxes on all corporations and rich individuals; and, above all, by voluntary subscriptions. ♦They declare war against France.♦ They declared war against the Emperor Napoleon and against France, in the name of Ferdinand and of all the Spanish nation, protesting that they would not lay down their arms till that Emperor restored to them the whole of their Royal Family, and respected the rights, liberty, and independence of the nation which he had violated. This, said they, we declare with the understanding and accordance of the Spanish people. By the same declaration, they made known that they had contracted an armistice with England, and that they hoped to conclude a lasting peace.
Solano was at this time on the frontiers with his army, having been recalled from Portugal. If any man in such times could rely for security upon his character, his popularity, and the whole tenor of his life, this nobleman might have felt himself secure. The arbitrary authority which he possessed at Cadiz had always been exercised for the good of the inhabitants and the improvement of the city: the military and naval officers respected him, the higher orders were his personal friends, and the populace looked with full347 confidence to his justice. No one more deeply felt and regretted the decline and degradation of Spain; yet had he partaken of its degradation, for he resigned himself to it, and despairing of his country, would have submitted to a nominal reform of government imposed by a foreign power, and under an intrusive dynasty. Upon the first movements at Seville, he hastened thither; and Saavedra, P. Gil, Count de Tilly, and others, who were willing to stand forward against the usurpation, and encourage a spirit from which every thing might be hoped, communicated their desires and intentions to him, as a true Spaniard, whose genuine patriotism could not be called in question. But Solano was one of those persons who believed the power of the French to be irresistible; the leading men whose opinions were most conformable to his own, and who, till this fatal time of trial, had been thought capable and desirous of introducing those reforms which the system of administration required, had submitted to Buonaparte’s pleasure; and while they, in common with all the constituted authorities in the metropolis, in the most earnest terms exhorted their countrymen to submission, the French, he knew, were ready to march troops wherever their presence might be required, and to repress an insurrection as promptly and severely in Seville as they had done at Madrid. He was not aware that the spirit which had manifested itself at Madrid, and was ready to break out in Seville, was felt at that time throughout every city and every village348 in the Peninsula. A proper fear also lest the people should possess themselves of power which they would certainly abuse, influenced him also; and determining hastily to support what appeared to him the cause of order and the laws, he received the communications which were made to him with coldness and distrust, required time to deliberate before he could assent to their views, and hastened with all speed to resume his command at Cadiz, and preserve that important city for the intrusive government.
There he gave out that he had returned thus suddenly to provide against a bombardment of the city which the English were about to commence. This gave him a pretext for removing cannon from the land side, in order to strengthen the batteries toward the sea; it is said that he removed the military stores also, under pretence that the casemates would be wanted as shelter for the inhabitants; and that he sent to the French General Dupont, who had been ordered to Andalusia, urging him to hasten thither by forced marches. The truth of these reports it is impossible to ascertain; and some who knew and loved Solano have asserted their belief, that if he had lived to witness the national virtue which was so soon afterwards displayed, he would have been one of the most ardent and able supporters of the national cause. Admiral Purvis, who commanded the British squadron before Cadiz, sent in flags of truce, and offered to co-operate with him against the French, who349 had five sail of the line and a frigate, under Admiral Rossilly, then lying in the bay; offers of assistance on the part of England were also made by the governor of Gibraltar, Sir Hew Dalrymple, who was already in communication with General Castaños, then commanding the Spanish force in the camp of St. Roque. Solano replied, that all overtures must be addressed to the government at Madrid, which was in fact declaring his adherence to Joseph Buonaparte.
Yet he appears to have wavered in purpose, if not in inclination. As soon as the popular cause had obtained the ascendancy at Seville, the Junta of that city sent out four artillery officers with dispatches to the commanders at Cadiz, Badajoz, Granada, and St. Roque, declaring, that in the present dissolution of government, the duty of providing for the public weal had been committed to them, and informing them that war had been declared against France, and peace with England. The Conde de Teba, Cipriano Palafox, was the person entrusted with this mission to Cadiz: his brother, the Conde de Montijo, had taken a decided part in promoting the insurrection; and this young officer was charged with these dispatches, not only because it was an honourable office, but because he was capable of explaining to Solano the state of affairs at Seville more fully than there had been time to do in writing. Full of zeal in a cause which he afterwards deserted, he entered Cadiz cracking his whip like a courier,350 and communicated to the people who flocked about him, the news which he brought; which was also speedily diffused by means of private couriers, whom the merchants of Seville sent to their correspondents, and by the zeal of propagandists who, doubting the determination of the persons in authority, came to make the people declare themselves. Solano was intimate with the Count de Teba, and, according to that nobleman’s relation, would have considered himself criminal if he had acknowledged the authority of the Junta of Seville, derived, as he conceived it to be, merely from the people of that city in a state of insurrection; but he saw how dangerous it would now be openly to disclaim their authority, and therefore summoned to council all the general officers, military and naval, eleven in number, who were within reach, and an address to the people was drawn up in their name. ♦They exhort the people not to engage in hostilities with the French.♦ It stated, that of all undertakings a war against France was the most difficult, considering the numbers and discipline of the French army; the want of Spanish troops, and the indiscipline of the new levies which might be raised. The right of declaring who were the enemies of the nation belonged, they said, exclusively to the King; he had repeatedly assured them that the French were his friends and intimate allies; in that character they had entered Spain, and the King had not manifested any change in his opinions concerning them; it was doubtful therefore whether he required from the351 people those sacrifices which were now called for. If nevertheless the people would decide upon war, they ought to know that great sacrifices must be made; men must be enrolled, embodied, and disciplined, they must quit their homes for a long time, perhaps for ever, and they who were not enrolled must return to their ordinary state of tranquillity; for it was for soldiers alone to fight, while the other inhabitants of a country remained neutral and passive, as might be seen by the example of the Germans, the Prussians, the Russians, and other nations. Were the people to act otherwise, and take an active part, the enemy would plunder their houses, and lay waste every thing with fire and sword. Moreover the most dreadful disorganization of society would ensue; and the English who were in the bay might take advantage of this dissolution of government to get possession of the port and city, and convert Cadiz into a second Gibraltar. The governor and the eleven general officers whom he had assembled concurring in these views, laid their opinions, they said, before the people, who were now to determine what part should be taken, and who could accuse no person of having deceived them, if the evils which were thus foreseen and foretold should in the event come upon them. But if, in despite of these representations, they persisted in the resolution of making war against the French, the generals were ready to begin hostilities, that they might not be accused of352 having given their advice from pusillanimity or any other motives unworthy of their patriotism, their honour, and their courage.
The tenor of this address evinced little resentment of the wrongs of their country in the persons by whom it was framed; and the manner in which it was published discovered as extraordinary a want of judgement in the governor, as he had displayed in his legislative experiments at Setubal. Instead of waiting till the next day, he increased the agitation and alarm of the people, ordering the address to be read at night in the streets by the light of torches, and summoning the restless part of the population, and alarming the peaceable, by the sound of military music; sure means of counteracting the sedative effect which the proclamation was intended to produce. The bolder spirits who were engaged in the better cause did not fail to perceive the advantage which the address afforded, by the heartlessness of its reasoning, and its full recognition of the right of the people to direct the conduct of the governor. There was no rest for the inhabitants that night; an answer was prepared to the generals, which was brought by a disorderly multitude, bearing torches, at midnight, to the governor’s palace. Solano was summoned to the balcony; and a young man, standing on the shoulders of one of the stoutest of his companions, read to him a writing in the name of the people, declaring that they had decided upon war, because they could confute all the353 reasons which had been advanced against it; and accordingly he read aloud an answer to the address, point by point. The mob applauded, and required that the French squadron should immediately be summoned to surrender. Solano assured them that their wishes should be fulfilled, and that on the morrow all the general officers should be assembled in consequence. Had he sympathized with the national feeling, and given at first that assent which he now reluctantly yielded, he might have directed their ardour, and maintained subordination, though not tranquillity. But the populace had now gained head, and broken loose, and at such times the bloodiest ruffian has always the most influence.
Part of the mob went to the arsenal, and these were the better-minded Spaniards, who wanted arms, that they might use them in the defence of their country. They found no opposition, because the soldiers every where partook of the general impulse of indignation against the French. Others broke open the prisons to deliver their friends and companions in guilt. The house of the French Consul was attacked and forced, for the purpose of putting him to death: he had taken refuge in the Convent of St. Augustine, and from thence got on board the French squadron. Murmurs were heard against Solano, as one who was disposed at heart to favour the enemy. The Count de Teba warned him that he was in danger, and advised him to give the354 command to D. Thomas de Morla (one of the generals whom he had called to council), and go with him to Seville, for the avowed purpose of obtaining the fullest information how to proceed in so important a crisis. Solano saw the prudence of this advice, but a sense of honour withheld him from following it, lest he should be suspected of cowardice; and as a second reason, he alleged a fear which his blind attachment to the French alone could have occasioned, that the English might take advantage of the confusion, and endeavour to make themselves masters of Cadiz; as if England were the enemy whom the Spaniards had then cause to dread!
On the morrow the general officers assembled for the second time, and about mid-day the people having collected to know their determination, they came forward in the balcony, and Solano and Morla assured the multitude that every thing which they desired should be done, and therefore they might disperse, and go each to his home in peace. One man cried out that they did not choose to see the French colours flying. Solano asked where they were to be seen? and upon being answered, on the French ships, he replied, that the naval officers and engineers were already instructed to take measures for obtaining possession of that squadron. They appeared satisfied with this, and Solano sate down to dinner. Before he had risen from table another mob arrived at the palace, with a man at their head who had formerly been355 a Carthusian, but had obtained leave to exchange that order for a less rigid one, in which he was now serving his noviciate. This man demanded to speak with the governor; an answer was returned, that the governor stood in need of rest, and that he had promised the people to fulfil their desires. The ex-Carthusian was not satisfied with this, and endeavoured to push by the sentinel, who upon this fired his piece in the air, and fastened the door. The mob then, under the same leader, brought cannon against the house, shattered the doors, and rushed in. They were now bent upon Solano’s death. He meantime escaped by the roof, and took shelter in the house of an English merchant, whose lady concealed him in a secret closet; and there, it is said, he would have been safe, if the very workman who had constructed it had not joined the mob, and discovered38 his356 hiding-place. The mistress of the house, Mrs. Strange, in vain endeavoured to save him, by the most earnest intreaties, and by interposing between him and his merciless assailants. She was wounded in the arm; and Solano, as he was dragged away, bade her farewell till eternity! They hauled him toward the gallows, that his death might be ignominious; ♦Nellerto, Mem. t. 3, Nos. 134, 143. Jacob’s Travels. Sir J. Carr’s Travels, p. 47, 48.♦ others were too ferocious to wait for this, they cut and stabbed him, while he resigned himself with composure and dignity to his fate; and the mortal blow is said to have been given by one of his own soldiers, who, to save him from farther sufferings, and from intended shame, ran him through the heart.
There may be reason for supposing that the fury of the populace was in this instance directed by some personal enemies of the Marquis, because it fell wholly upon him; the general officers who united in the address seem to have incurred no danger, and Morla, as second in command, was declared the next day by acclamation governor of Cadiz and captain-general of the province. He accepted the command, on condition that the people would disperse peaceably; the tumultuous election was confirmed by the Junta of Seville, who sent one of their members to concert a plan of operations with Morla; and the new governor issued a proclamation,357 ♦1808. June.♦ exhorting the people to be tranquil, telling them that a set of ruffians were plundering and destroying under the mask of patriotism, protesting that the only desire of the persons in authority was to die in the cause of their beloved Ferdinand, whom a tyrant had separated from them; assuring them that measures should instantly be taken against the French ships, and that within four and twenty hours the happy effects would be seen. Meantime the French squadron took up a defensive position, in a channel leading to the Caraccas, and out of reach of the works. M. Rossilly, the commander, knew that every effort would be made to relieve him, and endeavoured therefore to gain time, being no doubt confident that the force which would be ordered to occupy Cadiz would beat down any resistance that the Spaniards could oppose. He made overtures to the governor, proposing to quit the bay, if an arrangement to that effect could be made with the British squadron; this, he said, was for the purpose of tranquillizing the people, since his force, and the position which he had taken, appeared to occasion some uneasiness. But if the English should refuse their consent, he then offered to land his guns, keeping his men on board, and not hoisting his colours; in that case he required that hostages should be exchanged, and demanded the protection of the Spaniards against the exterior enemy. Morla replied, that though these proposals were such as it became the French admiral to make, it was not358 compatible with his honour to accept them: his orders were positive, and he could hear of nothing but an unconditional surrender. Lord Collingwood had now arrived from before Toulon, to take the command upon this, which had become the more important station. He offered to co-operate with the Spaniards, with whom the fleet was now in full communication; but being aware of their own strength, and sure of their prey, they declined his assistance. If the French commander had not relied too confidently upon the advance of his countrymen and the fortune of Buonaparte, he would now have surrendered to the English, for the certainty of obtaining better treatment, and the chance of exciting some disagreement respecting the prizes. Batteries were erected on the Isle of Leon, and near Fort Luiz; and from these, and from their mortar and gun-boats, the attack was commenced, while the British sailors remained impatient spectators of a contest carried on at a distance, and protracted from the ninth of June till the fourteenth, when, having in vain endeavoured to obtain more favourable terms, ♦Surrender of the French squadron.♦ Rossilly surrendered unconditionally. In an address to the people which Morla then published he pointed out the advantage of a mode of attack which they had censured as dilatory and inefficient; the victory had cost only four lives, and the ships which were now their own had been taken with the least possible injury. The prisoners, he said, should be exchanged for Spanish troops.359 He exhorted and commanded the people to return to their accustomed habits of subordination. The convulsion which Spain has undergone, said he, has awakened us from our lethargy, and made us feel our rights, and the duty which we owe to our holy religion and our King. We wanted an electric shock to rouse us from our palsied state of inactivity; we stood in need of a hurricane to clear the heavy and unwholesome atmosphere. But if violent remedies are continued after the good which was proposed from them be obtained, they become fatal: excessive efforts bring on a debility worse than direct weakness, because the very principle of strength is exhausted. It was now necessary to return to order, and to confide in the magistrates. Able men must be armed and disciplined; they who were not fit for military service would be employed in other ways, and boys and women who excited tumults should be punished. The troops, said he, the whole city, the sword of justice, and above all God himself, who chastises those that abuse his mercies, authorize and support me.
The man who addressed this language to his countrymen had hitherto endeavoured to frustrate the purposes of those better spirits whom the danger had awakened; and by his means this blow against the French had been delayed as long as possible, in the hope and expectation that a French force might arrive in time to prevent it, and secure Cadiz for the Intrusive King.360 For in this part of Spain alone, the intention of opposing Buonaparte had been conceived as soon as his designs were discovered, and measures had been taken for obtaining assistance from the English. The Spanish Commander at Algeziras, and the British Governor of Gibraltar, had always been accustomed in time of war to maintain that sort of humane and courteous intercourse which the laws of honour allow, and by which the evils of hostility may be mitigated. The opportunity thus afforded had not been overlooked by those Spaniards who were resolved to act for the deliverance of their country; and if Ferdinand, instead of overthrowing the favourite, had found it necessary to fly, it was intended that he should have taken refuge at Gibraltar, and from thence have embarked for the colonies, trusting to British honour. As early as the beginning of April, General Castaños had communicated with Sir Hew Dalrymple upon the state of affairs, and the measures which it might be necessary to adopt. After the elder branches of the Royal Family had been decoyed away, a hope of saving D. Francisco, the youngest of the Infantes, was cherished, and of conveying him to America, to secure that portion of the Spanish dominions: but in case the whole of the Bourbons should be destroyed, or carried into hopeless captivity, the Archduke Charles was regarded as the fittest person to whom the throne, thus rendered vacant, could be offered; and a request was made361 to Sir Hew that a frigate might be held in readiness to sail for Trieste, and bring him over. Sir Hew Dalrymple saw the whole importance of the crisis; and by the generosity with which he took upon himself the responsibility of acting in affairs of such moment, the Spanish General was induced to place just confidence in British frankness and good faith. Toward the latter end of May two French officers, one of whom was an aide-de-camp of Murat’s, came to Algeziras. Castaños supposed their errand was to arrest him, and in that case had determined upon killing them, and retiring by sea to Gibraltar. He found, however, that they spake to him with apparent confidence respecting the Viceroyalty of Mexico, which had been promised him by the old government, and was now held out as a lure to him, as it also was to General Cuesta. The aide-de-camp assured him that the removal of the Bourbons from Spain had for three years been the chief object of Buonaparte’s policy; and this having now been happily effected, the house of Austria was next to be removed ... an operation which could not require more than four months; ... so easy at that time did any ambitious enterprise appear to the soldiers of Buonaparte! But Castaños was neither deterred by the power of this formidable tyrant, nor seduced by any prospect of personal aggrandizement. He continued his communications with Gibraltar, and his plan was to begin by seizing the French fleet; this he thought would be the362 best mode of commencing hostilities, and such a stroke at the outset would give a character of decision and vigour to the Spanish counsels. Morla had influence enough to frustrate it then; but no evil arose from the delay; rather it proved advantageous, by allowing time for that simultaneous manifestation of feeling which so decidedly proved the spirit of the people. Meantime, in full reliance upon England, Castaños obeyed the first summons from the Junta of Seville, and prepared to resist the French when they should enter Andalusia.
While Asturias, Galicia, and Andalusia, had thus with one impulse taken arms against the usurpation, and opened an intercourse with England, of whose willing and efficient assistance no doubt was entertained, the city of Valencia, where the same spirit manifested itself at the same time, became the scene of a most horrible and disgraceful tragedy. There also, in the first movements of the people, the governor, D. Miguel de Saavedra, fell a victim to popular fury; he was brought back from Requeña, whither he had retired for safety, and murdered near the palace of the Conde de Cervellon, who had decidedly engaged in the national cause, and yet with all his efforts was unable to save him. His head was carried about the streets on a pike, and then exposed upon a pillar in the Plaza de S. Domingo. A Junta was chosen, and order would soon have been re-established, if at this time there had not arrived from Madrid one363 of those monsters whose actions, we might wish, for the sake of human nature, to account for by the supposition of demoniacal possession. P. Baltasar Calvo, such was his name, was a Canon of the church of S. Isidro, in the metropolis; it was afterwards reported that he had been deputed by Murat to secure Valencia for the intrusive government, by secretly treating with the members of the Junta; and that finding this impracticable, he determined to make himself master of the city by terror. But that he should have acted as he did with any ultimate view of delivering up the city to the French is utterly impossible; nor indeed is it likely that he had any other purpose than that of glutting at the head of a mob a devilish disposition, which, if he had lived a century earlier, would have found appropriate employment and full gratification in the service of the Holy Office.
There were many French residents in Valencia; the abominable conduct of their government toward Spain had made them objects of hatred as well as suspicion; and at the beginning of the disturbances most of them very imprudently took refuge in the citadel. Calvo denounced them to the mob as being in correspondence with Murat and the French troops, for the purpose of betraying the city. The Junta had no military force at their command; and they were too much confused or intimidated to employ that moral force which, with due exertions on the part of the magistracy, may364 generally be brought into action. The British consul, Mr. Tupper, was one of their number; he went to the citadel, represented to the French the imminent danger to which they were exposed while they remained there collected as it were for slaughter, and intreated them to retire into the different convents, and name such of the inhabitants as they supposed would be willing and able to associate for their protection. But thinking themselves safer where they were, they would not be persuaded. By this time the Canon had collected instruments enough for his bloody purpose; in a large city ruffians will never be wanting, till the police of cities, and the moral condition of the inferior classes, be very different from what they are throughout all Christendom; and that he might have sure subjects at his command, he had opened the prisons and let their inmates loose. On the 5th of June, when the evening was closing, Calvo led his rabble to the citadel, and forced some friars to accompany them. Little resistance was made by the guard; the Frenchmen were led one by one into an apartment, to be confessed by the friars, like condemned criminals, then thrust out by some of these infatuated and infuriated wretches, felled with bludgeons, and dispatched by the knife. When the Junta heard that this horrible massacre was going on, they called out the monks and friars, and sent them to the scene of slaughter, carrying the host uncovered, and with lighted tapers, chanting as they went. At that sight365 the wretches ceased from their murderous work, and, smeared as they were with blood, knelt by the bodies of their dead and dying victims, in adoration. But Calvo, more obdurate than the very murderers whom he directed, called on them to complete what they had begun; he intimated to the religioners, that if they interposed in behalf of the French, they should be considered as accomplices with them, and partake their fate: and they, intimidated by the threat, and appalled by the dreadful objects before them, withdrew, ... when that spirit of heroic devotion, which looks upon martyrdom without dismay, might surely have prevented farther bloodshed, and redeemed the Valencians from the shame of the foulest excesses by which a cause so righteous in itself was sullied.
The massacre continued all night. A hundred and seventy-one persons were butchered; and when the day broke, it was perceived that some ten or twelve of these victims were still breathing. The effect which this produced upon the murderers shows how certain it is that the religioners would have softened them, had there been one man among them with the spirit of a martyr. Struck with compassion, and without making their intention known to Calvo, as if they knew him to be immitigable, they removed these poor sufferers to the hospital, and assisted in binding up the wounds which they had made. There still remained about an hundred and fifty French in the citadel; the mob, satiated with366 blood, and now open to feelings of humanity, determined upon sparing them, and removing them to a place of safety. The Canon consented to this, which it might have been dangerous to oppose; but his lust for blood was still unsatiated. He ordered all the French to be confessed before they left the citadel, then fastened them two by two with ropes, and marched them out toward the place appointed. On the way he halted the mob, and holding up a paper, declared that it had been found in the pocket of one of the Frenchmen, and that it contained an engagement on the part of his countrymen in that city, to deliver it up as soon as an army should appear before it. The multitude, with whom bold assertions, if according with their passions or prejudices, always pass for proofs, believed this preposterous charge; and with renewed ferocity falling upon the remnant whom they had resolved to spare, massacred them all. Calvo then led them to the houses of the French, in search of those who had remained at home, when the greater number took shelter in the citadel; these also were dragged from their hiding places, and in the same deliberate manner confessed and butchered. One circumstance alone occurred which may relieve the horror of this dreadful narrative. M. Pierre Bergiere had acquired a large fortune in Valencia, and was remarkable for his singular charity. It was not enough for him to assist the poor and the sick and the prisoner with continual alms, he visited them, and367 ministered to their wants himself in the sick room and in the dungeon. Yet his well-known virtues did not exempt him from the general proscription of his countrymen, and he too having been confessed and absolved, was thrust out to the murderers. The wretch who was about to strike him was one whom he had frequently relieved in prison, and upon recognizing him withheld his arm; calling however to mind that Bergiere was a Frenchman, he raised it again; but his heart again smote him, and saying, “Art thou a Devil or a Saint, that I cannot kill thee?” he pulled him through the crowd, and made way for his escape.
During these atrocities the Junta seem to have been panic-stricken, making no effort to exert an authority which never was so much needed. The Canon was not satisfied with this timid and unwilling acquiescence; he wished to involve them in the responsibility for these wholesale murders, or to bring them into discredit and danger by making them act in opposition to the wishes of the multitude whom he guided. With these views he commanded five Frenchmen to be led to the door of the hall wherein they held their sittings, and sent in a messenger to ask in his name for a written order to put them to death. The intention was readily understood, but the moment was not yet come for acting decisively against this merciless demagogue, and the Conde de Cervellon replied, “You have killed many Frenchmen without an order, and368 none can be wanted now.” Mr. Tupper went out to the assassins, and addressed them on behalf of the prisoners; he was struck at with a knife by one who called him a Frenchman himself; the blow was parried, voices were heard crying that he was an Englishman, and one man declared he would put to death the first person who should offer violence to the English consul. But any interposition for the miserable French was in vain; they were knocked down and stabbed, and their bodies were left upon the steps of the hall. There were still several Frenchmen concealed in the city, who were in danger every moment of being discovered and massacred. Mr. Tupper, when he found that all appeals to the humanity of the mob were unavailing, had recourse to a different method, and proposed to an assembly of ruffians, armed with the knives which they had already used in murder, and were eager to use again in the same service, that the survivors should be given up to him, that he might send them prisoners to England, promising in exchange for them a supply of arms and ammunition from Gibraltar. By this means their lives were preserved.
The canon Calvo was now in that state of insanity which is sometimes produced by the possession of unlimited authority. He declared himself the supreme and only representative of King Ferdinand, and was about to issue orders for dismissing the Conde de Cervellon from his rank as Captain-general, dissolving the Junta,369 and putting the Archbishop to death. A sense of their own imminent danger then roused the Junta. They invited him to join them, and assist at their deliberations. He came, followed by a crowd of ruffians, who filled the avenues when he entered the hall: he demeaned himself insolently, and threatened the assembly till P. Rico, a Franciscan, one of the most active and intrepid in the national cause, rose and called their attention to a matter upon which the safety of the city depended; and then denounced the Canon as a traitor, and called upon the members immediately to arrest him. Calvo was confounded at this attack; ... when he recovered himself, he proposed to retire while the Junta were investigating his conduct; they well understood his intention, and voted that he should immediately be sent in irons to Majorca; and before the mob, who at his bidding would have massacred the Junta, knew that he had been accused, he was conducted secretly under a strong guard to the mole, put in chains, and embarked for that island. The Junta then acted with vigour and severity: they seized about two hundred of the assassins, had them strangled in prison, and exposed their bodies upon a scaffold. The Canon was afterwards brought back and suffered the same deserved fate. What confession he made was not known; he would not permit ♦Sir J. Carr’s Travels, p. 255–266.♦ the priest to reveal it, farther than an acknowledgement that God and his crimes had brought him to that end.
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The Valencians, as soon as they were delivered from the tyranny of this frantic demagogue, prepared vigorously for defence. They burnt the paper money which had been stamped in Murat’s name, and stopped several chests of specie which were on the way to Madrid. The Catalans were not able to exert themselves with equal effect, because Barcelona, the second city of the kingdom in population, but in commercial and military importance the first, was in the hands of the French; but where the people were not controlled by the immediate presence of the enemy they declared themselves with a spirit worthy of their ancestors. The decrees from Bayonne and the edicts of Murat were publicly burnt at Manresa. The Governor of Tortosa, D. Santiago de Guzman y Villoria, was murdered by the raging populace, and that city declared against the intrusive government. Duhesme thought to secure Lerida by sending the Spanish regiment of Estremadura to occupy the citadel; he expected that, being Spaniards, no objection would be made to admitting them, and an order for relieving them by French troops might afterwards be obtained from the government at Madrid. But the people of Lerida refused to let them enter, in wrongful, though at that time necessary distrust; and the regiment, glad to find itself at liberty, took up its quarters at Tarrega, waiting to see where it might be employed with most advantage in the service of its country. ♦Cabañes. Hist. del Exercito de Cataluña. Part i. p. 23, 24.♦ They were soon invited to Zaragoza. It was for the371 purpose of keeping open a communication with that city that Duhesme had wished to occupy Lerida; and if both places had been secured, the French would then have had military possession of all the Pyrenean provinces.
Among the persons who accompanied Ferdinand to Bayonne was D. Joseph Palafox y Melzi, the youngest of three brothers, of one of the most distinguished families in Aragon. He was about thirty-four years of age, and had been from boyhood in the Spanish guards without ever having seen actual service; in Madrid, where he had mostly passed his time, he was only remarkable for a certain foppishness in his appearance, and in ordinary times he might have passed through life as an ordinary man, without any pretensions to moral or intellectual rank. After the tumults at Aranjuez he was appointed second in command there, under the Marquis de Castellar, to whose custody the Prince of the Peace was committed. Not being regarded at Bayonne as a person whom it was necessary to secure, he found means to escape in the disguise of a peasant, and in that dress arrived safely at a country house belonging to his family, at Alfranca, about two miles from Zaragoza. That city was in a perturbed state, ... the people restless, indignant, and eager to act against the enemy; the magistrates, and the Captain-general of Aragon, D. Jorge Juan Guillermi, desirous of maintaining order, and ready in regular course of office to obey the instruction which they received from Madrid, not372 scrupulous from what authority they came, while it was through the accustomed channels. The arrival of Palafox at such a time excited the hopes and the expectations of the Zaragozans. That he was hostile to the intended usurpation was certain, he would not otherwise have exposed himself to danger in escaping from Bayonne; that he came with the intention of serving Ferdinand was to be presumed, ... perhaps with secret instructions from him; it was even rumoured that Ferdinand himself had miraculously made his escape, and was now concealed in the house of the faithful companion of his flight. This report was too romantic to obtain belief, except among the most credulous of the ignorant. Palafox however was so popular, and the impatience of the people discovered itself so plainly, and their wishes so evidently looked to him as the man whom they would fain have for their leader, that though he used no means direct or indirect for encouraging this disposition, the Captain-general thought proper to send him an order to quit the kingdom of Aragon. Despotic as the system of administration had been throughout all Spain, such an order to a man of Palafox’s rank, in his own country, would have been deemed at any time a most unfit exertion of authority. Under the present circumstances it evinced the determination of General Guillermi to support the intrusive government, and hastened the insurrection which he apprehended, but was unable to avert.
Two men of strong national feeling and great373 hardihood had obtained at this time an ascendancy over the populace; Tio Jorge the one was called, the other Tio Marin, ... Tio, or uncle, being the appellation by which men in the lower classes who have passed the middle age are familiarly addressed in that part of Spain. ♦Insurrection in that city.♦ These persons, on the morning of the 24th of May, at the head of a multitude of peasants from the parishes of S. Madeleña and S. Pablo, proceeded to the Governor’s palace, crying out, Down with Murat! Ferdinand for ever! They disarmed the guard, made their way into his apartment, and required him to accompany them to the arsenal, and give orders for distributing arms to the people; a great quantity, they said, had been sold to the French. It was in vain that Guillermi defended himself against this absurd accusation, and pleaded his age and services and honourable wounds: his conduct towards Palafox had unequivocally shown what part he was disposed to take in this crisis of his country. But the Zaragozans, less inhuman than the populace in many other places, contented themselves with securing him in the old castle of the Aljaferia, which was used for a military prison as well as for a depot of artillery. The second in command, Lieutenant-general Mori, who was an Italian by birth, was then regarded as his successor, rather by right of seniority, than for any confidence on the part of the people; for though his name was shouted with loud Vivas, ominous intimations accompanied these shouts, that if he did not374 demean himself to their satisfaction, the cry would be, Down with Mori, as it had been, Down with Guillermi. A Junta was formed, but though the most respectable persons were chosen, the people continued to act for themselves. Still it was with greater moderation than had been evinced elsewhere; a cry was raised against the French inhabitants; and they were conducted to the citadel more for their own security than for that of the city.
Tio Jorge and a party of peasants, now armed from the arsenal, went to Alfranca, and invited Palafox into Zaragoza; he showed no disposition to accept their invitation, and they would have taken him with them against his consent, if General Mori, feeling the instability of his own power, had not written to solicit his assistance. The next morning, when he appeared in the Council, he requested that some means might be taken for delivering him from the importunities of the people, protesting that he was ready to devote all his exertions, and his life also, if that sacrifice should be required, to his country and his King. The people who surrounded the door were now calling out that Palafox should be appointed Captain-general; they burst into the Council with this cry. Mori gladly declared himself willing to resign the office if his services were no longer necessary, and Palafox was thus invested with the command.
The city was in this state when Jovellanos, having been released on the accession of375 Ferdinand from his long and iniquitous imprisonment in Majorca, arrived there on the way from Barcelona to Asturias, his native province. The insurrection in Catalonia had not broken out when he commenced his journey, but every where the storm was gathering; travellers of his appearance were every where regarded with curiosity and suspicion; and when desirous, because of his infirm age and broken health, to avoid the noise of a tumultuous city and the inconvenience of unnecessary delay, he would have past on without entering the gates, a jealous mob surrounded the carriage. Hearing that it came from Barcelona, some were for searching the strangers, others for conducting them before the new Captain-general to be examined; presently however he was recognised, the name of Jovellanos was pronounced; He is a good man, he must stay with us, was then the cry; and he was conducted as in triumph to the palace. Palafox also intreated this eminent and irreproachable man to remain in Zaragoza and assist him with his advice; but Jovellanos pleaded infirmities brought on more by sufferings than by years, and the necessity of retirement and tranquillity for a broken constitution. Among the persons who were then with the greatest zeal assisting Palafox in his preparations for war, was the Conde de Cabarrus, a man of great reputation as a financier and political economist, remarkable alike for talents and irregularities. Jovellanos, himself the most excellent of men, had tolerated the376 faults of Cabarrus for the sake of the noble qualities which he possessed; and when Cabarrus, from the high favour which he enjoyed under Charles III. became in the ensuing reign an object of hatred and persecution, Jovellanos, as he had been the most disinterested of all his many friends in prosperity, was the most faithful of the few who adhered to him in his disgrace. Hitherto the love of Cabarrus for his country, his passionate desire for the improvement of its institutions, and his attachment to the principles of liberty, had never been doubted; and now at thus meeting Jovellanos after ten years of suffering, he shed tears, less in grief for the condition of Spain, than in joy for the right old Spanish spirit which they saw reviving among the people. He promised to follow his venerable friend to Jadraque, and offered to be guided by his counsels. Jovellanos the next day proceeded on his journey, and for honour as well as protection Tio Jorge, with an escort of musqueteers, convoyed him the first stage.
The situation in which Palafox was placed was equally conspicuous and perilous. To have escaped from Bayonne, and taken upon himself the command of one of the kingdoms of Spain in opposition to the usurpation, marked him in a peculiar manner for the vengeance of a tyrant who was not to be offended with impunity. The capital of Aragon was an important position, and at this time exposed to danger on all sides. The adjoining province of Navarre was in377 possession of the French, and it was not yet known that any resistance to them had been manifested in Catalonia. The passes of the Pyrenees, leading directly into Aragon, were open, and the main body of the French army was on the other side in and about Madrid. Thus surrounded by the enemy, and in a city which in military language would have been called defenceless, (the walls and gates of Zaragoza having for many generations been of no other use than to facilitate the collection of the customs,) Palafox declared war against the French. The proclamation which he issued was in a style which accorded with the temper of the people. He declared that the Emperor of the French, the individuals of his family, and every French general and officer, should be held personally responsible for the safety of King Ferdinand, his brothers, and his uncle: that should the French commit any robberies, devastations, and murders, either in Madrid or any other place, no quarter should be given them: that all the acts of the existing government were illegal, and that the renunciations at Bayonne were null and void, having been extorted by oppression: that whatever might be done hereafter by the royal family in their state of duresse, should for the same reason be accounted of no authority; and that all who took an active part in these transactions should be deemed traitors to their country. And if any violence were attempted against the lives of the Royal Family, he declared that in that case the378 nation would make use of their elective right in favour of the Archduke Charles.
Upon the first intelligence of the tumults at Zaragoza, the Junta of Government at Madrid, knowing how popular the name of Palafox would prove, dispatched his elder brother, the Marquis de Lazan, to inform him of the course which they were pursuing, and persuade him to use his influence for reducing the Aragonese to submission. But the Marquis, on his arrival, found that no influence could have effected this, and that Palafox had decidedly taken his part; and he also entered heartily into the cause of his country. The Principe del Castel Franco, D. Ignacio Martinez de Villala, one of the council of Castille, and the Alcalde of the court, D. Luis Marcelino Pereyra, were sent from Bayonne upon a similar errand, with a proclamation addressed to the Zaragozans, and signed by all the Spaniards who had obeyed Buonaparte’s summons as members of the Assembly of Notables. Had they reached Zaragoza the mission might have cost them their lives, but finding that the people of Aragon were every where inflamed with the same hatred against the French, they deemed it expedient to turn back.
It was believed by some of the noblest-minded Spaniards, that deeply as their countrymen resented the treachery with which the royal family had been entrapped, and the insult offered to the nation in attempting to impose upon it a foreign dynasty by force, no national opposition would379 have been attempted, if the slaughter at Madrid and the executions by which it was followed had not excited in the people a feeling of fiery indignation, and a desire of vengeance strong as the sense of the most intolerable private injury could have provoked. The basest creatures of the intrusive government lamented Murat’s conduct in sacrificing so many victims by his military tribunal as impolitic, while they served and supported a system which began in treachery and could only be upheld by force. It was their belief that every thing must yield to force of arms, and they were incapable of estimating the moral force which was called forth in resistance. The Juntas every where appealed to public opinion, and the press every where where the French were not present, teemed with addresses to the people, in all which the massacre of Madrid was represented as a crime for which vengeance must be exacted. The Junta of Seville published one to the people of the metropolis, blessing them for the noble example they had given, and telling them that that example would be remembered in the annals of their country for their eternal honour. “Seville,” said they, “has seen with horror that the author of your misfortunes and of ours has sent forth a proclamation in which all the facts are distorted, and he pretends that you gave the provocation when it was he who provoked you. The government had the weakness to sanction that proclamation, and give orders for circulating it, and saw with perfect unconcern many of you380 put to death for a pretended violation of laws which had no existence. That proclamation said that the French blood cried for vengeance. And the Spanish blood, ... does not it cry out for vengeance? ... that Spanish blood shed by an army which was not ashamed to attack a disarmed and defenceless people, living under their own laws and their own King, and against whom cruelties were committed which make human nature shudder? All Spain exclaims that the Spanish blood in Madrid cries out for vengeance! Comfort yourselves! We are your brethren, we will fight like you till we perish in defence of our King and our country. Assist us with your good will, and with your prayers to that Almighty God whom we adore, and who cannot forsake us, because he never forsakes justice. And when the favourable hour arrives, exert yourselves then and throw off the ignominious yoke, which with such cruelty and such perfidiousness has been forced upon you.”
The Junta of Oviedo, in like manner, called upon the people to revenge their brethren who had been massacred; to remember their forefathers; to defend their wives and sisters and daughters; and to transmit their inheritance of independence to their children. They reminded them how Pelayo, with the mountaineers of Asturias, laid the foundation of the Spanish monarchy, and began that war against the Moors which his posterity continued for 700 years, till they had rooted out the last of the invaders.381 They reminded them of the Cid Campeador, Ruy Diaz de Bivar; how, when the Emperor claimed authority over Spain, and a council, where the King of Castille himself presided, discussed his pretensions, that hero refused to deliberate on such a demand, saying that the independence of Spain was established above all title; that no true Spaniard would suffer it to be brought in question; that it was to be upheld with their lives; and that he declared himself the enemy of any man who should advise the King to derogate in one point from the honour of their free country! They reminded them of the baseness, the perfidy, and the cruelty which they had already experienced from that proud and treacherous tyrant, who arrogates (said they) to himself the title of Arbiter of Destinies, because he has succeeded in oppressing the French nation, without recollecting that he himself is mortal, and that he only holds the power delegated to him for our chastisement. Had he not, under the faith of treaties, drawn away their soldiers to the Baltic? had he not, in the character of a friend and ally, marched his troops into the very capital, and made himself master of the frontier fortresses, then robbed them of their King and the whole of their royal family, and usurped their government? What if they perished in resisting these barbarians? “It is better (said they) to die in defence of your religion and independence, and upon your own native soil, than be led bound to slaughter, and382 waste your blood for the aggrandizement of his ambition. The French conscription comprises you. If you do not serve your country, you will be forced away to perish in the North. We lose nothing; for, even should we fall, we shall have freed ourselves, by a glorious death, from the intolerable burden of a foreign yoke. What worse atrocities would the worst savages have perpetrated, than those which the ruffians of this tyrant have committed? They have profaned our temples, they have massacred our brethren, they have assailed our wives; more than 2000 of the people of Madrid, of that city where they had been so hospitably received, they have murdered in cold blood, for no other cause than for having defended their families and themselves. To arms! to arms!... Will you bend your necks to the yoke? Will you allow yourselves to be insulted by injuries the most perfidious, the most wicked, the most disgraceful, committed in the face of the whole world? Will you submit to the humiliating slavery which is prepared for you? To arms! to arms! ... not like the monster who oppresses you, for the indulgence of an insatiable ambition; not, like him, to violate the law of nations and the rights of humanity, ... not to render yourselves odious to mankind; ... but to assist your countrymen, to rescue your King from captivity; to restore to your government liberty, energy, and vigour; to preserve your own lives, and those of your children; to maintain the uncontrolled right of383 enjoying and disposing of your property; and to assert the independence of Spain.... The time is come; the nation has resumed the sovereign authority, which, under such circumstances, devolves upon it. Let us be worthy of ourselves! Let us perpetuate the renown of our fathers! A whole people is more powerful than disciplined armies. Spain will inevitably conquer in a cause the most just that ever raised the deadly weapons of war; she fights, not for the concerns of a day, but for the security and happiness of ages; ... not for an insulated privilege, but for all the rights of human nature; ... not for temporal blessings, but for eternal happiness; ... not for the benefit of one nation, but for all mankind, and even for France itself. Humanity does not always shudder at the sound of war, ... the slow and interminable evils of slavery are a thousand times more to be abhorred; ... there is a kind of peace more fatal than the field of battle, drenched with blood, and strewn with the bodies of the slain. Such is the peace in which the metropolis of Spain is held by the enemy. The most respectable citizen there is exposed to the insolence of the basest French ruffian; at every step he has to endure at least the insult of being eyed with the disdain of the conqueror towards the conquered. The inhabitants of Madrid, strangers, as it were, and by sufferance in their own houses, cannot enjoy one moment’s tranquillity. The public festivals, established by immemorial custom, the attendance384 on religious ordinances, are considered as pretexts for insurrection, and threatened with being interrupted by discharges of cannon. The slightest noise makes the citizen tremble in the bosom of his family. From time to time the enemy run to arms, in order to keep up the terror impressed by the massacres of the 2d and 3d of May. Madrid is a prison, where the jailors take pleasure in terrifying the prisoners for the purpose of keeping them quiet by perpetual fear. But the Spaniards have not yet lost their country!... Those fields which, for so many years, have seen no steel except that of the ploughshare, are about to become the new cradle of their freedom! Life or death in such a cause, and in such times, are indifferent. You who return will be received by your country as her deliverers! and you whom Heaven has destined to secure, with your blood, the independence of our native land, ... the honour of our women, ... the purity of our holy faith, ... you will not dread the anguish of the last moments. Remember what tears of grateful love will be shed over your graves, ... what fervent prayers will be sent up for you to the Almighty Father of Mercies. Let all Spain become a camp; let her population become an armed host; let our youths fly to the defence of the state, for the son should fall before the father appears in the ranks of battle. And you, tender mothers, affectionate wives, fair maidens, do not retain within your embraces the objects of your love, until, from385 victory returned, they deserve your affection. They withdraw from you not to fight for a tyrant, but for their God; for a monarch worthy the veneration of his people; for yourselves, and for your companions. Instead of regretting their departure, sing ye, like Spartan women, the song of jubilee!... The noble matrons, the delicate maidens, even the austere religious recluse nuns, they too must take a part in this holy cause; let them send up their prayers to Heaven for the success of our undertaking, and minister, in their domestic economy, to the necessities of their warlike sons and brethren.”
The popular faith as well as the patriotism of the Spaniards was roused. They were told to implore the aid of the Immaculate Conception; of Santiago, so often the patron and companion in victory of their ancestors; of our Lady of Battles, whose image is worshipped in the most ancient temple of Covadonga, and who had there so signally assisted Pelayo in the first great overthrow of the Moorish invaders. The fire flamed higher for this holy oil of superstition; but it was kindled and fed by noble pride, and brave shame and indignation; by the remembrance of what their forefathers had been, and the thought of what their children were to be. While the leaders thus availed themselves of popular faith, they called upon the clergy for those sacrifices which the circumstances of the country rendered necessary: “Venerable orders of religion,” said they, “withhold not the386 supplies which are required for the common cause! If your virtue did not impel you to offer this assistance, your interest would extort it; for your political existence, ... the possession of your property, ... your individual security, ... all depend upon the issue of this war. But Spain this day receives from her favourite sons proofs of their affection and gratitude, for the riches she has bestowed, and the splendour she has conferred, for her pious generosity, and her ardent zeal, in sustaining the religion and the customs of their fathers.” And to the honour of the clergy, no men exerted themselves more strenuously in the common cause; a conduct the more praiseworthy, after the submission of their Primate, and the infamous part which the Inquisition had taken.
While the other Juntas acted independently each in their province, and prepared rather for local and immediate danger than for any regular system of general defence, the Junta of Seville assumed a higher authority, and took upon itself, as if by delegation, the duty of providing for the country in this extreme necessity. “The King,” they said in their proclamation to the people of Spain, “to whom we all swore allegiance with emotions of joy unprecedented in history, has been decoyed from us. The fundamental laws of our monarchy are trampled under foot; our property, our customs, our wives ... all which the nation holds most dear, are threatened. Our holy religion, our only hope, is doomed387 to perdition, or will be reduced to mere external appearances, without support and without protection. And a foreign power has done this, ... not by dint of arms, but by deceit and treachery, by converting the very persons who call themselves the heads of our government, into instruments of these atrocious acts; persons who, either from the baseness of their sentiments, from fear, or perhaps from other motives, which time or justice will unfold, hesitate not to sacrifice their country. It therefore became necessary to break the shackles, which prevented the Spaniards from displaying that generous ardour that in all ages has covered them with glory; that noble courage, with which they have always defended their honour, their laws, their monarchs, and their religion. The people of Seville assembled accordingly on the 27th of May; and, through the medium of all their magistrates, of all their constituted authorities, and of the most respectable individuals of every rank, this Supreme Council of Government was formed, invested with all necessary powers, and charged to defend the country, the religion, the laws, and the King. We accept the heroic trust; we swear to discharge it, and we reckon on the strength and energy of the whole nation. We have again proclaimed Ferdinand VII. ... again sworn allegiance to him, ... sworn to die in his defence; this was the signal of happiness and union, and will prove such to all Spain.
“A Council of Government had scarce been388 formed, when it violated the most sacred laws of the realm. A president was appointed without any authority whatever, and who, had he had any lawful title, hastened to forfeit it. In addition to his being a foreigner, which was a legal objection, he acted for the destruction of the very monarchy from which he received his appointment, and of the laws, which alone could sanction it. Under these circumstances we could not restrain our loyalty, much less could we violate the sacred engagements, which we had before contracted as Spaniards, as subjects, as Christians, as freemen, independent of all foreign authority and power. Nor could the interference of the first tribunal of the nation, the Council of Castille, check or control our exertions. The weakness of that Council became obvious from the wavering and contradictory proceedings which it adopted in the most momentous situation wherein the nation ever hath been placed, when the Council ought to have displayed that heroic firmness, with which numberless motives and its own honour called upon it to act. The order tamely to submit to, and circulate and obey the act of abdication in favour of a foreign prince, was the consummation of its weakness, perhaps of its infamy. That abdication was evidently void and illegal from want of authority in him who made it; the monarchy was not his, nor was Spain composed of animals subject to the absolute control of their owners; ... his accession to the throne was founded on his royal descent,389 and on the fundamental laws of the realm. It is void on account of the state of violence in which it was made; ... it is void, because the published act of abdication of King Ferdinand VII. and of his uncle and brother, was made in the same state of compulsion, as is expressly declared in the very act itself; ... it is void, because many royal personages, possessed of the right of inheritance to the crown, have not relinquished that right, but preserve it entire.
“The French ruler summoned the Spanish nation: he chose such deputies as best suited his purpose, and in a despotic manner appointed them to deliberate in a foreign country on the most sacred interests of the nation, while he publicly declared that a private and respectful letter, written to him by Ferdinand VII. at the time when he was Prince of Asturias, was a criminal performance, injurious to the rights of sovereignty. It is, indeed, a heinous offence, it is rebellion, when an independent nation submits to the control of a foreign prince, and discusses in his presence, and under his decision, its most sacred rights and public welfare.
“He has resorted to many other means to deceive us. He has distributed libels to corrupt the public opinion, in which, under the strongest professions of respect for the laws, and for religion, he insults both, leaving no means untried, however infamous they may be, to bend our necks under an iron yoke, and make us his slaves. He assures the public, that the supreme pontiff and390 vicar of Jesus Christ approves and sanctions his proceedings; while it is notorious, that, in sight of all Europe, he has despoiled him of his dominions, and forced him to dismiss his Cardinals, in order to prevent him from directing and governing the whole church, in the manner sanctioned by our Saviour Jesus Christ.
“Spaniards, every consideration calls on us to unite and frustrate views so atrocious. No revolution exists in Spain; our sole object is to defend what we hold most sacred, against him, who, under the cloak of alliance, intended to wrest it from us, and who would despoil us, without fighting, of our laws, our monarchs, and our religion. Let us, therefore, sacrifice every thing to a cause so just; and, if we are to lose our all, let us lose it fighting, and like generous men. Join, therefore, all: let us commit to the wisest among us in all the provinces the important trust of preserving the public opinion, and refuting those insolent libels which are replete with the most atrocious falsehoods. Let every one exert himself in his way; and let the church of Spain incessantly implore the assistance of the God of Hosts, whose protection is secured to us by the evident justice of our cause. Europe will applaud our efforts, and hasten to our assistance. Italy, Germany, and the whole north, suffering under the despotism of the French nation, will eagerly avail themselves of the opportunity held out to them by Spain, to shake off the yoke and recover their liberty, their laws, their monarchs,391 and all they have been robbed of by that nation. France herself will hasten to erase the stain of infamy which must cover the instruments of deeds so treacherous and heinous. She will not shed her blood in so vile a cause. She has already suffered too much under the idle pretext of a peace and happiness which never came, and which can never be attained but under the empire of reason, peace, religion, and laws, and in a state where the rights of other nations are respected and observed.
“Spaniards, your native country, your property, your laws, your liberty, your King, your religion, nay, your hopes in a better world, which that religion can alone devise to you and your descendants, are at stake, ... are in great and imminent danger!”
Admirable as this address is, one grievous error was committed in it, the precursor of others, and in itself of the most dangerous and fatal tendency. It was said, “that the number of the enemy’s troops was not so great as the French stated with a view of intimidating the Spaniards; and that the positions which they had taken were exactly those in which they could be conquered and defeated in the easiest manner.” Whatever momentary advantage might be hoped for by thus deceiving the people as to the extent of their danger, was sure to be counterbalanced tenfold whenever they were undeceived, as inevitably they would be. This error was the more remarkable, because they were well aware of the392 enemy’s strength, and perceived also in what manner it was to be opposed with the greatest probability of success. For this purpose they strenuously recommended in an address concerning the conduct of the war, that all general actions should be avoided as perfectly hopeless, and in the highest degree dangerous. A war of partizans was the system which suited them; their business should be incessantly to harass the enemy; for which species of warfare the nature of the country was particularly favourable. It was indispensable, they said, that each province should have its general; but, as nothing could be done without a combined plan, it was equally indispensable that there should be three generalissimos, one commanding in Andalusia, Murcia, and Lower Estremadura; one in Gallicia, Upper Estremadura, the Castilles, and Leon; one in Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia. These generalissimos should keep up a frequent communication with each other, and with the provincial generals, that they might act by common accord, and assist each other. A particular general was required for the provinces of Madrid and La Mancha, whose only object should be to distress the enemy, to cut off their provisions, to harass them in flank and in rear, and not leave them a moment of repose. Another generalissimo was necessary for Navarre, the Biscayan provinces, Asturias, Rioja, and the north of Old Castille; this being the most important station of all. His whole business should be to prevent393 the entrance of French troops into Spain, and to cut off the retreat of those who were flying out of it. It was recommended that frequent proclamations should be issued, showing the people that it was better to die in defence of their liberties than to give themselves up like sheep, as their late infamous government would have done. “France,” said they, “has never domineered over us, nor set foot in our territory. We have many times mastered her, not by deceit but by force of arms. We have made her kings prisoners, and we have made the nation tremble. We are the same Spaniards; and France, and Europe, and the world, shall see that we have not degenerated from our ancestors.” They were also exhorted watchfully to confute the falsehoods which the French circulated, and particularly those which the baseness of the late government still permitted to be published in Madrid. And care was to be taken to convince the nation, that when they had freed themselves from this intestine war, the Cortes would be assembled, abuses reformed, and such laws enacted as the circumstances of the times required and experience might dictate for the public good: “Things,” said they, “which we Spaniards know how to do, and which we have done, as well as other nations, without any necessity that the vile French should come to instruct us, and, according to their custom, under the mask of friendship, and wishes for our happiness, contrive (for this alone they are contriving) to plunder us, to violate our394 women, to assassinate us, to deprive us of our liberty, our laws, and our King; to scoff at and destroy our holy religion, as they have hitherto done, and will always continue to do, so long as that spirit of perfidy and ambition, which oppresses and tyrannizes over them, shall endure.”
A general enrolment of men from the age of sixteen to that of forty-five was ordered by this Junta in the name of Ferdinand. They were to be divided into three classes; the first consisted of volunteers, who were to march wherever their respective Juntas, or Ayuntamientos, by the direction of the Supreme Junta, might order them; and were then either to be embodied with the regular troops, or formed into separate corps, and act with them, being in all things subject to the same duties. The second class consisted of unmarried men, and those who, whether married or widowers, had no children; these were to hold themselves ready for service in the second instance. The third class included fathers of families, persons in minor orders, and others who were employed in those offices of the church which were not indispensably necessary for public worship: this class was not to be called upon till the last extremity, when it became the duty of all to offer their lives in defence of the country. But this being the time of harvest, and it having pleased the Almighty to bless the land with an abundant one, all persons included in the second and third classes were enjoined, whatever their rank and property might be, to395 lend their personal service in collecting it, and this was required from those who were above the age of forty-five as well as from others: so would they deserve well of the country, and the Junta expressed their confidence that no persons would so far derogate from the generosity of the Spanish character, as to take advantage of the times, and demand an exorbitant price for day labour. There were many villages where the women reaped and performed other agricultural offices; this they might do every where, and in so doing the Junta would consider them as rendering the greatest service to their country; the clergy also, secular and regular, were invited to set a generous example, by taking their part in this important duty. Women, who from age, weakness, or other causes, were not capable of working in the fields, were intreated to occupy themselves in working for the hospitals, and to send their contributions to the Commissariat Office in Seville. The names of all persons who exerted themselves in this or any other manner in behalf of the general weal, should at a future time be published by the Supreme Junta, and each would then receive that praise and reward which their patriotism had deserved.
The Spaniards, confiding in the indisputable justice of their cause, and being, according to the enthusiasm of the national character, warm in their expectations of splendid success, reckoned upon a great desertion from the French armies, not only of the Netherlanders, Germans, and396 other foreigners, who, under various forms of compulsion, had been brought into the tyrant’s service, but also of the French themselves. An outrage so unprovoked and monstrous, so flagrant a breach of faith, an act of usurpation effected with such unparalleled perfidiousness, and then with such matchless effrontery avowed, must, they thought, even among the French themselves, excite a sense of honour and of indignation which would prevent them from becoming the instruments of so infamous an injustice. In many of their proclamations therefore they distinguished between Buonaparte and the people over whom he ruled, calling the French an enlightened, a generous, and an honourable nation, and declaring a belief that they as well as the Spaniards desired the destruction of the tyrant by whom they were at once oppressed and disgraced. They expressed a hope that the success of the Spaniards might encourage the French people for their own sakes, and for the sake of universal justice, to offer him up as a victim, and by that sacrifice expiate the shame which he through his acts of treachery and blood had brought upon France. “Let it not be supposed,” they said, “that all Frenchmen participate in his iniquities! Even in the armies of this barbarian we know that there are some individuals, worthy of compassion, who, amidst all the evil wherewith they are surrounded, still cherish in their hearts the seeds of virtue.” The Junta of Seville published an397 address to the French army, inviting the soldiers, whether French or of any other nation, to join with them, and promising them, at the end of the war, each an allotment of land as the reward for his services.
As the Spaniards were too sanguine in relying upon the general enthusiasm which was displayed throughout the nation, so the French, on the other hand, more unreasonably regarded it with contempt. Having defeated and humbled the greatest military powers in Europe, they looked upon the Spanish insurgents as a rabble whom it was rather their business to punish than to contend with. It was fortunate for the Spaniards that they had no force at this time considerable enough to be called an army; the enemy knew not where to strike an effective blow, when the people were in commotion and in arms every where, but nowhere in the field. Their object therefore was to get possession of the provincial capitals, that the authority every where might be in their hands as it was in the metropolis. With this intent General Dupont with a considerable force was sent from Madrid to Andalusia, there to occupy Seville and Cadiz, and thereby crush the insurrection where it appeared to be gaining most strength. Marshal Moncey with his corps marched upon Valencia. General Lefebvre Desnouettes was sent from Pamplona against Zaragoza. Marshal Bessieres dispatched detachments against Logroño, Santander, Segovia, and398 Valladolid. And Duhesme in Catalonia sent General Schwartz against Manresa, and General Chabron against Tarragona, while he himself prepared to march against the armed Catalans.
Murat meantime had left Spain. Before he had well recovered from a severe attack of the Madrid colic an intermittent fever supervened, and when that was removed he was ordered by his physicians to the warm baths of Bareges. The Duc de Rovigo, General Savary, who had acted so considerable a part in decoying Ferdinand to Bayonne, succeeded in the command. ♦Several Frenchmen poisoned by the wine.♦ It happened at this time that several French soldiers, after drinking wine in the public houses at Madrid, died, some almost immediately, others after a short illness, under unequivocal symptoms of poison. Baron Larrey, who was at the head of the medical staff, acted with great prudence on this occasion. He sent for wine from different ventas, analyzed it, and detected narcotic ingredients in all; and he ascertained upon full inquiry that these substances, of which laurel-water was one, were as commonly used to flavour and strengthen the Spanish wines, as litharge is to correct acidity in the lighter wines of France. The natives were accustomed to it from their youth; they frequently mixed their wine with water, and moreover the practice of smoking over their liquor tended to counteract its narcotic effects by stimulating the stomach and the intestines: it was therefore not surprising that399 they could drink it with safety; though it proved fatal39 to a few strangers. M. Larrey therefore justly concluded that there had been no intention of poisoning the French; if such a suspicion had been intimated, execrated as they knew themselves to be, the troops would readily have believed it; and a bloodier massacre than that of the 2d of May must have ensued.
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CHAPTER VII.
ASSEMBLY OF NOTABLES AT BAYONNE. CONSTITUTION OF BAYONNE. THE INTRUSIVE KING ENTERS SPAIN. BUONAPARTE RETURNS TO PARIS.
June.
The Notables assemble at Bayonne.♦
Buonaparte meantime regarded the insurrection of the Spaniards with apparent indifference: as yet he was too little acquainted with the nature of the country and the national character to apprehend any difficulty in reducing them to submission, and he proceeded to regulate the affairs of Spain as if the kingdom were completely at his disposal. Of the Notables who were ordered to Bayonne, some had been nominated by Murat, others delegated by the respective provinces, cities, or bodies which they were to represent. The Archbishops of Burgos and Seville were summoned; several bishops, the generals of all the religious orders, and about twenty of the inferior clergy. Most of the Grandees were summoned, and some of the titular nobles to represent the nobility. Some cities were to choose representatives for the Cavalleros, or gentry, others for the commercial part of the people. Deputies were also named for Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Buenos Ayres, and the Nuevo Reyno de Granada, each401 being a native of the province which he was called upon to represent. Azanza had been sent for by Buonaparte to give him information concerning the royal property; ♦Azanza appointed President.♦ he was appointed president of the assembly, and considering the sentence of the old dynasty as irrevocably passed, devoted himself to the service of the new.
Urquijo also was summoned from his retirement. Not having been implicated in the intrigues of Ferdinand’s party, nor in their subsequent errors, he was more at liberty to choose his part; he had warned Ferdinand of the snare, and he had sufficient foresight to feel assured that Buonaparte’s intentions could not be effected without a severer struggle than had entered into his calculations. Had it been possible, he would have chosen to keep aloof and remain in tranquillity. But of tranquillity there was now no hope; and reluctantly obeying a third order, he repaired to Bayonne, persuading himself, that as the usurpation could not be prevented, the wisest course was to profit as much as possible by the change. For it was possible, he thought, to stipulate for conditions with the new dynasty, and dictate laws, and establish institutions, which would enable Spain to resume that rank among nations, to which the position and size and natural advantages of the country entitled it. Thus he deceived himself. Urquijo had always been too confident of his own talents; he wanted that unerring principle of religion which allows of no compromise with iniquity; and having in his402 youth entered heartily into the cause of revolutionary France, the theoretical republican ended in becoming a prime agent of the military despot of France, for the subjugation of his own country.
On his arrival he perceived that Buonaparte was very ill acquainted with the real state of Spain and the spirit which possessed the Spaniards; but he perceived also, that, like the people whom he had provoked, he was fixed in his purposes, and resolute in going through with what he had once begun. Urquijo truly and fairly represented to him the general discontent, the activity of the clergy, and more especially the regulars, in exciting the nation to arms, the probability of an obstinate and bloody struggle, and the likelihood that Austria would take advantage of it to renew the war, and that Russia would not remain inactive. These representations made no impression upon Buonaparte; he let Urquijo understand that the Emperor of Russia had given his consent to the deposition of the Bourbons, and the substitution of one of his family, when the peace of Tilsit was concluded; he spoke with severe contempt of Charles and Ferdinand and their ministers, especially Godoy, who in the last transactions at Bayonne had seemed solicitous for nothing but his own pension; he said he could have no reliance upon that family; and as to the opposition of the Spaniards, he plainly declared, that if they refused to acknowledge his brother for their King, he would dismember their country, or403 make an absolute conquest of it. If this language had been addressed to Urquijo from a distance, a generous indignation, an honest impulse of national feeling, might have saved him from dishonour. But he was within the magician’s circle; the frankness of the Emperor made him forgive his former treachery; ... towards him there was no duplicity or reserve; and when Buonaparte said that his brother would select the best and ablest men in Spain for his ministers, and added that he reckoned upon him, ♦Nellerto. Mem. t. 2, Nos. 59, 67.♦ Urquijo confessed within himself, that though he desired repose, and foresaw danger, he should be compelled to accept of office.
June 6.♦
Mazarredo was appointed minister of the marine, Azanza minister of finance, and General Cuesta viceroy of Mexico. These appointments were made before Joseph’s arrival; and when he was within a day’s journey of Bayonne, Buonaparte issued a decree proclaiming him King of Spain and of the Indies, and guaranteeing to him the independence and integrity of his dominions in the four quarters of the world. Joseph Buonaparte was an inoffensive unaspiring man, who, if he had been permitted to continue in a private station, would have gone through life obscurely and not unworthily, loved and respected by his family and friends. He had made himself popular at Naples, though the people of that city were attached to their legitimate King; and being established there with little of the responsibility, and none of the cares of government, he very unwillingly obeyed Napoleon’s summons to404 Bayonne. Lucien’s advice accorded entirely with his own feelings; and he came still with an intention of refusing the crown of Spain; but Napoleon, who was sure of his obedience, cared little for his consent or inclination; and when he arrived on the evening after the proclamation, he was received as King. The Emperor went out to meet him, and brought him in great state to the Castle of Marrac. ♦The Notables receive him as King.♦ A deputation of the Grandees waited upon him, and the Duke del Infantado, at their head, assured him of the joy which they felt in presenting themselves before him. His presence, they said, was eagerly desired to fix all opinions, conciliate all interests, and re-establish that order which was necessary for the restoration of Spain. The Grandees of that country had been celebrated in all times for fidelity to their sovereign; and he would find in them the same fidelity and the same devotion. In like manner he was addressed by deputations from the Council of Castille, from the Councils of the Inquisition, the Indies, and the Treasury, and from the army. They told him the immensity of glory which was accumulated upon the head of his imperial brother had obscured that of all the heroes of antiquity; and that the choice which Napoleon had made of his august person, announced him to be endowed with those great qualities whereby thrones are supported and sceptres40 established.
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Buonaparte required from these deputies, as their next service, an address to their countrymen, exhorting them to acknowledge the new King, and warning them of the evils of resistance, and the impossibility of making any successful opposition. “Dear Spaniards,” they said, “worthy compatriots, your families, your hearths, your fortunes, your property, your lives, are as dear and as precious to us as our own! We have been like you faithful and devoted to our former dynasty, till the term arrived which had been fixed by Providence, the absolute disposer of crowns and sceptres. The irresistible call of duty, and the desire of your welfare, has brought us to the presence of the invincible Emperor of France. We confess to you that the sight of his glory and his power might have dazzled us; yet we had determined to lay our supplications before him for the general good of our country. What was our surprise, when he406 prevented us, by proofs of benevolence and goodness, the more to be admired because of the greatness of his power! He has no other view than for our happiness. The sovereign whom he gives us is his august brother Joseph, whose virtues are the admiration of his subjects.” They proceeded to enumerate the blessings which he would confer upon them in the improvement of their finances, agriculture, and resources of every kind, the restoration of their military and naval strength, and the preservation of their religion in its exclusive purity. “And what,” they asked, “is the recompense which the great Emperor of the French requires from you in circumstances so important to the whole nation? That you remain quiet; that you take care of your families and your own concerns; that you do not abandon yourselves blindly to the dreadful disorders which are inseparable from popular commotions; that you wait with peaceable confidence that melioration of your fortune which you may expect from a virtuous monarch. Spaniards, look to yourselves and to your innocent children! What fruit can you hope to reap from the disturbances which rashness and malevolence are exciting? Anarchy is the severest of all chastisements which the Almighty inflicts upon mankind. No one disputes your courage; but without direction, without order, without unanimity, all efforts will be vain. The most numerous forces that you can embody would disappear before disciplined soldiers like smoke before the wind. Flatter not407 yourselves with the thought of possible success in such a contest; it is unequal in means if not in valour; you must be overcome, and then all would be lost. There is no safety for the state but in uniting ourselves with all our hearts to the new government, and assisting it in the work of regenerating the country. We are come to a miserable situation, brought to it by the capricious, indolent, unjust government under which we have lived for the last twenty years. It remains for us all to submit, and each to co-operate in his place for the formation of a new one, upon principles which will be the security of our liberties and rights and property. This is the desire of the invincible Napoleon, who occupies himself for our good, who wishes to deserve well of our nation, and to be called by our descendants the regenerator of Spain.”
June 10.♦
The men who prepared this address to their countrymen, in obedience to Buonaparte’s commands, must have known with what scorn and indignation it would be received. The first act of the intrusive King was not likely to diminish those feelings; it was a decree in which, premising that he had accepted the cession of the crown of Spain made in his favour by his well-beloved brother the Emperor Napoleon the First, he nominated Murat for his Lieutenant-general. If Napoleon had considered the interest of his brother he would rather have recalled Murat with some implied displeasure, as if in putting so many Spaniards to death after the insurrection, he had408 acted with needless and unauthorized severity: but he had determined upon reducing the people to submission by intimidation and force. Joseph announced his accession by a proclamation of the same date. In opening to him so vast a career, Providence, he said, without doubt had judged of his intentions, and would enable him to provide for the happiness of the generous people whom it confided to his care. Aided by the clergy, the nobles, and the people, he hoped to renew the time when the whole world was full of the glory of the Spanish name. Above all, he desired to establish tranquillity and happiness in the bosom of every family by a wise social organization. The spirit of his government would be to improve the public good with the least possible injury to individual interests. It was for the Spaniards that he reigned, not for himself.
About ninety Notables had now assembled at Bayonne, including those who had been decoyed thither with Ferdinand. A much greater number had been convoked; but some dared not undertake the journey, for fear of the people, who would justly have regarded them as traitors for obeying the summons; and others engaged heartily in the national cause. The Bishop of Orense, D. Pedro Quevedo y Quintana, was one of the persons whom the Junta of Government had summoned; and he declined obedience in a letter of calm and dignified remonstrance, which produced as much effect upon the people as the409 most animated military address, and which those who hoped or affected to hope for any melioration of the state of Spain by Buonaparte’s means could not have perused without a sense of shame. Impressive as this composition was, it derived additional weight from the character of the writer, for the Bishop of Orense was one of those prelates whose truly Christian virtues are the proudest boast and the truest glory of the Catholic church. During the dreadful years of the French revolution he received into his palace three hundred of the emigrant clergy: there he lodged and supported them, and lived with them at the same table, refusing to partake of any indulgence himself which could not be extended to these numerous guests. It was not possible for him, he said, infirm as he was, and at the age of seventy-three, to undertake so long a journey upon so sudden a notice. But bearing in mind the good of the nation, and the intentions of the Emperor, who desired to be as it were its angel of peace, its tutelary spirit, ... he would take the opportunity of saying to the Junta, and through them to the Emperor, what, if he were in person at Bayonne, he should there have said and protested. The business there to be treated is of remedying evils, repairing injuries, improving the condition of the nation and the monarchy: ... but upon what bases? Is there any approved means for doing this, any authority recognized by the nation? Will she enslave herself, and by that means expect her safety? Are there not410 diseases which are aggravated by medicine, and of which it has been said, tangant vulnera sacra nullæ manus? And does it not appear that those of the Royal Family are of this kind, and have they not been so aggravated by the treatment which they have received from their powerful protector, the Emperor Napoleon, that their case is now desperate? The Royal Family had been sent into the interior of France, ... of that country which had banished it for ever; sent back to its primitive cradle, it found a grave there by a cruel death, where its elder branch was cruelly cut off by an insane and sanguinary revolution. And this having been done, what could Spain hope for? Would her cure be more favourable? The means and the medicines did not promise it. He proceeded to say, that the abdications made at Bayonne could not be believed, and appeared to be impossible; that they could not be valid unless they were renewed and ratified by the Kings and the Infantes in their own country, and in perfect freedom from all constraint and fear. Nothing would be so glorious for Napoleon as to restore them to Spain, and to provide that in a general Cortes they might act according to their free choice; and that the nation, independent and sovereign as it was, might then proceed to recognize for its lawful King the person whom nature, right, and circumstances, should call to the Spanish throne. This indeed would be more honourable for the Emperor than all his victories and laurels. This indeed would deliver Spain411 from the dreadful calamities which threatened her; then might she recover from all her evils, and giving thanks to God, return also the most sincere gratitude to her saviour and true protector, then the greatest of all Emperors, the moderate, the magnanimous, the beneficent Napoleon the Great.
At present, said the venerable prelate, Spain cannot but behold him under a very different aspect. She sees in him the oppressor of her Princes and of herself. She looks upon herself as fettered and enslaved, when happiness is promised her, ... and this by force even more than by artifice, ... by armies which were received as friends, either through indiscretion and timidity, or perhaps by treason. These representations he laid before the Junta in the discharge of his duty as one of the King’s counsellors, that office being attached to the episcopal order in Spain: and he desired that they might be submitted to the Great Napoleon. “Hitherto,” said he, “I have relied upon the rectitude of his heart, as being free from ambition and averse to deceit. And still I hope that, perceiving Spain cannot be benefited by enslaving her, he will not persist in applying remedies to her in chains, for she is not mad.”
The want of any legitimate authority in the Junta of Notables to legislate for the nation was so palpable, even to the members themselves, that their president, Azanza, represented to Buonaparte, as an advisable measure, to convoke a412 Cortes in the usual form, and within the kingdom. But it was too late for this; the name of a Cortes, and the appearance of free deliberation, could no longer delude the Spaniards, after the forced abdications at Bayonne and the slaughter at Madrid. Buonaparte maintained that the consent of the nation would supply the want of any formalities which could not be observed in the existing circumstances; he delivered to Azanza the project of a constitution, and ordered him to appoint two committees, who should arrange the subject for discussion, and propose such alterations and modifications as they might deem convenient. Azanza and those who acted with him had flattered themselves that they should make terms with the new dynasty, and secure to their country a free representative government; but they now found that they were to receive a constitution as well as a King from the will and pleasure of Buonaparte. ♦Speech of Azanza at the opening of their sittings.♦ Nevertheless Azanza congratulated the Junta at their first sitting on the delightful and glorious task to which they were called, of contributing to the happiness of their country in labouring for the good of the present generation and of posterity, by the order and under the auspices of the hero of their age, the invincible Napoleon. Thanks and immortal glory, said he, to that extraordinary man who restores to us a country which we had lost! He spoke of the long misgovernment by which Spain had been degraded under a succession first of crafty then of imbecile sovereigns, till the413 last of their kings had resigned his rights to a Prince who, for their happiness, united in himself all the talents and resources required for restoring her to her former prosperity. He called upon them to sacrifice some privileges, which for the most part were but imaginary, upon the altar of their country, and to construct a monument at once simple and grand in place of the Gothic and complicated structure of their former government. He told them that it was in their power, by their collective representatives, and by their individual efforts, to do much towards appeasing the agitation which prevailed in many parts of the kingdom. Misguided men, without plan, without accord, without object, were acting in a manner from which nothing but ruin and desolation could ensue. Certain as the Junta were of that truth, it must be their business to convince others of it who were now deluded. Thus should they render their labours useful, and fulfil the generous designs of the hero who had convoked them; Spain would recover her ancient glory, and they would have the sweet satisfaction hereafter of thinking that they had contributed to it.
The first sitting was employed in forming an address to King Joseph, and the business of the second was to present it. The glorious task which had been imposed upon them, they said, was to lay the foundations of durable happiness for their beloved country; was it not then their first duty to come before the chief of the Spanish414 nation, the centre of all their hopes, and devote themselves in his presence with the utmost zeal and ardour to the work? They noticed the disturbances in Spain as momentary troubles, occasioned by the error of the people, who never reflect, and who are worthy of commiseration when they return to their duty. The Intruder replied, that he wished to remain ignorant of these tumults, and to find none but Spanish hearts beyond the Pyrenees. In quitting a people who did justice to his government, he had made the greatest of sacrifices, he said; but, from his own feelings, he anticipated the love of the Spaniards. He knew the wisdom and the loyalty of the Castillian character. He would visit his provinces, bearing with him the heart of a father, and he should meet with none but his children. The enemies of the Continent (so in his brother’s manner he designated the English) were endeavouring to detach the colonies from the mother country, but the agents and instruments of this crafty hatred should not be spared. He concluded by desiring them in their deliberations to regard nothing but the good of the country, and to reckon upon the blessings of the people, and upon his entire satisfaction.
Ten other sittings completed the business of the Junta, who had little time allowed them for their discussions, and less power. Some alterations they were permitted to make in minor points, but the principle and form of the constitution were of Buonaparte’s stamp. It was415 promulgated by the Intruder as the fundamental law of the kingdoms, and the basis of the compact whereby his people were bound to him, and he to his people. ♦Religion.♦ The first article declared that the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion should be the religion of the King and of the nation in Spain and in all the Spanish possessions, and no other should be permitted. ♦The succession.♦ The Salic law of succession was established, as in France; in failure of legitimate male descendants to Joseph, the crown was to devolve on Napoleon, and his heirs male, whether natural and legitimate, or adopted; in their default to Louis and Jerome, and their heirs in succession, Lucien being tacitly excluded. In failure of all these, the son of the eldest daughter was to inherit; and if the last King left no daughter who had issue male, the crown might then go to the person whom he should have appointed by his will, whether one of his nearest relations were chosen or any one whom he should deem most worthy to govern the Spaniards, but the appointment must be presented to the Cortes for their approbation. The crown of Spain and of the Indies was never to be united with any other in the same person. The King should be considered as a minor till he had completed his eighteenth year; during a minority there should be a Regent, who must be at least twenty-four years old; if the last King should not have nominated one among the Infantes, that Infante was to hold the office, who being of the age required was the416 last in succession to the throne. The Regent, like the King, was to be irresponsible; and he was to have a fourth part of the revenues which were settled upon the crown. Should there be no Infante of age for the office, a Council of Regency was then to be composed of the seven senior senators. The minor King was not to be under the Regent’s care, but under the guardianship of his mother, in case his predecessor should not have designated a guardian; and if the last King had not appointed five senators for a Council of Tutelage, to provide for the education of the minor, and to be consulted in all things of importance relating to his person and establishment, that office devolved upon the five senior senators, or if there were a Council of Regency existing, on the five senators next in seniority to the members of that council.
The palaces of Madrid, the Escurial, S. Ildefonso, Aranjuez, the Pardo, and others belonging to the crown, with all the parks, forests, inclosures, and property thereunto appertaining, were the patrimony of the crown: if the rents of the whole did not amount to a million of pesos fuertes, other lands were to be added to them which would make up that sum. The public treasury was also charged with the payment of two millions of pesos fuertes per year to the crown, in monthly payments. The hereditary Prince became entitled to a revenue of 200,000 from the age of twelve, the other Infantes to 100,000, the Infantas to 50,000 each, charged417 upon the public treasury: the Queen Dowager was to have 400,000, charged upon the treasury of the crown.
July.
Ministry.♦
There were to be nine ministers for the departments of justice, ecclesiastic and foreign affairs, the interior, finance, war, the marine, the Indies, and general police; and a secretary of state, with the rank of minister, by whom all decrees were to be signed. The King might at his pleasure unite the ecclesiastic department with that of justice, and the general police with that of the interior: the rank of these ministers depended upon the seniority of their appointment.
The Senate was to consist of the Infantes who had attained the age of eighteen, and of twenty-four individuals chosen by the King, from his ministers, the Captains-General of the army and navy, the Embassadors, Counsellors of State, and members of the Royal Council. No one was eligible till he had completed his fortieth year: the office was for life, unless it were forfeited by the legal sentence of a competent tribunal, and it was never to be given in reversion. The president was to be named yearly by the King. In case of insurrection, or of disturbances which threatened the security of the state, the Senate might at the King’s proposal suspend the constitution in the places specified, and for a certain time.
It belonged to the Senate to watch over the preservation of individual liberty, and of the liberty of the press. A Senatorial Junta of418 individual liberty, consisting of five members, was to be chosen by the Senate from its own body, and to this committee all persons arrested for offences against the state, if they were not brought to trial in the course of a month from the day of their commitment, might appeal: should the Junta be of opinion that the interests of the state did not justify a longer imprisonment, it was to call upon the minister by whom the arrest was ordered, either to set the prisoner at liberty, or deliver him over without delay to a competent tribunal. If after three such consecutive applications within the space of another month the prisoner should neither have been discharged nor remitted to the ordinary tribunals, the Junta was then to require a meeting of the Senate; and the Senate, if it saw cause, was to pass a resolution in this form: There are strong presumptions that N. is arbitrarily imprisoned. The president was to lay this resolution before the King; and the King was to refer it to a Junta, composed of the presidents of the Council of State and of five members of the Royal Council.
In like manner there was to be a Senatorial Junta of the liberty of the press, consisting of five senators. Authors, printers, and booksellers, who thought themselves aggrieved if they were prevented from printing or selling a work, might appeal to this Junta; and should the Junta be of opinion that the prohibition was not required by reasons of state, the minister by whom it had419 been imposed should be required to withdraw it. If after three consecutive applications in the course of a month the prohibition were not revoked, the Junta was then to summon the Senate, and the Senate, if it saw reason, to resolve there were strong presumptions that the liberty of the press had been violated; and this resolution was to be laid before the King, and by him, as in a matter of individual liberty, referred to a Junta whose decision was final. Periodical publications were not entitled to the benefit of this provision. The members of these Senatorial Juntas were to be changed one every six months.
The Council of State was to consist of not fewer than thirty members, nor more than sixty, divided into the six sections or departments of justice and ecclesiastical affairs, the interior, and general police, the finances, war, the marine, and the Indies, each section consisting of a president and four members at least, and the King presiding over the council. The hereditary Prince might assist at their sittings, from the age of fifteen. The ministers and the president of the Royal Council were by their office members, and might attend their meetings when they thought it convenient, but they were not part of any section, neither were they accounted in the appointed number. The projects of all laws civil and criminal, and the general regulations of the public administration, were to be examined and determined here; and the decrees of the King upon subjects falling within the province420 of the Cortes were to have the force of law (having been discussed in this council) till the next Cortes should be assembled.
The Cortes or National Junta was to consist of an hundred and sixty-two members, in one chamber, divided into the three Benches of the Clergy, the Nobles, and the People; that of the clergy was to be placed on the right of the throne, that of the nobles on the left, that of the people in front. The bench of the clergy was to be composed of twenty-five archbishops and bishops, that of the nobles of twenty-five peers, who should be called Grandees of the Cortes: the bench of the People of sixty-two deputies for the provinces of Spain and the Indies, thirty deputies for the principal cities of Spain and the adjacent islands, fifteen commercial members, and fifteen deputies of the universities, men of learning, or distinguished by their proficiency in the sciences or the arts. The Ecclesiastical Deputies were to be appointed by letters patent, under the great seal, and they were not to be deprived of their functions unless by the sentence of a competent tribunal, legally pronounced. The Nobles were to be appointed and hold their seats in the same manner: they were required to possess an income of not less than 20,000 pesos fuertes, or to have performed long and important services either in the civil or military line. Members for the provinces were to be chosen in the proportion of one representative for about 300,000 inhabitants; and the provinces were to be divided421 into departments with reference to this purpose, each containing a population sufficient to entitle it to elect one deputy. The manner in which the Juntas of Election were to be constituted would be established by the Cortes; till that time they should be composed of the Deans of the Regidores in every place which contained not less than an hundred inhabitants; and if in any departments there were not twenty places containing this population, the smaller hamlets were then to be united for the purpose of furnishing an elector, in the proportion of one for an hundred inhabitants, chosen by lot from the Deans of the Regidores. The other electors were the Deans of the Curas, or parochial clergy, in the principal places of the departments; but the number of clerical electors was never to exceed one-third of the whole Junta of Election. The President was to be named by the King, and the Juntas of Election were never to meet except by letters of convocation. The Deputies for the thirty principal cities were to be chosen one for each by the Ayuntamiento, or corporation. A deputy for a province or city must be possessed of landed property. The fifteen commercial Deputies were to be chosen from the Juntas of Commerce, and from among the richest and most respected merchants. The Tribunals and Juntas of Commerce in every city were to form a list of fifteen persons, and from these lists the King was to appoint the members. He was in like manner to appoint422 the remaining fifteen from a list to that amount presented by the Royal Council, and from seven candidates presented by each of the universities.
Members of the Bench of the People might be re-elected to a second Cortes, but not to a third, till an interval of three years should have elapsed. The Cortes should assemble once in three years at least; it was to be convoked by the King, and neither deferred, prorogued, nor dissolved, but by his order. The President should be appointed by the King from three candidates whom the Cortes was to choose. At the opening of every session the Cortes was to choose these three candidates, two vice-presidents, and two secretaries, and four committees, ... of justice, of the interior, of finance, and of the Indies, consisting of five members each. The sittings of the Cortes were not to be public; votes were to be taken vocally or by secret ballot; and for every resolution a majority of the whole body was necessary. The opinions and votes were neither to be printed nor divulged; such publication, whether by means of the press, or of written papers, if made by the Cortes, or any of its members, was to be considered as an act of rebellion. Every three years the amount of the annual receipts and expenditure was to be fixed by law; which law was to be presented by orators of the Council of State for the deliberation and approbation of the Cortes. In like manner all alterations in the civil and penal codes, in the system of imposts, or of currency,423 were to be propounded; and projects of laws were to be proposed by the sections of the Council of State to the respective committees of the Cortes. Accounts were to be presented annually to the Cortes by the Minister of Finance, and to be printed; and the Cortes might make such representations as they deemed convenient upon any abuses in the administration. If they had any grave charges to prefer against a minister, the accusation and the proofs were to be laid before the throne by a deputation; and the King was to refer it to a commission composed of six counsellors of state and six members of the Royal Council.
The Spanish kingdoms and provinces in America and Asia were to enjoy the same rights as the mother country, and to trade freely with her; every kind of cultivation and industry was to be free there, and no monopoly of export or importation to be granted. Every kingdom and province should always have deputies at the seat of government, to promote their interests and to be their representatives in the Cortes. Two deputies each were to be sent by New Spain, Peru, the Nuevo Reyno de Granada, Buenos Ayres, and the Philippines; one each by the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, by Venezuela, Charcas, Quito, Chile, Cuzco, Guatemala, Yucatan, Guadalaxara, the western internal provinces of New Spain and the eastern. These deputies were to be chosen by the Ayuntamientos of such places as the Viceroys or424 Captains-general should appoint in their respective territories; they must be natives of the respective provinces, and proprietors of land; they were to hold their places for a term of eight years, and after the expiration of that term, till their successors should arrive. Six of these deputies, chosen by the King, should be added to the Council of State and section of the Indies, to have a consultive voice in all matters relating to the colonies.
The Spains and the Indies were to be governed by one code of laws civil and criminal. The judicial order was to be independent, justice administered in the King’s name by the courts and tribunals which he should appoint, and all corporate or private jurisdictions, such as the Justicias de abadengo, ordenes y señorio, were abolished. The King was to appoint all the judges, and no one could be removed from his office, unless in consequence of charges against him made by the president or Procurador General of the Royal Council, at the Council’s instance, and with the King’s approbation. There were to be Conciliatory Judges forming a Tribunal of Pacification, Courts of the first instance, Audiences or Tribunals of Appeal, a Tribunal of Reposition or Cassation for the whole kingdom, and a High Court Royal. The courts of first instance were to be as many as the country required; the tribunals of appeal for Spain and the adjacent islands, not fewer than nine nor more than fifteen. The Royal Council was to425 be the Tribunal of Reposition, and should also take cognizance of appeals in ecclesiastical cases. Criminal processes were to be public, and it was to be discussed in the first Cortes whether or not trial by jury should be established. Appeal might be made to the Tribunal of Reposition against a criminal sentence. The High Court Royal was to take cognizance of personal offences committed by individuals of the Royal Family, ministers, senators, and counsellors of state; there might be no appeal against its sentences, but they were not to be executed till the King should have signed them. It was to consist of the eight senior senators, the six presidents of the sections of the Council of State, the president and two vice presidents of the Royal Council. The right of pardoning should belong to the King alone. There should be one commercial code for Spain and the Indies; and in every great commercial town a Tribunal and a Junta of commerce.
The Vales Reales, Juros, and whatever loans the government had contracted, were acknowledged as the national debt. Custom-houses between different jurisdictions and provinces were abolished both in Spain and the Indies, and were only to exist upon the frontiers. Taxes were to be equalized throughout the kingdom, and all privileges, whether granted to corporations or individuals, were suppressed; but for those which had been purchased, an indemnification should be awarded. The public treasure was to426 be distinct from that of the crown, and under a director general appointed by the King; the accounts were to be rendered yearly, and examined and closed by a tribunal of general accounts, composed of persons whom the King should nominate. All nominations for all employments belonged to the King, or to the authorities to whom the laws confided them.
A perpetual alliance, offensive and defensive, by land and by sea, between France and Spain, was declared by this constitution; the contingent which each power was to furnish being to be determined by a particular treaty. Foreigners who had rendered important service to the state; or who might be useful to it by their talents, their invention, or their industry; and those who formed large establishments, or acquired lands for which they paid yearly taxes to the amount of fifty pesos fuertes, might be admitted to the rights of naturalization. ♦Security of persons.♦ Every man’s house was an asylum, not to be entered except by day, and for a specific object, determined by the law, or by an order proceeding from the public authority. No person residing in the Spanish dominions should be arrested, except in flagrante delictu, without a legal and written order, issued by a competent authority, notified to the party, and explaining the grounds of the arrest, and the law in virtue of which it was granted. No Alcayde or jailer should receive or detain a prisoner, till he had entered in his register the warrant of committal: nor might the relations and427 friends of a prisoner be prevented from seeing him, if they came with an order from the magistrate, unless the judge should have given directions that the prisoner should have no communication with any person. The use of the torture was abolished, and any rigour beyond what the law enjoined was pronounced a crime.
All existing feoffments, entails, and substitutions, if the property did not amount by itself, or with other possessions held by the same owner, to the annual rent of 5000 pesos fuertes, were abolished, and the owners were to hold it as free property. If it exceeded that value, the owner, at his choice, might ask the King’s permission to make it free. If it exceeded the yearly value of 20,000 pesos fuertes, all above that sum should be free. In the course of one year the King would establish regulations upon this subject; and for the future no property might thus be tied up, except by virtue of the King’s permission, granted in consideration of services rendered to the state, and for the purpose of perpetuating in their rank the families who should thus have deserved; but the property thus to be bound should in no case exceed the annual value of 20,000 pesos fuertes, nor fall short of 5000. ♦Abolition of privileges.♦ The different degrees and classes of nobility were to be preserved with their respective distinctions; but all exemptions hitherto attached to it, from public burthens and duties, were abolished, and nobility was not to be required as a qualification for civil or428 ecclesiastical employment, nor for military rank either by sea or land. Services and talents were to be the only means of promotion. But no person might obtain public employment in the state or church, unless he had been born in Spain, or naturalized there. The endowments belonging to the different orders of knighthood were only to be bestowed according to their original destination, in recompense of public services; and no individual should hold more than one commandery.
The constitution was successively and gradually to be brought into use by decrees or edicts of the King, so that the whole should be in execution before the first of January, 1813. The particular charters of the provinces of Navarre, Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and Alava, were to be examined in the first Cortes, that what should be deemed most convenient to the interest of those provinces and of the nation might be determined upon. Two years after the constitution should have been entirely carried into effect, the liberty of the press was to be established, and organized by a law made in the Cortes. All additions, modifications, and improvements, which it might be deemed expedient to make in this constitution, were to be presented by order of the King, for examination and discussion, to the first Cortes which should be held after the year 1820. And a copy of the constitution, signed by the Secretary of State, was forthwith to be communicated to the Royal Council and to the other councils and tribunals, in order that it might429 be published and circulated according to accustomed form.
The Notables were not allowed much time for deliberating upon the various provisions of this constitution, which they had been convoked to sanction and not to form. The only two points which called forth any discussion were the limitation of entails, and the declaration of intolerance: the nobles who, by a wise reform of government, when their injurious privileges were taken away, ♦De Pradt, p. 152.♦ would have recovered their just and legitimate influence in the state, contended in vain against the first, which was designed to cut the root of their strength; the latter was unwillingly conceded to the inveterate prejudices of the nation by men whom the enormous falsehoods, the preposterous usages, and the execrable cruelty of their own church had driven into a state of unbelief, less impious than such a superstition. The Vicar-general of the Franciscans presented a memorial signed by the Prelates of the Religious Orders in behalf of those institutions, to show that it was not expedient to abolish them, but that some suppressions, and a limitation of their numbers, would produce all the good that was desired. ♦Nellerto, i. 103.♦ A memoir was also presented in behalf of the Inquisition, by one of its officers, and signed by the Council of Castille, arguing against an apprehended intention of abolishing that tribunal, and advising that it should be enjoined to follow in its proceedings the forms of the episcopal ecclesiastical courts. Both430 memorials were referred to the legislature, as not being within the scope of the constitution.
The members of the Junta, ninety-one in number, subscribed this constitution, and bound themselves to observe it, and as far as in them lay to provide for its observation, believing, they said, that under a government thus defined, and so just a Prince as the one who for their good fortune had fallen to their lot, Spain would be as happy as they desired. The ministry was now completed: Urquijo was appointed Secretary of State, Cevallos Minister for Foreign Affairs, Azanza for the Indies, Mazarredo for the Marine, O’Farrill for the War Department; Jovellanos for the Interior, in his absence and against his consent, repeatedly and firmly refused. The Conde de Cabarrus was appointed Minister of Finance; the news reached him at Burgos, where he was in the midst of the French armies: Cabarrus acted always from impulse rather than principle, and fear and ambition operating upon a vain, rash, unstable temper, he yielded in an unhappy hour, and, contrary to his better mind, accepted the appointment. Pinuela was made Minister of Justice; the Duque del Parque Captain of the Body Guard, the Duque del Infantado Colonel of the Spanish, and the Prince de Castelfranco of the Walloon Guards; the Marquis of Ariza Grand Chamberlain, the Duque de Hijar Grand Master of the Ceremonies, the Conde de Fernan Nuñez Grand Huntsman, the Conde de Santa Colonna Chamberlain.
431 Some of these persons signed the constitution, and accepted office because they were in a state. of duresse; some because they were regardless of every thing except their own interest, and cared not whom they served so they might serve themselves; others attached themselves faithfully to the intrusive King, because they miscalculated the resistance which could be opposed, and having chosen their part, adhered to it with miserable fidelity through all the odious and dreadful consequences in which they were involved. These persons had hoped to form a social contract with the new King; and to obtain for their country that regular and constitutional freedom, the want of which had drawn on its long degradation and decline. Of that hope they were speedily undeceived. The constitution which they sanctioned, and which was published to the Spaniards as their act and deed, was intended in all its parts and provisions to establish a government not less despotic than that which it was to supersede. By the composition of the Cortes two of the three estates of the realm retained the name indeed, and the semblance of honour, but were divested of any real power, their united members forming not a third part of the chamber. Spain was indeed in no condition to be trusted with a popular assembly; but a Cortes chosen and restricted like this of the Bayonne constitution, was obviously designed for no other purpose than to delude the people with a venerable432 name, and carry into effect, under a show of freedom, the will and pleasure of the Monarch. The regulations which pretended to provide for the liberty of the press were in like manner deceptive. All that they did was to afford some protection against the stupid bigotry of the Inquisition; such works as Fray Gerundio would not be proscribed while the author could appeal to a senatorial Junta; but nothing which distinguishes a free press, and which constitutes its value, ... nothing which, as it were, embodies public opinion, and gives it its due and salutary weight, could have passed the double ordeal to which it was subjected. The provisions in favour of the liberty of the subject bore about the same relation to our Habeas Corpus, as this superintended freedom of the press to its actual state in England. The Napoleon Habeas Corpus of the Bayonne constitution established in reality a perpetual suspension for interests of state; and where it was to take effect, it was not as an absolute and fundamental law, but by a reference to the sovereign’s discretion.
In the last sitting of the Notables a letter from Ferdinand was produced, written from Valençay to the intrusive King, congratulating him on his accession to the throne of Spain, and expressing a hope to see that country made happy under a Sovereign who had given so many shining proofs of wisdom at Naples; this, he said, could not be indifferent to him, who looked upon himself as a member of the Napoleon family, seeing that he433 had requested the Emperor to grant him one of his nieces in marriage, and hoped to obtain that favour. Whether Ferdinand had been compelled to this as to his former acts of degradation, or whether his poor mind had now been subdued to his fortune, mattered little; to the world, as well as to the Notables at Bayonne, his condition appeared hopeless at that time, nor could any possible event have seemed more beyond all human probability than his restoration.
The business of the twelfth and last sitting was to receive the Constitution from the hands of King Joseph, and swear to it. For this purpose the hall in which they held their meetings was fitted up with a throne, and a rich altar on its right. The Intruder having taken his seat, addressed them in the Spanish language. Their sentiments, he told them, had been those of the Emperor Napoleon, his august brother, in pursuance of whose measures, and in consequence of one of those extraordinary events to which all nations at particular conjunctures are subject in their turn, they were there convened. The Constitution which they were about to accept was the result; it would avert from Spain those long convulsions which might else have been foreseen in the suppressed disquietude of the nation. If all the Spaniards could have been assembled with them, they also, having all but one interest, would have had but one opinion; “and then,” said he, “we should not have to bewail the misfortune of those persons who, being led astray434 by foreign suggestions, must be reduced by force of arms. The enemy of the Continent expects to despoil us of our colonies by taking advantage of the troubles which he excites in Spain. But every good Spaniard must open his eyes and rally round the throne. We carry with us the act which establishes the rights and reciprocal duties of the King and of the people. If they are disposed to make the same sacrifices as ourself, it will not be long before Spain will become tranquil and happy at home, just and powerful abroad. We pledge ourselves with confidence at the feet of that God who reads the hearts of men, who disposes them at his pleasure, and who never abandons him who loves his country and fears nothing but his conscience.”
The Constitutional Act was then read; the President Azanza demanded of the Notables if they accepted it; and they having replied affirmatively, he addressed the intrusive King, whose paternal language, he said, might have sufficed for ever to attach their hearts, if they had not already been entirely devoted to him. Every word had confirmed them in their confidence that they should see their country restored under his wise government, the evils and rooted abuses which had brought on her decay removed, and the miseries terminated which were at present caused by error, ignorance, and perfidious counsels. “Yes, Sir,” said he, “these miseries will cease when your subjects shall see your Majesty in the midst of them; when they435 shall be acquainted with that great charter of the constitution, the immoveable basis of their future welfare, ... that charter, the precious work of the earnest and beneficent care which the hero of our age, the great Napoleon, the Emperor of the French, takes for the glory of Spain. What auspices could be so fortunate for the commencement of a reign and of a dynasty, as the renewal of the compact which is to unite the people to the sovereign, the family to its father; which determines the duties and respective rights of him who commands, and of those who have the happiness to obey!” The Archbishop of Burgos then, assisted by two canons, took from the altar a book containing the four Gospels, and brought it before the throne, and the Intruder, laying his hand upon the book, pronounced the following oath; “I swear upon the holy Gospels to respect our holy religion, and make it be respected; to observe the Constitution, and make it be observed; to maintain the integrity and independence of Spain and its possessions; to respect the liberty and property of individuals, and make them be respected; and to govern with a single view to the interest, the welfare, and the glory of the Spanish nation.” The oath of fidelity and obedience to the King, the constitution, and the laws, was then taken by the Archbishop and the other clerical members of the Junta first, next by the President and other officers of the royal household, lastly by all the remaining deputies.
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The ceremony being thus completed, the Junta attended Joseph to his carriage, then returned to the hall, and upon the motion of Azanza voted that two medals should be struck to perpetuate their gratitude to the Emperor Napoleon for the solicitude which he had bestowed upon the affairs of Spain, and to consecrate the solemn delivery of the Constitution. After this act of adulation they waited upon Buonaparte at the Palace of Marrac, to conclude their business and their servilities by expressing their gratitude for all that he had done for Spain. ♦Address of thanks to Buonaparte.♦ “Sire,” said their President Azanza, “the Junta of Spain has accomplished the glorious task for which your Majesty convened it in this city. It has just accepted with as much eagerness as freedom the great charter which fixes upon a sure foundation the happiness of Spain. Happily for our country, a preserving Providence has employed your irresistible hand to snatch it from the abyss into which it was about to be precipitated; it had need be irresistible, ... for, oh, blindness! they who ought to rejoice the most in this benefit are the first to misapprehend it! But all Spain, Sire, will open its eyes. It will see that it required a total regeneration, and that from your Majesty alone it could be hoped for. This is an incontestable truth, and I appeal to the reflection of all those who may not yet be sincerely united to the authority which actually governs the kingdom: let them examine in their inmost conscience under what other rule they could promise437 themselves the inestimable benefits which they will henceforth enjoy; let them examine and answer in good faith. The evil was at its height; the agents of a feeble government concentred its arbitrary power in their hands for the purpose of extending its limits more and more; the authorities under them, timid and debased, never knew what course they were to pursue, and if they did no harm, it was impossible for them to effect any good. The finances were a chaos, the public debt an abyss: all parts of the machine were deranged or broken, there was not one which performed its functions: where was the sensible Spaniard who did not perceive the impossibility of its going on, and could not fix the near term of its total dissolution? To what other power than that of your Imperial and Royal Majesty could it be reserved, in such a state of things, not merely to arrest the evil, for that would not have sufficed, but to remove it entirely, and to substitute order for disorder, law for caprice, justice for oppression, security for insecurity? Such are the wonders, Sire, which your Imperial and Royal Majesty has worked in a few days, and which fill the world with astonishment. Your Majesty alone is not astonished, because you have conceived and wrought them without effort. We however well perceive that the means which your Majesty has used were the only ones which could have been employed for the good of Spain. To give to our country a liberal constitution which restores its ancient Cortes,438 secures the property and liberty of individuals, breaks the fetters which were imposed upon genius, establishes a government, and fixes the national prosperity, ... to place upon the throne of the Spaniards a just and amiable Prince who will govern by the laws, and will have no other happiness than that of his people, ... such is the work of consummate wisdom for which the Junta offers to your Imperial and Royal Majesty its tribute of respect and gratitude. It would perpetuate that tribute by a durable monument voted in its own name and in the name of all the Spaniards of all climates, of all the individuals of a numerous family dispersed over a great portion of the globe; who will not delay with one accord to bless their generous benefactor, and who will transmit his august name to the remotest generations with the glorious appellation of the Restorer of the Spains.”
The Deputies stood in a circle round Napoleon while their President delivered this base address. For the first, and perhaps the only time in his public life, Buonaparte was at a loss for a reply. He spake indeed more than three-quarters of an hour, but it was vaguely and hesitatingly, in confused and broken sentences, his head bending down, and when he raised it at times, it was only again to let it fall. None of those memorable expressions came from him which the hearers bear away, none of those sparkling sentiments and pointed sentences, ... those coruscations which at other times characterized his discourse. It439 seemed as if the powers both of thought and of language had forsaken him. From one subject he passed to another unconnectedly, resuming them with as little reason as he had broken them off, and frequently repeating the same flat meaning in the same cold and vapid words. His manifest embarrassment would have been ludicrous to all persons present, if the necessity of restraining themselves had not rendered it as painful to them as it was to himself. So strange and utter a destitution of his wonted talents astonished those who witnessed it. Perhaps Buonaparte was sickened with excess of adulation, and contemplating mournfully the condition to which men, once of proud intellect, patriotic hopes, and generous desires, had debased themselves in subservience to his purposes, regarded them with compassion rather than contempt. Perhaps he compared in sure anticipation the opinion which posterity would pronounce upon these transactions with the language which was now addressed to him. The cloud was not of the understanding alone, but of the heart. The work, he then believed, was done; this was the concluding scene of the drama, the plot had been fully developed, and the intended catastrophe was brought about; but in the hour of success it is scarcely possible that he should not have contrasted the reflections which then came upon him, with those emotions of proud and honourable triumph which he had felt at Lodi, at ♦De Pradt, 153.♦ Marengo, and at Austerlitz, and that comparison440 may have made him stand amid the circle of his servile instruments humiliated and self-condemned.
On the second morning after this memorable scene the intrusive King entered Spain, as if to take quiet possession of a throne to which he had regularly and lawfully succeeded. ♦July 10.♦ Two decrees were issued from Tolosa, one enjoining that his accession should be proclaimed on the 25th, being Santiago’s day, and that flags should every where be hoisted, and the other customary ceremonies observed; the other required prayers to be made in all churches and convents for a blessing upon his government. ♦July 12.♦ At Vitoria he altered the arms of Spain, directing that the shield should be divided into the six quarterings for Castille, Leon, Aragon, Navarre, Granada, and the Indies, and that in the centre of the shield the eagle which distinguished his Imperial and Royal Family should be borne. From Vitoria also he sent abroad a proclamation, in which, according to the superscription, he manifested to the Spanish nation his generous sentiments, and his desire that the kingdom should recover its pristine splendour. It spake of the security which the new constitution afforded to religion, and to liberty both civil and political; of the revival and improvement of their Cortes; of the institution of a Senate to be at once the protection of individual liberty and the support of the throne, and in which they who should have rendered distinguished services to the state would441 find an honourable asylum, and an appropriate reward. It promised integrity and independence for the courts of justice; and that merit and virtue should be the only titles to public employment. “If his desires did not deceive him,” he said, “their agriculture and commerce would quickly flourish, being set free for ever from the fiscal trammels which had destroyed them. I come among you,” he said, “with the utmost confidence, surrounded by estimable men, who have not concealed from you any thing which they believed to be useful for your interests. Blind passions, deceitful voices, and the intrigues of the common enemy of the Continent, whose only view is to separate the Indies from Spain, have precipitated some among you into the most dreadful anarchy. My heart is rent at the thought. Yet this great evil may in a moment cease. Spaniards, unite yourselves! come around my throne! and do not suffer intestine divisions to rob me of the time and consume the means which I would fain employ solely for your happiness.”
The Intruder and his ministers halted at Vitoria till the French, of whose speedy and complete success no doubt was entertained, should have chastised the insurgents, and opened for them the way to Madrid. Buonaparte meantime returned to Paris. In every place through which he passed he was received with more than usual demonstrations of triumphant joy. The population of town and country gathered442 together to behold and to applaud him. Houses were hung with garlands, and the streets through which he rode were formed into parterres of flowers, and overbowered with shrubs. From Bayonne to Toulouse and Bordeaux, and from thence to Nantes and Tours and to the capital, it was one continued festival. It gratified the ambition of the French to know that their great Emperor had placed his brother upon the throne of Spain; this was another step toward that universal empire which they believed to be within their reach. They had been kept in ignorance of the nefarious artifices by which the usurpation had been brought about, and little did they apprehend that the consequences of this usurpation would carry tears and mourning into almost every family in France, and bring upon it the full and overflowing measure of retribution.
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CHAPTER VIII.
PROCEEDINGS IN ENGLAND. SUCCESSES OF THE FRENCH IN THE NORTH OF SPAIN: THEIR FAILURE IN CATALONIA. MONCEY REPULSED FROM VALENCIA. DUPONT ENTERS CORDOBA. BATTLE OF RIO SECO. THE INTRUDER ENTERS MADRID. SURRENDER OF DUPONT’S ARMY. THE FRENCH RETREAT FROM MADRID.
Feelings of the English people concerning the transactions in Spain.♦
The first news which reached England of the
Spanish insurrection was brought by the Asturian
deputies, and it was soon followed by dispatches
from Coruña, Cadiz, and Gibraltar.
Never was any intelligence received with more
general joy. Notwithstanding the frequent hostilities
in which Spain had been involved with
this country, first, during the age of its power;
then through its connexion with the Bourbons;
and afterwards from the ascendance which the
Directory and Buonaparte had obtained over
an infamous minister, an imbecile King, and a
wretched government, the English had always
regarded the Spaniards as the most honourable
people with whom they were engaged either in
commerce or in war; nor was there ever a war
in which some new instance of honour and generosity
on their part did not make us regret
that they were our enemies. Hitherto the444
present contest had been carried on with little hope.
♦1808.
June.♦
No other sympathy than that of mere political
interest had as yet been felt in our alliances
with Austria or Russia; but, from the moment
when the Spaniards called upon us for aid, we
felt that we had obtained allies worthy of our
own good cause, and the struggle assumed a
higher and holier character. It became, avowedly
and plainly to every man’s understanding,
a war for all good principles; and we looked on
to the end with faith as well as hope. Never
since the glorious morning of the French revolution,
before one bloody cloud had risen to
overcast the deceitful promise of its beauty, had
the heart of England been affected with so generous
and universal a joy. They who had been
panic-stricken by the atrocities of the French
demagogues, rejoiced to perceive the uniform
and dignified order which the Spaniards observed
in their proceedings, and their adherence
to existing establishments; ... firmer minds, in
whom the love of liberty had not been weakened
by the horrors which a licentious and unprincipled
people committed under that sacred
name, were delighted that the Spaniards recurred
with one accord to those legitimate forms of
freedom, which a paralyzing despotism had so
long suspended; the people universally longed
to assist a nation who had risen in defence of
their native land; and professional politicians,
not having time to consider, nor being able to
foresee in what manner these great events would445
affect their own party purposes, partook of the
popular feeling.
June 15.♦
The first parliamentary notice of these proceedings was by a speech of Mr. Sheridan’s, made by him for the purpose of stimulating the ministry to a vigorous co-operation with the Spaniards. “There had never,” he said, “existed so happy an opportunity for Great Britain to strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world. Hitherto, Buonaparte had run a victorious race, because he had contended against princes without dignity, ministers without wisdom, and countries where the people were indifferent as to his success; he had yet to learn what it was to fight against a people who were animated with one spirit against him. Now was the time to stand up, fully and fairly, for the deliverance of Europe; and, if the ministry would co-operate effectually with the Spanish patriots, they should receive from him as cordial and as sincere a support, as if the man whom he most loved were restored to life and power. Will not (said he) the animation of the Spanish mind be excited by the knowledge that their cause is espoused, not by ministers alone, but by the parliament and the people of England? If there be a disposition in Spain to resent the insults and injuries, too enormous to be described by language, which they have endured from the tyrant of the earth, will not that disposition be roused to the most sublime exertion by the assurance that their efforts will be446 cordially aided by a great and powerful nation? Never was any thing so brave, so generous, so noble, as the conduct of the Spaniards! Never was there a more important crisis than that which their patriotism had thus occasioned in the state of Europe!”
Mr. Canning replied, that his Majesty’s ministers saw, with the most deep and lively interest, this noble struggle against the unexampled atrocity of France; and that there was the strongest disposition on the part of government to afford every practicable aid in a contest so magnanimous. In endeavouring to afford this aid, he said, it would never occur to them that a state of war existed between Spain and Great Britain. They should proceed upon the principle, that any nation who started up with a determination to oppose a power, which, whether professing insidious peace, or declaring open war, was the common enemy of all nations, ... whatever might be the existing political relations of that nation with Great Britain, became instantly our essential ally. As for what were called peculiarly British interests, he disclaimed them as any part of the considerations which influenced government. In this contest, wherein Spain had embarked, no interest could be so purely British as Spanish success; no conquest so advantageous for Great Britain as conquering from France the complete integrity of the Spanish dominions in every quarter of the world. This declaration satisfied Mr. Whitbread; but that gentleman447 thought proper to deprecate the tone in which the Emperor Napoleon was spoken of, saying, that, when he heard him called despot, tyrant, plunderer, and common enemy of mankind, he wished from his heart England could come into the cause with clean hands.
A few days after this debate, Mr. Whitbread, in a speech upon the state of the empire, took occasion to refer to an opinion concerning peace, which he had delivered early in the session. “I then stated,” said he, “that it did not appear to me degrading for this country to propose a negotiation for peace with France: at no period of the interval which has elapsed, has it appeared to me that such a proposition would be degrading; nor can I anticipate, during the recess which is about to take place, any circumstance, the occurrence of which can, by possibility, render it unexpedient or degrading to open such a negotiation.” The common feeling and common sense of the country were shocked at the mention of negotiating with Buonaparte, just at the moment when his unexampled treachery towards an ally was the theme of universal execration; and when a whole nation had just arisen against his insolent aggression. ♦July 4. Mr. Whitbread speaks in favour of the Spaniards.♦ Mr. Whitbread felt that he had injured himself in the opinion of the people, and therefore, on the last day of the session, took occasion to express his admiration of the Spanish patriots; and to regret that ministers had not applied for a vote of credit, which would enable them more effectually to second the wishes of all448 ranks of Englishmen, by aiding and assisting the Spaniards. “Had such a message,” he said, “been sent down, it would have been met with unanimous concurrence; and that concurrence would have been echoed throughout the country. The Spanish nation was now committed with France: never were a people engaged in a more arduous and honourable struggle; and he earnestly prayed God to crown their efforts with a success as signal as those efforts were glorious. He could not help thinking, that it would have been well to have given an opportunity of manifesting to them the sympathy which glowed in every British heart, through the proper channel, the legitimate organ of the British people. For himself, from the bottom of his soul, he wished success to the patriotic efforts of the Spaniards; and that their present struggle might be crowned with the recovery of their liberty as a people, and the assertion of their independence.”
As a farther avowal of these sentiments, Mr. Whitbread addressed a letter, on the situation of Spain, to Lord Holland; “the subject,” he said, “being peculiarly interesting to that distinguished nobleman, from the attachment he had formed to a people, the grandeur of whose character he had had the opportunity to estimate, and to which he had always done justice, even when that character was obscured by the faults of a bad government.” Having repeated his professions of ardent sympathy with the Spaniards, he recurred to his proposal for negotiating.449 “It has been falsely and basely stated,” said he, “that I advised the purchase of peace by the abandonment of the heroic Spaniards to their fate. God forbid! A notion so detestable never entered my imagination. Perish the man who could entertain it! Perish this country, rather than its safety should be owing to a compromise so horridly iniquitous! My feelings, at the time I spoke, ran in a direction totally opposite to any thing so disgusting and abominable. I am not, however,” he pursued, “afraid to say, that the present is a moment in which I think negotiation might be proposed to the Emperor of the French by Great Britain, with the certainty of this great advantage, that if the negotiation should be refused, we should be at least sure of being right in the eyes of God and man; an advantage which, in my opinion, we have never yet possessed, from the commencement of the contest to the present hour; and the value of which is far beyond all calculation.”
In vindicating himself from the imputation of regarding the cause of the Spaniards with indifference, Mr. Whitbread succeeded for the time; but, in other respects, this letter lowered him in the opinion of judicious minds. The folly of wasting time in a farce of negotiation; the certainty that such delay would injure the Spaniards, and the probability that it might induce them to regard us with a suspicion, which such conduct would render reasonable; above all, the absurdity of proposing to treat with the tyrant at the very450 time when he was perpetrating the most flagrant breach of treaties; when he had proved in the eyes of all Europe, that no treaties, no alliances, no ties of public faith, or individual honour, could restrain him, ... were so glaring to every man’s understanding, that Mr. Whitbread’s advice appeared like absolute infatuation. So far, indeed, from opening a negotiation at that time, and on these grounds, with the Corsican, it behoved the British Government then to have made the war a personal war against him, ... to have proclaimed loudly before God and the world, that this country never would treat with a man who had avowed his contempt for the laws of nations; and given open proof that he made treaties only for the purpose of more securely effecting the destruction of those who were credulous enough to rely upon his faith. Then was the time to have appealed to the French people themselves.... The Spanish war was a war of the Buonaparte family, not of France. Hitherto, Buonaparte and his immediate agents were the only persons implicated in the infamy of this unexampled treachery and usurpation. Would France appropriate that infamy to herself? Would she, for the sake of this foreign family, entail upon herself the privations, the sacrifices, and the hazards of interminable war? To France we offered peace, under any other ruler; we reclaimed none of her conquests; we asked nothing from her, ... we were ready to restore prosperity to her merchants, her citizens, and her peasantry;451 and to open her ports to the commerce of the world. But peace with Buonaparte was impossible. How could England, so long the object of his avowed and inveterate hatred, trust him, when his insatiable ambition did not spare the oldest, the most faithful, the most serviceable, the most submissive of his allies and friends! If proclamations to this tenor had been scattered over the whole coast of France, Buonaparte might have been endangered by the British press and the force of truth, when he stood in no fear of any other force. The importance of communicating true intelligence to the French was manifested by the care with which he kept them in ignorance, and the shameless falsehoods which continually appeared in his official papers.
Arms, ammunition, and clothing were dispatched to the northern provinces, immediately upon the arrival of the Deputies: men, they said, they did not want. Colonel Sir Thomas Dyer, Major Roche, and Captain Patrick, were sent at the same time on a military mission to Asturias, and Lieut.-Colonel Doyle, Captain Carroll, and Captain Kennedy, to Galicia. The Spanish prisoners were released and sent home; and, in the King’s speech, at the close of the ♦July 4.♦ session, Spain was recognised as a natural friend and ally. It was there declared, “that the British government would make every exertion for the support of a people thus nobly struggling against the tyranny and usurpation of France; that it would be guided in the choice and direction of452 its exertions by the wishes of those in whose behalf they were employed; and that, in contributing to the success of this just and glorious cause, England had no other object than that of preserving unimpaired the integrity and independence of the Spanish monarchy.” An order of council appeared on the same day, announcing that hostilities against Spain had ceased. Nor was Portugal overlooked by the British government. Lieut.-Colonel Brown, Colonel Trant, and Captain Preval, were sent to obtain intelligence of the state of affairs in the northern provinces, and preparations were made for sending an expedition under Sir Arthur Wellesley, to free that kingdom from the French; and in thus delivering an old and faithful ally, to operate a powerful diversion in aid of the Spaniards.
The French in Spain, meantime, had acted with their wonted celerity, and for the most part, at first, with their wonted success. General Verdier having routed the people who had assembled at Logroño, entered that town, and put the leaders of the people to death as rioters. General Frère defeated a body of 5000 men at Segovia, and reduced the city to submission. Lasalle marched from Burgos upon the little town of Torquemada, where Queen Juana, in former times, watched during so many weeks the body of her husband, as jealously as if he had been living; suffered no woman to approach the church wherein his bier was placed; and listened eagerly to the knave who flattered her insane affliction453 with a tale, that a certain King fourteen years after his death had been restored to life, and why might not a like miracle be vouchsafed in compassion to her grief, and in answer to her prayers? Some 6000 Spaniards had gathered together there: ♦Torquemada burnt.♦ he dispersed them with great slaughter, and burnt the place; then marched upon Palencia, disarmed the inhabitants of that city and the vicinity, and being joined at Duenas by General Merle, proceeded against Valladolid, which had declared for the national cause.
D. Gregorio de la Cuesta, whom Ferdinand had appointed Captain-General of Castille and Leon, had endeavoured to suppress the spirit of resistance when it first manifested itself in those kingdoms. He was in correspondence with Urquijo; and the leaders of that party, who were considered as the Liberales of Spain before they attached themselves to the service of the Intruder, reckoned upon his co-operation, and had already nominated him to the Vice-royalty of Mexico. ♦Nellerto, t. 2, p. 203.♦ Cuesta was an old brave man, energetic, hasty, and headstrong: in the better ages of Spain he would have been capable of great and terrible actions; and the strong elements of the Spanish character were strongly marked in his resolute, untractable, and decided temper. Yet the national spirit was dormant within him till it was awakened by the voice of the nation. He published a proclamation at Valladolid, exhorting the people to remain tranquil, and accept the powerful protection which was offered to the454 kingdom, and threatening with punishment all who should attempt to raise disturbances, or take part in them. And when the Ayuntamiento of Leon applied to him for advice how to act upon the abdication of the Bourbons, he resented their application as implying a doubt of his own sentiments; and replied, that nothing ought to be attempted against the determination of the Supreme Junta who governed in the Emperor’s name; that the nation ought peaceably to wait for the King whom Napoleon should appoint; that a struggle without arms, ammunition, or union, must needs be hopeless; and that even if any successes were obtained, the leaders would quarrel among themselves for command, and a civil war must arise, which would end in the destruction of the kingdom. But when Cuesta saw how strong the tide of popular feeling had set in, and that what he had looked upon at first merely as a seditious movement, ♦Impugnacion al Manifesto del G. Cuesta, p. 8, 9.♦ ♦He takes the national side.♦ had assumed the sacred and indubitable character of a national cause, perceiving then that the choice was not between subordination and anarchy, but between France and Spain, he chose the better part, and entered into it heartily, and exerted himself to embody and discipline the impatient volunteers, who, in their honest hatred of the French, would have hurried to their own destruction.
But great evil arose from the resistance which he had opposed to the patriotic cause. Where the principal persons and constituted authorities455 declared themselves frankly and freely at first, the zeal of the people was easily restrained within due bounds, and no excesses were committed; but wherever the higher orders acted manifestly in deference to the multitude, and in fear of them, the mob knew that they were masters, and always abused their power. Thus it was at Valladolid. General Miguel Cevallos was imprisoned there by Cuesta, as the only means of preserving him: the ferocious rabble broke in, dragged him out, and murdered him, and paraded with his head and lacerated limbs in bloody and abominable triumph through the streets. Nor was this the only ill consequence: while he advised submission, and endeavoured to enforce it, time, which should have been employed in uniting, arming, and training the willing people, was irrecoverably lost; ♦Impugnacion, p. 13.♦ and when the French approached Valladolid, they found Cuesta at the head of an undisciplined assemblage numerous enough and brave enough to raise a vain and unreasonable confidence in themselves, and perhaps in him. ♦He is defeated at Cabezon.♦ They had taken post at Cabezon, a village surrounded with vineyards, two leagues from the city. Lasalle having reconnoitred their position, ordered General Sabatier to charge them, while Merle cut off their retreat from Valladolid. According to the French account they stood the enemy’s fire half an hour, then took to flight, leaving upon the ground a thousand dead (the seventh part of their number), and 4000 muskets. Cuesta, with the remains of his army, retired to456 the borders of Leon, defeated, but not discouraged. ♦The French enter Valladolid.♦ Valladolid was now at the conqueror’s mercy; and the Bishop, with the other heads of the clergy, came out to intercede for it. The people were disarmed, the adjoining country was kept down by military force, and deputies from Valladolid, Segovia, and Palencia were sent to Bayonne to solicit the Emperor’s clemency, and pledge themselves for the allegiance of their fellow citizens. Two detachments under Generals Merle and Ducos were then ordered into the Montañas de Santander by different routes. The patriots, consisting almost wholly of untrained volunteers, were beaten at Lantueño, at Soncello, and at Venta del Escudo. ♦They enter Santander.♦ The two detachments entered the city on the same day, and Santander also was compelled to send deputies with promises of submission to Bayonne. By these operations Marshal Bessieres kept Navarre and the three Biscayan provinces in subjection, and, for the time, reduced the Montaña and the greater part of Old Castile.
The movements of the French had not been less successful on the side of Aragon. General Lefebvre Desnouettes was ordered to suppress the insurrection in that kingdom. He began by arresting D. Francisco Palafox in Pampluna, who having accompanied Ferdinand to Bayonne as his chief equerry, was on his way through that city with the supposed intention of joining his brother. Lefebvre then marched from Pampluna upon Tudela. Palafox had detached a457 ♦June 9.♦ body of Aragonese from Zaragoza, chiefly armed peasantry, to assist the Tudelans in defending the passage of the Ebro: they were defeated by superior discipline and superior numbers, their cannon were taken, and Lefebvre having entered Tudela, put the leaders of the insurrection to death, following, after Murat’s example, the principle of the tyrant whom he served, that the Spaniards who opposed him were to be considered and treated as rebels. The French paid dearly in the end for the insolent barbarity with which they thus began the war: it called forth the revengeful spirit of the nation, and the contest assumed a character hateful to humanity, the guilt and the reproach of which must lie mainly upon those by whom the provocation was given. Lefebvre then repaired the bridge over the Ebro, which had been burnt, and advanced to the village of Mallen, where the Marquis de Lazan, at ♦June 13.♦ the head of ten thousand raw troops, with two hundred dragoons, and eight ill-mounted cannon, had taken a position, with the canal of Aragon on the right, and the village on the left, and supported by an olive grove. A short but bloody action ensued: brave as the Aragonese were, they were in no condition to oppose flying artillery, well disciplined troops, and a powerful cavalry. They were defeated, but not disheartened; and on the following day sustained another action with the same ill success at Alagon, about four leagues from Zaragoza. ♦He marches against Zaragoza.♦ The French then approached the city, expecting that not more458 resistance would be made there than at Valladolid, and that the submission or punishment of the capital would intimidate the rest of Aragon; this object was to be aided by a movement from the side of Catalonia.
There were between three and four thousand Spanish troops at Barcelona in the beginning of June; but in a short time there remained scarcely more than as many hundreds, so rapidly they had deserted, some to return home, or seek their fortunes, the greater part to serve their country in these stormy times. The French secretly encouraged this desertion: so large a force in Barcelona would have rendered a stronger garrison necessary, and have increased their uneasiness and danger; but in the field they cared not what number of Spaniards might be collected against them; the more numerous they were in their present state of indiscipline, the more easily, and with the greater effect, they might be defeated. ♦June 3.♦ Being thus rid of their presence, Duhesme was able to send out more than half his force in two detachments, under Generals Chabran and Schwartz. The first, who had distinguished himself in Switzerland against the Austrians in the dreadful campaign of 1799, was ordered with 4200 men to enter Tarragona, garrison it with a thousand men, incorporate in his division Wimpffen’s Swiss regiment of 1200 men, which was stationed in the city, and then proceed by way of Tortosa to co-operate with Marshal Moncey against Valencia. General459 Schwartz’s orders were to march with 3800 men by Molins de Rey and Martorell upon Manresa, and raise upon that city a contribution of 750,000 francs, to be paid within eight and forty hours, and applied to the service of the division. He was instructed to take means for putting the promoters of sedition to death, but to pardon them upon the plea of the Emperor’s clemency. What powder was in the magazines he was to send to Barcelona, and then to destroy the mills; next he was to proceed by way of Cervera to Lerida, and get possession of that city, if it could be done by a sudden attempt; in that case he was to garrison the castle with 500 men, incorporate with his own troops the Swiss who were there, and levy a contribution of 600,000 francs, for the use of Lefebvre’s army, with which he was then to co-operate according to sealed instructions, which he was to open at Bujaraloz, on the way to Zaragoza.
The French plans were widely combined and well concerted. Here, however, they failed in execution. The people of Manresa and Igualado received timely intelligence from Barcelona of the intended movements; the Somatenes, or armed population, were called out, and posted to wait for the enemy in the strong positions of Bruch and Casa Masana: powder was served out from those mills at Manresa which Schwartz intended to destroy; and curtain rods were cut into small pieces, and distributed instead of bullets. The French lost a day by halting at460 Martorell because of the rain: the time which they thus lost was well employed by the Catalans, and when Schwartz arrived at Bruch a fire was opened upon him by an enemy concealed among the crags and bushes. Driven from this pass, after a brave defence, some of the Somatenes retreated to Igualada, others to Casa Masana; the latter were pursued and again defeated; they fled with all speed to Manresa, and if Schwartz had pursued his success he might have reached the city without opposition; but having met with more resistance than had been looked for, and perceiving how determined a spirit had been manifested in the people, he halted, as if doubtful whether to advance or retire. Upon discovering this irresolution the Somatenes again took heart; and being reinforced by the peasantry from the plain of Bages, a hardy active race, and excellent marksmen, they attacked the vanguard of the enemy at Casa Masana, and drove them back upon the main body of the column near Bruch.
An odd accident deceived the French. There was among the Somatenes a drummer, who had escaped from Barcelona: little as the knowledge was which this lad possessed of military manœuvres, it enabled him to assume authority among these armed peasants, and he performed the double duties of drummer and commander with singular good fortune. For the enemy inferred from the sound of the drum, which was regularly beaten, that the peasantry were461 supported by regular troops: ... there were Swiss in Lerida, and the regiment of Extremadura was at Tarrega; the apprehension therefore was not unreasonable, and, after a short stand against a brisk fire, Schwartz determined upon retreating. The Somatenes, encouraged by success, and now increasing in number, pressed upon him; and the news of his defeat raised the country behind him, to his greater danger. He had to pass through the little town of Esparraguera, consisting of one narrow street, nearly a mile in length. The inhabitants cut down trees, and brought out tables and benches to obstruct the way, and they stored the flat roofs of their houses with beams and stones. The head of the French column, ignorant of these preparations, entered the street at twilight; but having experienced the danger, Schwartz divided them into two bodies, one of which made its way on the outside of the town by the right, the other by the left. From this time the retreat became disorderly; the enemy lost part of their artillery in crossing the Abrera; and had the people of Martorell acted upon the alert like those of Esparraguera, and broken down the bridge over the Noya, the fugitives, for such they were now become, might probably all have been cut off. ♦June 7.♦ They entered Barcelona in great confusion and dismay: their loss was less than might have been expected in such a route, for the Spaniards had neither horse nor cannon; they left, however, one piece of artillery in the hands of the462 pursuers, and about 400 dead, the greater part being Swiss.
The effects of this action were of great importance. It was the first success which the Spaniards had obtained, and it had been obtained by the people without any troops to assist them, ... without any military leader. The insurrection became general throughout Catalonia as fast as the tidings spread; the plan of co-operating with Lefebvre against Zaragoza was disconcerted; and Duhesme, perceiving that it would require all his force to repress the Catalans, recalled Chabran from his march toward Valencia. That General had reached Tarragona without opposition on the day when Schwartz’s routed division re-entered Barcelona; but receiving orders to return without delay, he could neither secure that fortress, as had been intended, nor venture to incorporate the Swiss, who were more likely to take part with the Spaniards than against them. Meantime the people of the intermediate country, encouraged by the victory at Bruch, had risen: they began to harass him at Vendrell, and attempted to maintain a position against him at Arbos, which they brought artillery to defend. ♦Arbos burnt by the French.♦ Here, however, they were totally defeated; fire was set to the place, a neat and flourishing agricultural town, two-thirds of the houses were destroyed by the flames, and cruelties were committed upon the inhabitants which exasperated the Catalans instead of intimidating them. Even the463 people of Arbos themselves, who escaped the enemy, when they returned to inhabit their half burnt habitations, or the hovels which they constructed amid the ruins, instead of repenting the part which they had taken, or bewailing the ruin of their property, prided themselves in the thought that their town should have been the first to suffer the full vengeance of the enemy in so glorious and unquestionable a cause. Duhesme came out to protect the division on its farther retreat; they halted at S. Feliu de Llobregat, and having been reinforced, Chabran was ordered to proceed against Manresa, and punish that city, which was believed to be the centre of the revolution. ♦Chabran defeated at Bruch.♦ The fatal pass of Bruch was upon the road, and it was now occupied with some degree of skill. The Catalan Juntas, conceiving a high opinion of the strength of this position, had used great exertions to strengthen it; artillery had been planted there, and the Somatenes were supported by some of the soldiers who had fled from Barcelona, and by four companies of volunteers from Lerida under Colonel Baget. Chabran had a stronger detachment than that with which Schwartz had forced the pass; but after losing some 450 men, and some of his guns, he deemed it advisable to retreat, and was harassed by the Catalans almost to the gates of Barcelona.
Duhesme now perceived, that instead of dispatching troops to assist in the subjugation of Aragon and Valencia, there would be464 employment enough in Catalonia for all his force. The French, expecting no resistance from the people after the government was subdued, had thought it sufficient to possess themselves of Figueras and Barcelona: the distance between these places is about fourscore miles, and they had neglected to secure the intermediate posts of Gerona and Hostalrich. Duhesme now learnt, not without some alarm, that Figueras was invested by the peasantry, and that though impregnable to any means which they could bring against it, it was in danger of being reduced by famine; thinking, therefore, by a prompt attack upon Gerona to repair the oversight which had been committed, he drew out a considerable force from the capital, and marched with it in ♦June 17.♦ person, with Generals Lecchi and Schwartz, against that city. Intelligence had been obtained of his intention; and the peasantry of Valles, and the inhabitants of the sea-shore, posted themselves to oppose his march on the heights which terminate at Mongat, a small fortress, or rather strong house, with a battery to protect that part of the coast from the Barbary corsairs. An armed vessel sailed from Barcelona to act against this place, in co-operation with the land forces; and Duhesme easily deceiving his unskilful opponents by demonstrations which drew their attention from the real point of attack, defeated them, drove them from the ground, took the strong house, and disgraced his victory by the cruelty which he exercised upon his465 prisoners, as well the unarmed villagers who fell into his hands as those who were taken in action. ♦Mataro sacked by the French.♦ The people of Mataro, not intimidated by the enemy’s success, defended the entrance of their town: the French general, in revenge for the loss which the head of his column sustained in forcing it, gave up this rich and flourishing place, containing above 25,000 inhabitants, to be sacked by his troops; and the men were not withheld from committing the foulest atrocities by ♦Cabanes. 1. p. 63.♦ the recollection, that they had recently been quartered during two months in that very town as allies and guests, among the people who now found no mercy at their hands.
Duhesme proceeded plundering, burning, and destroying as he went along. On the morning of the 20th he appeared before Gerona, sacked the adjoining villages of Salt and S. Eugenia, opened a battery upon the city with the hope of intimidating the inhabitants, endeavoured to force the Puerta del Carmen without success, and was in like manner repulsed from the fort of the Capuchins. A second battery was opened with more effect in the evening, and its fire was kept up during the night, which was so dark that none of the besiegers’ movements could be distinguished. They attempted to scale the bulwark of S. Clara, and some succeeded in getting upon the wall; these were encountered there by part of the regiment of Ulster, and their fate deterred their comrades from following them. The people of Gerona evinced that night what466 might be expected from them when they were put to the proof. The clergy were present wherever the fire was hottest, encouraging the men by example as well as by exhortations; and the women, regardless of danger, carried food and ammunition to their husbands, and fathers, and brothers, and sons. Without the city the Somatenes collected in such force, that they prevented the French from fording the river Ter, which they repeatedly attempted, with the intention, it was supposed, of proceeding to relieve Figueras. Duhesme employed artifice as well as force: he sent proposals at various times to the Junta; and some of his messengers were seized and detained as prisoners, for endeavouring when they entered the city to distribute proclamations from Bayonne, and from the government of Madrid. Finding, however, that the place was not to be taken by a sudden assault, and not being prepared to undertake a regular siege, he deemed it expedient to return on the following day towards Barcelona, after no inconsiderable loss in men as well as in reputation. ♦Figueras relieved by the French.♦ This repulse would have drawn after it the loss of Figueras, if the Catalans could have collected a regular force on that side. They blockaded it with the Somatenes of Ampurdan, assisted by a few troops from Rosas: the garrison consisted of only 1000 men; had they been more, the place must have fallen, for the French had had no time to introduce provisions, and they were reduced to half allowance. Not being strong enough to sally467 against the besiegers, they revenged themselves upon the town, and laid about two-thirds of it in ruins. At length the relief which their countrymen in Spain could not effect was brought to them from France. General Reille being made acquainted with their distress, collected 3000 ♦July 3.♦ men at Bellegarde, and putting the Somatenes to flight with that force, introduced a large convoy of provisions, and reinforced the garrison.
The preservation of Figueras by the French was an event of more importance in reality than in appearance; but at this time appearances and immediate effect were what they stood in need of to maintain that opinion of their power which had been so rudely shaken by this national resistance. It was part of their plans, that, while Lefebvre chastised Zaragoza, and terrified Aragon by the fate of its capital, a similar blow should be struck in the south by Marshal Moncey. For this purpose he collected a force of 12,000 men besides cavalry in the province of Cuenca. The Spaniards were doubtful whether his march would be directed against Murcia, where Count Florida Blanca coming at the age of fourscore from the retirement in which he had hoped to pass the remainder of his honourable age in piety and peace, had proclaimed Ferdinand, and hoisted the standard of independence; or against Valencia, where the inhabitants had reason to expect severe vengeance for the massacre which had been committed there. This uncertainty produced no evil when the Spaniards had no armies468 on foot, and every province was left to its own resources. ♦Defeat of the Spaniards.♦ Valencia was the point of most importance; the people were more willing to meet the danger than to wait for it; and with such a force as could be raised of peasantry, new levies, and a few regular troops, they occupied the entrance of a defile near Contreras, and the bridge over the river Cabriel. ♦June 21.♦ They were forced from thence with the loss of four pieces of cannon, the whole of their artillery; but they were not pursued like a routed enemy: the French deemed it expedient to proceed with caution in a country where the whole population was decidedly hostile, and the Spaniards took up a second and stronger position at Las Cabrillas, and in front of Las Siete Aguas. ♦June 24.♦ There also they were unable to withstand the attack of disciplined troops, well commanded, and well supplied with all the means of war; yet they made a brave resistance, retreating from one position to another; and when they fell back upon Valencia, as they had no cause for shame, they brought with them no feeling of despondency, and communicated no dismay, with which the arrival of a beaten army might under other circumstances have infected the people.
Moncey, on the other hand, had found a more determined resistance than he expected, and was disappointed of the succours which should have joined him from Catalonia. He has been censured for not advancing against the city with the utmost expedition, before the people had time to469 make preparations for resisting him; but knowing the anarchy which prevailed there, he might not unreasonably think that an interval of delay would either abate their ardour, or increase their confusion; if he failed to intimidate them into submission, he had reason to believe that the gates would be betrayed to him; and if the traitors who had engaged to perform this service should be detected, or fail in the execution, even in that case a successful resistance could hardly have been contemplated by him as a possibility. In a military view Valencia indeed must then have appeared incapable of defence. Suburbs nearly as large as the city itself had grown up round the whole circle of its old brick walls, and the citadel was small, ill fortified, and altogether useless. In so large a city, for the population exceeded 80,000, a besieger might reckon upon the wealth, the fears, and the helplessness of a great portion of its inhabitants; and perhaps he might undervalue a people whom travellers had represented as relaxed by the effects of a delicious climate, by which, according to the proverbial reproach of their Castillian neighbours, all things were so debilitated, that in Valencia the meat was grass, the grass water, the men women, and the women nothing.
On the day after his second victory Moncey wrote from his head-quarters at La Venta de Bunol, six leagues from the city, to the Captain-general, saying, that he was ordered by the Junta of government at Madrid to enter and restore470 tranquillity there, and promising to pardon the atrocious massacre which had been committed if he were received without opposition. The Junta appealed to the people with a spirit that inspired confidence: the very women exclaimed that death was better than submission; and Padre Rico, with a sword in one hand and a crucifix in the other, went through the streets exhorting his fellow citizens to exert themselves to the utmost, and die, if they were so called, like martyrs, in the cause of their country. The public opinion having been decidedly expressed, all persons capable of bearing arms without exception were ordered to repair to the citadel, and there provide themselves with weapons. The quantity of muskets was insufficient for the number who applied, and all the swords, of which there was a large stock, were delivered out, though many were without hilts. A few twelve and sixteen pounders, with one twenty-pounder, were planted at the Puerta del Quarte, where the principal attack was expected; a great quantity of timber, which had just been floated down the river, was used in part to form a breastwork at this important point, and part in blocking up the entrance of the streets within the walls. The other gates were fortified, though less formidably; and the ensuing day was employed in filling the ditches with water, and cutting trenches across the road to impede the enemy’s approach.
So little were the Valencians disheartened by471 their preceding defeats, that even now they would not wait for the French within their vantage ground. ♦The Spaniards defeated at Quarte.♦ On the evening of the 27th Moncey found some 3000 of them under D. Joseph Caro, brother of the Marquis de Romana, posted about six miles from the city, behind the canal at the village of Quarte, where they had broken down the bridge. A severe action ensued: the mulberry trees, with which that delightful country is thickly planted, afforded cover to the Valencian marksmen, and before they were dislodged and defeated, the number of slain on both sides amounted to 1500. At eleven on the following morning the advanced guard of the city came in with the expected intelligence that the enemy were close at hand; and shortly afterwards a flag of truce arrived with a summons, saying, that if the French were permitted to enter peaceably, persons and property should be respected; but otherwise they would force their way with fire and sword. A short time for farther preparations was gained by assembling the parochial authorities, under the plea of consulting them; and then, in the name of the people, it was replied, that they preferred death to any capitulation. Moncey immediately gave orders for the attack. A smuggler, who, for the purpose of better concealing his intentions, affected to put himself foremost among the patriots, had undertaken to deliver up the battery upon which the Valencians depended in great part for their defence, and which they had placed under the472 patronage of St. Catharine. He had engaged a sufficient number of accomplices; but the treason had been discovered on the preceding night: he and his associates were put to death; and when the French approached the battery, instead of finding it manned by traitors, they were received with a brisk and well-sustained fire.
The approach to the Puerta del Quarte was by a broad street leading straight for the gate. The Spanish commander, by a bold stratagem, ordered the gate to be opened; and when the French hastened forward, thinking either that their agents had done this, or that it was a mark of submission, a fire of grape was opened upon them, with effect equal to the most sanguine hopes of the defenders. The enemy drew back, leaving the ground covered with their dead. They then directed their efforts against the weakest point of the whole weak circuit of the walls, ... so well were they always acquainted with whatever local circumstances might contribute to the success of their military operations. It was where the old gate of S. Lucia had been built up; but the battery which they erected against it had scarcely begun to play, before a well-directed fire from the Puerta de S. Vicente dismounted the guns, and killed the men who were employed there. It was now manifest from the determined spirit of the Valencians, that if Moncey could have forced his way within the walls, his army was not numerous enough for the civic war which it would have been473 compelled to wage from house to house, and from street to street. After persevering in vain attempts from one till eight in the evening, he became convinced of this unwelcome truth, and withdrew for the night to his head-quarters between Mislate and Quarte, about a league from the city. ♦Moncey retreats into Castille.♦ To maintain his position there was impossible: he retreated, leaving part of his artillery, and suffering from the peasantry, and the parties who harassed his retreat, that vengeance which Murat had provoked, and which the conduct of the French wherever they were successful had exasperated. An attempt was made to intercept him on his way, and inclose him between the Valencian and Murcian forces: the plan was well conceived, and he had twice to attack and defeat the enemy, who had taken post in his rear, before he could reach Almanza. He had now effected his retreat out of the kingdom of Valencia, but his position was still so insecure, that it was deemed necessary to fall back from Almanza to S. Clemente, nearer the main force of the French in the two Castilles; there while the Valencians were exulting in the deliverance which they had obtained, he collected artillery and stores, and waited for reinforcements which would enable him to renew the attack with means that might ensure success.
The failure of the French in Valencia would have been amply compensated if they could have reduced Andalusia to obedience, and for this more important object greater and more474 commensurate efforts were made. One of the first acts of Murat after he reached Madrid had been to prepare for securing Cadiz. General Dupont was appointed governor of that city soon after the abdications at Bayonne had been effected; and he had commenced his march towards the south, when he was diverted to Toledo, to repress some tumults by which the people there had manifested their temper, before the insurrection in the capital kindled the whole kingdom. The apprehension of that insurrection, or the determined intention of provoking some such crisis, made Murat deem it expedient to keep the whole of his force within call. Dupont, therefore, was detained at Toledo; but when the disposition of the Andalusians was known, and fears were entertained for the French squadron at Cadiz, he was dispatched thither with a force esteemed fully equal to a service which, momentous as it was, was not thought difficult to be performed. He began his march at the end of May, and crossing the Sierra Morena without opposition, arrived on the third of June at Andujar. There he obtained the unwelcome intelligence that a Junta had been formed at Seville, and that not that province alone, but Granada, Cordoba, and Jaen also had declared against the French. Proceeding, therefore, now, as in an enemy’s country, he occupied Montoro, El Carpio, and Bujalance, and throwing a bridge over the Guadalquivir at El Carpio, passed some of his corps to the right bank, and proceeded with the main body along475 the left to the bridge of Alcolea, where the Spaniards had taken a strong position. ♦G. Dupont defeats the Spaniards at the bridge of Alcolea.♦ The bridge is very long, consisting of twenty arches, constructed of black marble; and the Spaniards had erected a redoubt to command the approach. They had planted some batteries upon an eminence, and confiding in these defences, had not thought it necessary to destroy the bridge. Want of skill, rather than of courage, rendered these preparations ineffectual: the tête-du-pont and the village were carried after a brave resistance. The way was now open; but when the French began to pass, a fire was opened which swept the bridge, and made the bravest of the assailants for a moment hesitate. A lieutenant of grenadiers, by name Ratelot, whose courage was worthy of a better cause, advanced to the middle of the bridge alone, and placing his hat upon his sword, waved it over his head, crying Vive L’Empereur! and calling his comrades to follow him. His example roused a brave spirit, which was only the more excited by the sight of his death. They crossed, and attacked the Spaniards with all the advantages which discipline gives to courage; and at the same time the division which had passed the river at El Carpio came up, and falling upon their left, completed their defeat. The French without delay advanced against Cordoba. A camp had been formed before that city with the intention of defending it; but the routed troops brought dismay with them; and the Cordobans, at the approach of danger,476 chose rather to rely upon their walls than their lines. Among the arms which they abandoned there were many of English manufacture, and others which, for their antiquity and unusual form, became objects of curiosity to the conquerors. ♦Cordoba entered and pillaged by the French.♦ Resolute men might have defended weaker walls than those of Cordoba, which were partly the work of the Romans, partly of the Moors; but stronger fortifications would not have afforded security unless they had been better defended. In two hours the gates were forced, the troops and the new levies retreated or fled towards Ecija, and the city was at Dupont’s mercy.
Though by this easy conquest the French were enabled to enrich themselves with pillage, they were far from feeling themselves at ease. The news from Cadiz was of the worst kind; their squadron had been captured there, and the Spaniards were in communication with the English. The only considerable body of Spanish troops in the peninsula, under D. Francisco Xavier Castaños, which had been stationed in the camp of S. Roque, had heartily entered into the national cause; and the English from Gibraltar (which in the hands of England was now more serviceable to Spain than it had ever been made injurious to her) had assisted him with money, and with arms for the new levies. The alliance with England enabled the Spaniards also to bring over troops from Ceuta, who had been sent to garrison that place early in the477 year, because of a rumour that the English were intending to attack it. On all sides the insurrection was spreading; and the armed peasantry had occupied the passes of the Sierra, to cut him off from retreat and from reinforcements. He had looked for co-operation from the side of Portugal. A detachment of Junot’s army was to have proceeded along the coast of Algarve, and have crossed the Guadiana; a body of English troops from Gibraltar, sent under General Spencer to Ayamonte, had defeated this intention. ♦He is disappointed of succours from Portugal.♦ Junot, therefore, was fain to send them by the circuitous way of Elvas; but his own situation was now becoming perilous. The Spaniards under his command contributed to his danger at this time rather than to his strength. An English squadron off the Tagus kept him upon the alarm, while it encouraged the hopes of the Portugueze; and when General Kellerman was ordered to Elvas, the insurrection at Badajoz made it doubtful whether he would be able to proceed and effect his march to Cadiz with so small a force as could be spared from Portugal, and a detachment from Madrid was sent to join with him, and quell the people of Extremadura. Dupont could not be placed in a condition to effect the object for which he entered Andalusia, unless he received strong reinforcements; and Savary, therefore, ordered two divisions under Generals Vedel and Gobert, a force which was deemed more than sufficient to secure him against all danger, even if it478 should not be equal to the subjugation of the whole province.
These troops did not effect their junction without experiencing proofs of the national feeling, which might have taught them in how severe as well as hateful a contest the insatiable ambition of Buonaparte had wantonly engaged them. In passing through La Mancha they found that the sick, whom Dupont had left at Manzanares, had been killed; and they did not enter the little town of Valdepe as without a severe contest: the inhabitants embarrassed the invader’s cavalry by chains, which they stretched across the streets, and kept up a brisk fire from the houses, from which they were not dislodged till the French set the town in flames. When the advanced guard attempted to pass the Sierra Morena, they found an irregular force well posted and entrenched in the tremendous defiles of that great line of mountains, and they were compelled to fall back upon the main body. Notwithstanding this warning, the French entered upon the pass without precaution, in full confidence that even the strength of the situation would not enable the Spaniards to withstand them; and this presumption cost them many lives which might well have been spared. The first brigade and the cavalry were allowed to pass an ambush, which was laid among the trees and rocks, in advance of the entrenchment; a fire was then opened upon the second, and the French suffered three discharges before they were ready479 to act in return. Their Voltigeurs then dislodged the enemy from their vantage ground; the works were forced with a loss, according to the French account, of 900 on the part of the defendants; and the invaders leaving a detachment to secure the defiles, crossed the mountains, and entered Andalusia. Vedel, with his division, was stationed at Carolina; Gobert occupied the large and ancient village of Baylen, about four leagues farther on, nearly half way between Vedel and Dupont, who had his head-quarters at Andujar. A tête-du-pont was constructed to command the passage of the river there, and another at the village of Manjibar, between Baylen and Jaen.
While the intrusive government believed that by this junction its army in Andalusia was so strengthened, that the defeat of the Spaniards was certain if they could be brought to action, an opportunity was afforded it of striking a great blow in Castille, by which the way to the capital was laid open. A force considerable in numbers had been raised in Galicia, and arms and stores in abundance had now been supplied by Great Britain. Filangieri exerted himself in training these new levies, and gave orders for forming entrenchments at Manzanal; a position of extraordinary strength on the heights above Astorga. Whether this preparation for defensive war, when the people were too eager to be led against the enemy, renewed the suspicions which his conduct on St. Ferdinand’s day had excited; or480 whether private malice, as has been asserted, was at work for his destruction; he was murdered by some of his soldiers at Villa Franca, in the Bierzo, and the command of the Galician army then devolved upon D. Joaquin Blake, an officer of Irish parentage. Advancing to Benevente he formed a junction with the army of Castille and Leon, which Cuesta, with that characteristic energy which on such occasions he was capable of exerting, had collected after his defeat at Cabezon. The two generals disagreed in opinion; Blake dreaded the discipline of the French, and would therefore have avoided a general action; Cuesta relied upon the courage of his countrymen, and was eager to engage: he took the command, as being superior in rank, and they proceeded, in no good understanding with each other, in a direction which threatened Burgos. Nothing could have been more conformable to the wishes of the enemy; and Marshal Bessieres, in the expectation of sure victory, marched against them with the divisions of Generals Mouton and Merle, and General Lasalles’ division of cavalry, in all 12,000 men.
July 14.♦
He found them posted near Medina del Rio Seco, an ancient, and, in former days, a flourishing city, and containing now in its decay some 8000 inhabitants. The numbers of the Spanish army have been variously stated from 14,000 to 40,000. They attacked the enemy’s infantry with such determined ardour that they forced them to give way; won four pieces of artillery,481 spiked them, and set up their shout of victory, ... too soon; for the French cavalry charged their left wing, and by their great superiority decided the day, but not till after a most severe contest. Few bloodier battles have ever been fought in proportion to the numbers in the field, even if the force of the Spaniards be taken at its highest estimate: upon the best authority, that of the neighbouring priests, it is affirmed that 27,000 bodies were buried. The stores and artillery were taken, but the victors were not in a condition to complete the rout of the defeated army, and take advantage of the dissension between the two generals.
When Buonaparte received intelligence of this victory, he said, “it is the battle of Villa Viciosa. Bessieres has placed Joseph upon the throne:” and calculating with contempt the farther resistance which might be expected, he added, “Spain has now some 15,000 men left, and some old blockhead to command them.” Little did he know of Spain and of the Spaniards. The battle of Rio Seco did not intimidate even the men who were defeated there; but the enormities which the French committed in the city increased, if that were possible, the hatred with which the whole nation regarded them. The people of that city, unsuspicious of the future, had illuminated their houses, when the French on their entrance into the country arrived there, and some of the troops had been482 quartered among them. This did not save them from the worst horrors of war.
The way to Madrid was now open, and the Intruder proceeded on his journey thither without molestation. He had been proclaimed in that city on Santiago’s day, and the circumstances had been such as were little likely to encourage his partizans. The great standard-bearer and his son withdrew from the capital, rather than incur the guilt and contract the degradation of bearing part in the ceremony. Joseph and his train arrived on the evening of the 20th, ... all the troops being under arms to receive him, a most necessary part of the parade. Nothing indeed could be more striking than the contrast between the popular feeling on this day, and on that when Ferdinand, only four months before, made his entrance as king! Then the streets swarmed with the population of the whole surrounding country, and all the power and exertions of the magistrates were required to repress the general enthusiasm; now what few demonstrations of joy were made were procured by the direct interference of authority, the officers going from door to door to call upon the inhabitants, and even with this interference the houses were but just sufficiently decorated to save the inhabitants from vexation which they would otherwise have incurred. The money which was scattered among the populace lay in the streets where it fell, for the French483 themselves to pick up; and the theatres, which were thrown open to the people, were left to be filled by Frenchmen.
Yet every possible means had been used to prepare the metropolis for his reception, and keep down the spirit of the inhabitants by fraud and force. The publication of news from the provinces was prevented by the severest measures, and if any of the patriots’ manifestos found their way to Madrid, to print, copy, read, or listen to them, was declared and punished as high treason. A paper was forged in the Bishop of Santander’s name, recommending the people to receive with gratitude the King and the army, who were come to regenerate them. Revolution, they were told, was one of those indispensable remedies which must be employed when abuses had proceeded to a length which could not be restricted by the ordinary resources of public law. It was a species of war declared by the people against their own government to remove the established authority, when, either from ignorance or disinclination, it was not exercised for the general advantage. Happily for Spain, it was spared the necessity of passing through the calamities which other countries had experienced in this inevitable process; and it had only to receive a new government under the authority of the protector of the nations of Europe. In spite of these artifices and false representations, in spite also of all the measures taken to keep the inhabitants484 in ignorance of what was passing in the provinces, the agitation of the public continued; and a new edict was issued, enacting, that all strangers arriving in the metropolis should, within four and twenty hours, send in their names to the police, with an account of their occupations, the places from whence they came, and their motives for visiting Madrid.
The intrusive government had hoped that the battle of Rio Seco, and the terrible slaughter which had there been made of the Spaniards, would intimidate the nation, and convince them that all opposition to the new dynasty must be unavailing. In this expectation they were soon undeceived. The battle, bloody as it was, proved that the Spaniards were not to be discouraged by any defeat, however severe; and the Intruder, on his arrival in Madrid, experienced a resistance in a quarter where he looked only for pliancy and submission. The Council of Castille, when it was called upon to swear to the constitution, demurred; and avowed that it had not circulated the constitutional act, which it had been ordered to do by an edict from Vittoria: a transfer of the succession from one family to another, it maintained, could not be made without the authority and intervention of the nation: nor would the Members of the Council swear to the new constitution, because they were not the representatives of the nation; the Cortes were, and the Cortes had not accepted it. Now it would be a manifest infraction485 of the most sacred rights, if in a matter of such importance, relating not to the introduction of a new law, but to the extinction of all their former codes, and the formation of new ones in their stead, they should take an oath of observance before the nation should have signified its acceptance. The Junta of Bayonne had not been convoked to form codes and laws, but to treat of the advantages which they could obtain for the respective bodies or provinces by which they were deputed.
This was the point at which the Council had determined to make their stand. Many and great concessions they had previously made, yielding to compulsion, and trusting or hoping that political considerations, if worthier motives failed, might even yet prevent Buonaparte from effecting his designs of usurpation. But all temporizing was now at an end. The oath was to supply the invalidities of the forced abdications, to cover all the injustice and villany by which the Royal Family had been ensnared, to sanction the insolent intrusion of a stranger upon the throne, and bind the nation in honour and in conscience to support him there. It had already been ordered that no person in any public employ should receive his salary, or enjoy any of the emoluments of his office, till he had taken the oath. The Council therefore resolved now to stand forward, and give an example to those, who, like themselves, were within the power of the intrusive government, of the resistance which486 it was their duty to oppose. Their written memorial was laid before Joseph Buonaparte, who, upon hearing that the oath had not been taken, refused to read it, and directed Azanza to demand of them an immediate compliance with his decree; requiring that if the Council would not unanimously obey, as many as were obedient, though they should be the minority, should, without delay, subscribe the written oath. ♦July 26.♦ This order was twice repeated on the following day; and on the day after, the Council returned a dilatory reply, stating that it was a matter of conscience, and advising that as such it should be propounded to the chief universities, or other bodies or communities, as the Kings of Spain were wont to do in arduous points, which were to be decided not upon legal reasons alone, but upon theological considerations also; or that a Junta of the most approved Canonists and Theologians should be appointed, before whom the Council would send ministers to dispute the case. When this demand was delivered strong measures were meditated in return: an example, it was said, must be made of the Council, which might operate as a warning to all minor bodies and individuals; and it was generally believed that they would not escape death or banishment into France. But the policy of gaining time and trusting to events proved fortunate in this instance; and they were delivered from danger when all further arts of procrastination would have failed, by the487 splendid success of their countrymen in Andalusia, which compelled the Intruder and his ministers to consult their own safety by immediate flight.
When Vedel and Gobert had effected their junction with Dupont, it was thought proper, for the security of his position at Andujar, to occupy the old city of Jaen, the Aurigi, Oringe, or Oningis of the ancient Spaniards, in latter ages the capital of a Moorish kingdom, taken from the Mahommedans by King St. Ferdinand, famous afterwards for its silk manufactories; and still, though its trade and population had declined, containing some 12,000 inhabitants. It is situated on the skirts of the Sierra, and at the foot of Mount Jabaluez, in one of the happiest parts of a delightful country. The French had already made one of their plundering visits there; ♦July 1.♦ and when General Cassagne was now sent with a brigade consisting of 1300 men to take possession of the city and maintain it, a number of armed peasants awaited his approach among the fields and gardens without the walls. Their defence was ill planned and ill conducted; they fired their musquets repeatedly before the enemy were within shot, and took flight at the first discharge of the French artillery, many of them throwing away their cartridges to disencumber themselves of any thing which might impede their escape. The city was entered without any resistance from the inhabitants; and while one party of the assailants, singing the488 song of Roland, scaled the heights to attack an old castle, the others found an easier way to it through the town: it was abandoned at their approach, and they placed a garrison there.
The French, conformably to the system upon which they began this wicked war, put to death the peasants who fell into their hands. One of these victims excited admiration even in his murderers; he asked for life in a manner not unbecoming a Spaniard in such a cause: finding that no mercy was to be expected, he wrapt his cloak around his head and began his prayers; and when the bullet cut them short, fell and expired without a cry, or groan, or struggle. These military murders were not unrevenged. On the first day after the arrival of the French, the Spaniards increased in number, regular troops came to their assistance, and some smart skirmishes took place at the outposts. Early on the ensuing morning they surprised the castle; most of the garrison chose rather to leap from a high crag, at the imminent hazard of life or limbs, than to fall into the hands of an enemy to whom they had given such provocation; the others were put to death, and some of them barbarously tortured before that relief was given. Encouraged by this success, the Spaniards entered the city; a terrible fire was kept up upon the enemy from roofs and windows; the French were driven out, they formed upon some level ground in front of the town, where the Spanish cavalry charged them, and their guns were taken and retaken. The489 French occupied the same ground from which they had first driven the peasantry, and which was covered with stubble and with sheaves of corn, for there had been no time to carry in the harvest when these invaders approached. The sheaves took fire during the action, the cartridges which had been left there by the Spaniards exploded, threw the French into disorder, and killed and scorched many of them; and the whole field was presently in flames, out of which the wounded in vain endeavoured to crawl upon their broken limbs.
This action continued from an early hour in the morning till four or five in the afternoon, when the French again forced their way into the city; they pillaged it, they committed the foulest enormities upon the nuns and other women who had not taken flight in time; and in many places they set the houses and convents on fire. But the invaders had now learnt in what kind of war they were engaged; that they had provoked a national resistance, and that victory brought with it so little advantage, that when they had won the field, they were masters only of the ground on which they stood. The Spaniards were preparing for another attack, to avoid which General Cassagne ordered a retreat under cover of the night. The French families who resided in Jaen, suffering now for the crimes of their countrymen, abandoned their property and their homes to save their lives, and put themselves under the protection of the retreating troops. They had490 been thrown into prison on the morning when the invaders were first expelled, and that precautionary measure on the part of the magistrate might probably have failed to save them from the fury of an unreasoning multitude. As many of the wounded as could be carried by the dragoons’ horses were removed, the rest were left to their fate, for the French had no other means of transport; but most of those who were removed died on the way from the heat of the ensuing day’s journey and the pain of their wounds. ♦Memoires d’un Soldat, t. i. 145–168.♦ Their whole loss, as stated by themselves, amounted to a fourth part of their number. They were not pursued, and they effected their retreat to Baylen.
Dupont’s situation became now every day more insecure, for at this time neither men nor means were wanting to the Spaniards in Andalusia, nor prudence to direct their efforts in the wisest way. ♦Conde de Maule, t. xiii. p. 9.♦ The city of Cadiz alone supplied a donative of more than a million dollars and 5000 men; and as the men were mostly employed in filling up old regiments, the army was not weakened by having great part of its ostensible force consisting in raw levies. The general, Castaños, acted steadily upon the principles which the Junta of Seville had laid down; he harassed the enemy by detachments on all sides, cut them off from supplies, and allowed them no opportunity of coming to a regular engagement; and thus, while the difficulties and distresses of the French were continually increasing, the Spaniards acquired491 habits of discipline, and obtained confidence in themselves and in their officers. Castaños even attempted to reform the Spanish army, and introduce among them that moral and religious discipline by which Cromwell, and the great Gustavus before him, made their soldiers invincible. He issued an order for banishing all strumpets from the camp and sending them to a place of correction and penitence; he called upon the officers to set their men an example, by putting away the plague from themselves, and dismissing all suspicious persons; he charged the chaplains to do their duty zealously, and threatened condign punishment to any person, of what rank soever, who should act in contempt of these orders. Such irregularities, he said, would draw down the divine anger, and make the soldiers resemble in licentiousness the French, who for their foul abominations were justly hated by God and man; and it would be in vain to gather together armies, if at the same time they gathered together sins, and thereby averted from themselves the protection of the Almighty, which alone could ensure them the victory over their enemies. Happy would it have been for Spain if this principle had been steadily pursued; the foundations of that moral reformation might then have been laid, without which neither the strength nor the prosperity of any country can be stable.
Dupont might have secured his retreat across the Sierra Morena, if he had not relied too confidently upon his actual strength and the492 reputation of the French arms, and if he had not still hoped for succours from Junot. His force, though reduced by sickness, and the harassing service in which it was engaged, amounted to 16,000 effective men, enough to have defeated the Spaniards if they had been rash enough to engage in a general action, and more than he could well provide for. A large convoy from Toledo, together with all his hospital stores, was intercepted in the mountains. His men were fain to reap the standing corn, and make it into bread for themselves; the peasantry, whom they would otherwise have compelled to perform this work, having left the harvest to take arms against them, and bear a part in the defence of their country. He wrote pressingly for reinforcements; it was now, he said, nearly a month that he had occupied the position at Andujar; the country was exhausted, it was with extreme difficulty that he could obtain the scantiest subsistence for his army; the enemy were acquiring strength and courage to act upon the offensive: the anniversary of their great victory at the Navas de Tolosa was at hand, and to this the Spaniards, from religious, national, and local feelings, attached great importance. Every moment which he was compelled to waste in inaction increased the evil. Surely at such a crisis it would be prudent to neglect all partial movements of the insurgents for the purpose of enabling him to act in Andalusia with a sufficient force; if the enemy were permitted to acquire strength so as493 to keep the field, their example would be followed by all the provinces, and by all the Spanish troops throughout the kingdom; whereas one victory obtained over them here would go far towards the subjugation of Spain. These letters fell into the hands of the Spaniards; but if they had reached their destination, it was not in Savary’s power to have reinforced him.
On the 11th of July a council of war was held by Castaños, and it was determined that a division of 9000 good troops, under General Reding, should proceed by way of Menjibar to attack the enemy at Baylen, where Gobert was stationed for the purpose of guarding the road to Carolina, and maintaining a communication with Madrid. The Marqués de Coupigny, with 5000, was to proceed by La Higuereta and Villanueva, toward the same point, and co-operate with Reding; and Lieut.-Colonel D. Juan de la Cruz Mourgeon, with a corps of 2000, was to go by Marmolejo, and act against the enemy if they attempted to escape by the Sierra. Castaños himself occupied the Visos de Andujar, a strong and advantageous position, of which he thought it necessary to retain possession, though the troops were without tents, there was a want of water, and the heat excessive. But this position enabled him to keep Dupont upon the alarm, and prevent him from acting against Reding and Coupigny, while they interposed between him and the two other divisions of his army. ♦July 16.♦ Reding succeeded in driving the enemy from their tête-du-pont at494 Menjibar, and from the positions which they took up one after another between that place and Baylen, disputing their ground skilfully and well. Gobert was killed, one cannon and the baggage in the encampment taken. During these operations some of the Spaniards died from excessive heat and exertion; and in the afternoon Reding retired to Menjibar, and crossing the Guadalquiver again on the following day, effected a junction, on the third morning, with Coupigny, who had beaten the French from a strong post near Villanueva. Their intention was to have attacked Baylen; but Dufour, who succeeded to the command of Gobert’s division, had evacuated that place, finding himself unable to maintain it, and fallen back to unite with Vedel, at Carolina.
One part of the Spanish commander’s plan had thus been accomplished, and, in pursuance of his arrangements, Reding and Coupigny prepared to march from Baylen upon Andujar, and there attack the main body of the French on one side, while the reserve of the Spanish army was ready to act against it from the Visos. Dupont meantime had formed the same intention of placing a part of the enemy’s force between two fires; and on the night of the 18th, as soon as darkness had closed, the French marched from Andujar, after plundering the inhabitants of whatever was portable, and took the road toward Baylen. ♦July 19.♦ Reding was preparing to begin his march when the enemy arrived at three in the morning, and fell upon him, thinking to take495 him by surprise. The attack was made vigorously, and might probably have been successful, had not the Spaniards, because of their intended movement, been in some degree of readiness. The foremost companies both of horse and foot were engaged hand to hand; but the Spaniards rapidly took their stations, and repelled the assailants at all points. When day broke they were in possession of the high ground, and the French were forming their columns to renew the attack in a situation which was not exposed to the Spanish artillery. In this renewed attack both parties conducted themselves with the greatest intrepidity. Several times the assailants broke the enemy’s lines, and fighting with the resolution of men who had never known what it was to be defeated, they once made way to the batteries. But the Spaniards stood firm, they knew that reinforcements were at hand, and that if they kept their ground, the situation of the French was desperate; they had confidence in their leaders and in their own strength, and, above all, that thorough assurance of the justice of their cause, which, when other points are equal, will inevitably turn the scale. The action was long and bloody; it continued till noon without any other interruption than what arose from occasional recession and the formation of new columns. Dupont then, and the other generals, putting themselves at the head of their men, made a last charge with the most determined bravery; they were, however, once more repulsed.496 By this time they had lost 2000 men, besides those who were wounded. Dufour, who was with this part of the army, was killed, and Dupont himself wounded. No hope of victory remained, and no possibility of escape, the French therefore proposed to capitulate; and the arrival of the Spanish reserve, under D. Manuel de la Peña, at this point of time, enabled the victors to dictate their own terms.
Dupont’s intention of marching from Andujar had been so well concealed till the moment of its execution, that though that city contained some 14,000 inhabitants, no information was conveyed to the Spaniards on the adjacent heights, nor were they apprized of his movements till two in the ensuing morning, when he had been five hours on his march. Castaños immediately ordered La Peña to pursue him with the reserve and some corps of the third division. Upon his arrival he learnt that a capitulation had been proposed, upon which he referred the French negotiators to the commander-in-chief, and took such a position as effectually to surround the defeated army. The answer which Castaños returned was, that the French must surrender themselves prisoners of war, and no other terms would be granted; that because of the manner in which they had sacked the towns which they had entered, he would allow the general and officers to retain nothing more than their swords, and each a single portmanteau with apparel for his use; but that in other respects they should be497 treated like their squadron at Cadiz, in a manner conformable to Spanish generosity. And he required that Dupont should capitulate not only for the troops who had been actually engaged, but for the two other divisions also. The next day was spent in adjusting the terms; and on the 21st Castaños and the Conde de Tilly, as the representative of the Supreme Junta of Spain and the Indies, a title which the Junta of Seville at this time arrogated, advised the Junta that Dupont and his division were made prisoners of war, and that all the other French between the summit of the Sierra Morena and Baylen were to evacuate the peninsula by sea.
These, however, though thus officially announced to the Junta, and by them made known to Lord Collingwood, were not the terms which had been signed, and the cause of this misstatement has never been explained. There could have been no motive for deceiving the French by promising them better conditions than it was intended to observe, for the enemy were absolutely at their mercy; so confessedly indeed, that when La Peña made a threatening movement to accelerate the treaty, Dupont sent him word that if he thought proper to attack them no defence would be made. The most probable conjecture which can be offered seems to be, that the French negotiators, Generals Chavert and Marescot, had sufficient address not only to make the Spaniards relax the tone of severe justice which was at first assumed, but also in the course498 of drawing up the capitulation, to obtain modifications in the latter articles, by which the intention of the former was set aside; that Tilly and Castaños had been thus led to make greater concessions than they were themselves aware of, and had no suspicion when they communicated to the Junta the result of the treaty, that one part of it, and that the most important, was actually annulled by the other. The capitulation began by stating that their excellencies the Conde de Tilly and Castaños had agreed with the French plenipotentiaries upon these conditions, as desiring to give proofs of their high esteem for his excellency General Dupont, and the army under his command, for the brilliant and glorious defence which they had made when completely surrounded by a very superior force. The troops under General Dupont were to remain prisoners of war, except the division of Vedel; that division, and all the other French troops in Andalusia who were not included in the former article, should evacuate Andalusia, and take with them the whole of their baggage; but to prevent all cause of uneasiness while they were passing through the country, they should leave their artillery and other arms in charge of the Spanish army, to be delivered to them at the time of their embarkation; their horses, in order to save the trouble of transporting them, should be purchased by the Spaniards at a price agreed upon by two commissioners, one of each nation. The other troops, who were made prisoners,499 were to march out of the camp with the honours of war, with two guns at the head of each battalion, and the soldiers with their muskets, which they were to surrender to the Spaniards at the distance of four hundred toises from the camp. All the French troops in Andalusia were to proceed by stated journeys, not exceeding four leagues a day, and with proper intervals of rest, to Sanlucar and Rota, there to be embarked in Spanish vessels and transported to Rochefort; the Spanish army guaranteeing the safety of their march. The generals and officers were to retain their arms, and the soldiers their knapsacks. The generals should retain a coach and a baggage cart each, the officers of the staff a coach only, free from examination, but without breaking the regulations and laws of the kingdom: all carriages which they had taken in Andalusia were excepted, and the observance of this exception was left to the French General Chavert. Whereas many of the soldiers in different places, and especially at the taking of Cordoba, notwithstanding the orders of the generals and the care of the officers, had committed excesses which were usual and inevitable when cities resisted at the time that they were taken (thus carefully was the article worded by the able French negotiators), the generals and officers were to take proper measures for delivering up any church vessels which might have been carried away as booty, if any there were. Any thing omitted in this capitulation which might add to the accommodation of the French500 during their passage through the country and their tarriance in it, should be added as supplementary to these articles.
The French displayed more address in the management of this capitulation than they had shown in the campaign. During the battle of Baylen, Vedel was near enough with his division to hear the firing, but he had received no intelligence of Dupont’s movements, and did not move toward the scene of action till the firing had ceased. The French soldiers endeavoured to account for their defeat by vague accusations of treachery, by the want of a good understanding between the two generals, and by the alleged misconduct of Dupont, in making his corps attack one after another, instead of charging with his whole force, and in leaving too strong a detachment to guard the spoils with which he and the superior officers had enriched themselves. The more than likely supposition, that his messengers had been intercepted, would explain the want of co-operation, and the other charges may safely be dismissed. That when they were at the enemy’s mercy they should have obtained such favourable terms may indeed appear surprising, even though the French have exceeded all other people in the art of obtaining good terms under the most unfavourable circumstances. It is more easy to perceive why the conditions were not observed; for in fact it was impossible to observe them. Nothing could be done at that time in opposition to the will of the501 people; and an universal cry had gone forth against invaders who had set towns and villages on fire, pillaging wherever they went, plundering churches and convents, violating women, and putting to death the people whom they took in arms. The Andalusians were exasperated against the French because of these atrocities, as well as by that general feeling of indignation which the cause of the quarrel, the murders at Madrid, and the whole course of transactions at Bayonne, so justly excited. The Junta had issued a regular declaration of war against France, but the people knew and felt that this was not an ordinary war, and that no formalities could make it so; that the invaders had entered their country not in open hostility as fair and honourable enemies, but perfidiously and basely in the character of allies; and that by the complicated wickedness of their cause and their conduct they had forfeited all claim to the courtesies and observances of civilized war. They regarded Dupont’s army rather as criminals than as soldiers, ... men who had laid down their arms, but who could not lay down their crimes; and in that state of general feeling, if the Junta of Seville, or any other persons in authority, had attempted to perform the conditions of the capitulation, they would have been suspected of treachery, and might probably have fallen victims, like Solano, to the fury of the populace.
Aware of this, and yet withheld from breaking the capitulation by that national sense of honour502 which the revolution had not continued long enough to destroy, the Junta hesitated how to act, like men who, under the pretext of necessity, would willingly have done what, as an avowed and voluntary act, they were ashamed to do. ♦The Junta apply to Lord Collingwood and Sir Hew Dalrymple.♦ They were deliberating whether to observe the treaty when Castaños and Morla arrived at Seville. The former felt that his country’s honour and his own would be wounded by the breach of faith which was meditated, and he opposed it with the frankness of an upright mind. Morla, on the contrary, supported the popular opinion; and the Junta, deferring to it in fear, or in inclination, circulated a paper, wherein it was affirmed that, both Vedel and Dupont had broken the capitulation, that it was impossible to fulfil it, and that even if possible, it ought not to be fulfilled. This paper, composed by an officer of high rank, who was probably envious of Castaños, was sent by the Junta to Lord Collingwood and to Sir Hew Dalrymple, in the hope of obtaining their sanction for a mode of conduct which they themselves secretly felt to be unworthy.
Lord Collingwood had not been satisfied with the terms granted to Vedel: he was not sufficiently acquainted with the circumstances to understand why an inferior41 division should503 have been allowed to capitulate after the principal force had been defeated; and he perceived that these troops might again reach the frontiers of Spain in a week after they were landed at Rochefort. But although these were his feelings, nevertheless, when he was applied to from Cadiz for assistance in transporting Vedel’s men to France, he replied, that he would order seamen to fit out Spanish merchant vessels for that purpose, as there were not more English transports in those parts than were required for the conveyance of our own troops. It proved, however, that Spanish vessels were not to be found; and the answer of Lord Collingwood, when his opinion upon the fulfilment of the terms was directly called for, was, that although he was sorry such a treaty, or indeed any treaty, should have been made with the French General, it was his opinion that all treaties, when once solemnly ratified, should be held sacred, and the conditions observed as far as possible. The present engagement was one which it was not possible to perform, and therefore annulled itself. Sir Hew Dalrymple’s answer was still less satisfactory to those persons who sought a British sanction for breaking the terms. His opinion, he said, exactly coincided with what must have been that of the Spanish and French Generals504 by whom the capitulation was sanctioned, namely, that it was binding on the contracting parties, as far as the means of carrying it into execution were in the power of each. He hoped that the laws of honour, and not the rules of political expediency, continued still to govern the conduct of soldiers in solemn stipulations of this kind; and certainly the surrender of General Vedel’s corps could only be justified by the confidence he placed in that honour which characterized the Spanish nation. The reputation of a government, particularly one newly-formed, is, said he, a valuable part of its property, and ought not to be lightly squandered. And perhaps the question might be argued even on grounds of expediency.
Disappointed in these applications, but yielding
to the real difficulty of the case, the Junta
made no preparations for transporting the French
troops; and Dupont at length addressed a letter
to Morla, as Captain-general of the Province,
complaining of this, and of orders which had
been given to examine the baggage of the
general and other officers at Lebrixa. Morla
beginning, as he usually did, with a declaration
of his own honour and veracity, replied, that
neither the capitulation, nor the approbation of
the Junta, nor an express order from their beloved
King himself, could make that possible
which was not so. There were neither transports
for his army, nor means of procuring them;
and what greater proof of this could there be505
than that the prisoners taken in the squadron
were detained at a great expense, because the
Spaniards were unable to remove them?
♦1808.
August.♦
General Castaños, when he promised to obtain a
passport from the English for this army, could
promise no more than that he would earnestly
ask for it; and this he had done: but how could
the French commander believe that the English
would let an army pass which would certainly
carry on the war in some other point, or perhaps
in the very same? I am persuaded, he
pursued, that neither the general nor your excellency
supposed such a capitulation would be
executed; his object was to relieve himself from
embarrassment, yours to obtain conditions which,
impossible as they were, would render your inevitable
surrender honourable. Each effected
his desire, and now the imperious law of necessity
must be obeyed. The national character
permits no other law than this with the French;
it will not allow us to use the law of retaliation.
Your excellency compels me to speak bitter
truths.... What right has such an army to require
the impossible fulfilment of a capitulation? ... an
army which has entered Spain professing friendship
and alliance, imprisoned our King and his
Royal Family, sacked his palaces, murdered and
robbed his subjects, ravaged his country, and
despoiled him of his crown! If you do not wish
to draw upon yourself more and more the just
indignation of the people, which I am exerting
myself to restrain; you will cease to advance506
such intolerable pretensions, and endeavour by
your conduct to abate the strong sense of the
horrors so recently committed at Cordoba. He
added, that the orders for examining the baggage
came from the Supreme Junta, and were
indispensable.
A large sum of money had been found in possession of a private soldier, and Morla reminded the French general how greatly such a fact would provoke the rage of the populace. The discovery of some church plate, which was brought to light by the fall of a package at Santa Maria, roused the popular feeling beyond all farther endurance, and they immediately seized upon the whole baggage. Dupont upon this wrote angrily to Morla, demanding the restoration of the equipage, money, and effects of every kind belonging to himself and the other superior officers; invoking the principle of honour and probity, and saying, that jealous as he was for the glory of the Spaniards, the horrible excesses of the Spanish mob had made him groan. ♦August 14.♦ Undoubtedly, replied Morla, the conduct of the people has grieved me greatly; not that the act itself was wrong, but because it manifested a distrust of their government; because they took the administration of justice into their own hands; because it might have happened that in their fury they might have performed the vile and horrid office of the executioner, and have stained themselves and their compatriots by shedding that blood which had been spared on507 the field of battle. This is the cause of my concern, and on this account I proposed, as a thing expedient for the safety of your excellency and of those who accompanied you, that your equipages should undergo a prudent examination before they left Lebrixa, and advised you that nothing but submission and a discreet demeanour could save you from the indignation of the people. But it never was my intention, and still less the Supreme Junta’s, that your excellency and your army should carry out of Spain the fruit of your rapacity, cruelty, and impiety. How could you conceive this possible? How could you suppose us to be so stupid and insensible? Could a capitulation which speaks only of your equipage, give you the property of the treasures which your army has accumulated by means of murders, profanation of all sacred things, cruelties and violence of every kind, in Cordoba and in other cities? Is there any reason, law, or principle which enjoins that faith, or even humanity should be observed towards an army which entered an allied and friendly kingdom under false pretences, seized its innocent and beloved King with all his family by fraud and treachery; extorted from him a renunciation in favour of their own sovereign, ... a renunciation impossible in itself, ... and because the nation would not submit to this forced and invalid transfer, proceeded to plunder palaces and towns, to profane and sack the churches, murdering the ministers of the altar, violating nuns, carrying rape every508 where, seizing every thing of value which they could transport, and destroying what they were not able to bring away! Is it possible that such persons as these, when deprived of a booty, the very sight of which ought to fill them with compunction and horror, should have the effrontery to appeal to the principles of honour and probity! My natural moderation has made me hitherto write to your excellency with a certain degree of respect; but I could not refrain from tracing a slight sketch of your conduct, in reply to your extraordinary demands, ... demands which amount to this, ... do you plunder the temples and houses of Cadiz to reimburse me for what the people of the Puerto have taken from me, and what I took from Cordoba, with every circumstance of atrocity, violence, and brutality. Let your excellency lay aside such expectations, and be contented that the noble character of the Spanish nation withholds it from performing the vile office of the executioner. He concluded by saying, that every attention should be paid to the personal safety and convenience of the French general; and that he would use all endeavours in his power to have him sent to France with the least possible delay.
Dupont, when the first danger from the populace was over, had reason for his own sake to rejoice that the capitulation was not carried into effect. Enraged as Buonaparte was at the first signal defeat which his armies had sustained, he well knew that no opportunity of vindicating509 himself would be allowed him, and Admiral Villeneuve’s example was before his eyes. Most of the Swiss in his army, the officers excepted, entered the Spanish service; the more willingly, because General Reding, who had borne so conspicuous a part in the victory, was their countryman. But, in truth, it was to them a matter of indifference on which side they were engaged, and in whatever action they were present the victor was sure to find recruits. Many, however, as well as many of the Germans who were taken at the same time, were allowed to engage as agricultural labourers. But toward the French the vindictive feeling of the people was never mitigated. The troops who escorted them with difficulty saved them from being torn to pieces by the peasantry; the murder of a Frenchman, so strong a hatred had their atrocities excited, was regarded as a meritorious act; untold numbers disappeared in consequence of this persuasion; and at Lebrixa a whole detachment, eighty in number, were massacred at one time, upon a cry of danger, absurd indeed, but sufficient to give the cowardly rabble a plea for gratifying that cruelty which is every where the characteristic of depraved and brutalized man. Letters were addressed to Morla from Madrid and various parts of Spain, some requiring that Dupont and the other French generals should be put to death, others that the whole of the prisoners should suffer, as an example which the public good demanded, and which justice called for.510 Some of these letters, by their ill writing and incorrect language, indicated from what base hands they came; others were the elaborate composition of men whom the very hatred of cruelty had made cruel, and who pleaded for a massacre in the same spirit of perverted zeal which had produced the Inquisition and the horrors of St. Bartholomew’s day. These letters were so numerous that Morla thought proper publicly to reply to them, representing that such an act would not only bring on reprisals, but would fix a lasting stain upon the Spaniards. He took that opportunity of excusing himself from any concern in the breach of the capitulation, desiring it might be understood that he neither executed, nor desired to execute the supreme power; but that it was the Junta of Seville which, for weighty reasons, not fit to be made public, had delayed the transportation of Dupont and the other French generals. “I,” said he, “had only to obey; for it is not in my character or manner of thinking ever to resist a constituted authority; such resistance can only occasion civil dissensions, which are the greatest evil a nation can suffer, and which I shall never spare any sacrifice to avoid.”
By the battle of Baylen Andalusia was left in peace. Castaños had made a vow to dedicate the victory to King St. Ferdinand, who won Seville from the Moors, and lying inshrined in the magnificent mosque of that city, which he converted to a Christian church, is venerated511 there with especial devotion. The ceremony was performed with great pomp, and the French eagles were offered at the shrine of the canonized King and conqueror, as trophies of the most signal victory which had been achieved in Andalusia since his time.
Among the papers which fell into the hands of the Spaniards were dispatches from Madrid, recalling Dupont to protect the capital against the army of Galicia and Castille and Leon, then advancing against it. These dispatches were written before the battle of Rio Seco, where Cuesta’s fatal rashness exposed that army to destruction. The Spanish generals separated after their defeat, and Cuesta complained that he was abandoned by the Galician force. He retired with his part of the army to Leon, and knowing that that city could not be defended, instructed the Leonese Junta to remove to Astorga; but Astorga itself was not more secure, and they withdrew across the mountains to Ponferrada. Cuesta then dispersed his infantry on the frontiers of Asturias, and retreated with the cavalry into Castille, cutting his way through the enemy’s rear-guard. Marshal Bessieres meantime reaped the fruits of his victory by seizing arms and stores which, in consequence of this rash action, were only brought from England to fall into the enemy’s hands. He found large depôts at Villalpando and Benevente; then turning southward to Zamora, was informed there that Cuesta had ordered his troops to rendezvous at Mayorga.512 Deceived by this information, to Mayorga he went, and there a deputation from Leon waited upon him to solicit his clemency. At Leon also he found arms and ammunition to a great amount, which, if not imprudently accumulated there, were carelessly abandoned.
Blake was thought to have given proof of great military talents both in the action and in the retreat; and Marshal Bessieres, hoping that so severe a defeat would convince him all farther resistance must be ineffectual, endeavoured to win him over to the Intruder’s service. For this purpose he wrote to him, under the pretext of assuring him that the prisoners should be well treated; and he took that opportunity for urging him to obey the act of abdication, and acknowledge King Joseph Napoleon. ♦July 24.♦ The Spanish general made answer, he acknowledged no other sovereign than Ferdinand of Bourbon, or his legitimate heirs; and if that unfortunate family should be altogether extinguished, his allegiance would then be due to the people of Spain, lawfully represented in a general Cortes. These, he said, were the sentiments of the whole army and of the whole nation; and he warned Bessieres against the error of mistaking the forced submission of towns which were occupied by French troops, for a real change of opinion in the inhabitants. “Undeceive therefore,” said he, “your Emperor; and if it be true that he has a philanthropic mind, he will renounce the project of subduing Spain. Whatever partial513 successes he may obtain, it is evident that his brother never can reign in this country; unless he reign over a desert, covered with the blood of the Spaniards, and of the troops employed on this unjust enterprise.”
July.♦
This answer did not satisfy the Frenchman, who, in a second letter, told Blake it was his duty to avoid the effusion of blood; for while France, and the greatest part of Europe, continued in their present state, it was impossible that the Bourbons could reign. He accompanied this reasoning by proposing a conference with him upon the subject, ... a proposal which, Blake replied, it was not fitting that he should address to a man of honour. Bessieres had set at liberty four or five hundred prisoners, under the title of peasants; this title the Spanish general disclaimed for them, maintaining that they were regular soldiers, incorporated with the troops of the line, though not wearing the uniform. In explaining this, he said, “his intention was not to release himself from acknowledging the generous conduct of the Marshal towards them, ... but to prevent the possibility of their receiving, upon any occasion, in consequence of any misconception, a treatment which they did not deserve; and which, he was sure, from the sentiments that his excellency had manifested, could not but be painful to his own feelings.” This answer was in a lower tone than the occasion required; it admitted a distinction between the peasant and the soldier: but it became him514 to have proclaimed, that Spain was in circumstances when, by the first principles of law in all countries, every man is called upon to defend his country, and, becoming a soldier by necessity and duty, is to be accounted such in virtue of the cause for which he is in arms.
Bessieres might now have sent a reinforcement to Junot, who had to contend against a spreading insurrection, while he was threatened with the more serious danger of an English expedition; but as that danger had prevented Junot from succouring Dupont, so the destruction of Dupont’s army cut off his hopes of assistance from Bessieres, who was then summoned in all haste to protect the flight of the Intruder from Madrid. There is some reason to believe that the news of the battle of Baylen reached the capital some days before it was known to Joseph and his ministers, that this knowledge emboldened the Council of Castille to make their resolute stand against taking the oath of fidelity, and that it was concealed as long as possible in the hope of preventing or intercepting the Intruder’s retreat. He was not apprised of it till eight or nine days after the event; and no time was then lost in providing for his safety by retiring to Vitoria, with the intention of concentrating the French force in that part of the country, and remaining there under their protection till reinforcements from France should arrive, numerous enough to effect the subjugation of Spain. Till this time, hope had been entertained by his adherents, that515 the opposition of the Spaniards, unexpected and violent as it was, would soon be quelled: but now it was apparent that what had hitherto been regarded as an insurrection, had assumed the serious form of war; and it is said that Joseph, considering that this extremity had not been contemplated by the Spaniards who had entered ♦Azanza y O’Farrill, p. 101.♦ ♦De Pradt, 192.♦ into his service, left them now at liberty to choose their part, for or against him, in the ensuing contest. In so doing he may have acted from a generous feeling, of which he was not incapable when master of his own actions; but in reality it was not in his power to withhold the liberty which he offered. The Duke del Infantado had already escaped from Madrid, and travelling in the dress of a peasant, had joined one of the Spanish armies. The Duke del Parque also had taken the first opportunity to withdraw. Two of the Intruder’s ministers, Cevallos and Pinuela, availed themselves of the liberty which was now within their choice, and remained at Madrid. Jovellanos, always true to himself and his country, had refused to obey his summons. The other five, Urquijo, Azanza, Mazarredo, O’Farrill, and Cabarrus, adhered to what they still believed to be the stronger part, and accompanied Joseph in his retreat.
END OF VOL. I.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY THOMAS DAVISON, WHITEFRIARS.