This commotion had been preceded by a brief insurrection, easily suppressed and not unlikely to be soon forgotten, on the 23rd of April, at Toledo. The events in the capital were of a more decisive character, and the amount of the bloodshed, in itself great, was much exaggerated in the reports which flew, like wildfire, throughout the Peninsula—for the French were as eager to overawe the provincial Spaniards, by conveying an overcharged impression of the consequences of resistance, as their enemies in Madrid were to rouse the general indignation, by heightened details of the ferocity of the invaders and the sternness of their own devotion. In almost every town of Spain, and almost simultaneously, the flame of patriotic resentment broke out in the terrible form of assassination. The French residents were slaughtered without mercy: the supposed partisans of Napoleon and Godoy (not a few men of worth being causelessly confounded in their fate) were sacrificed in the first tumult of popular rage. At Cadiz, Seville, Carthagena, above all in Valencia, the streets ran red with blood. The dark and vindictive temper of the Spaniards covered the land with scenes, on the details of which it is shocking to dwell. The French soldiery, hemmed in, insulted, and whenever they could be found separately, sacrificed—often with every circumstance of savage torture—retorted by equal barbarity whenever they had the means. Popular bodies (juntas) assumed the conduct of affairs in most of the cities and provinces, renounced the yoke of France, reproclaimed Ferdinand king, and at the maritime stations of chief importance entered into communication with the English fleets, from whom they failed not to receive pecuniary supplies, and every encouragement to proceed in their measures. Deputies were sent to England without delay; and welcomed there with the utmost enthusiasm of sympathy and admiration. England could both speak and act openly. Throughout the whole of the enslaved continent the news of the Spanish insurrection was brooded over with a sullen joy.
Napoleon received the intelligence with alarm; but he had already gone too far to retract without disturbing the magical influence of his reputation. He, moreover, was willing to flatter himself that the lower population of Spain alone took an active part in these transactions; that the nobility, whose degradation he could hardly over-estimate, would abide by his voice; in a word, that with 80,000 troops in Spain, besides Junot's army in Portugal, he possessed the means of suppressing the tumult after the first effervescence should have escaped. He proceeded, therefore, to act precisely as if no insurrection had occurred. Tranquillity being re-established in Madrid, the Council of Castile were convoked, and commanded to elect a new sovereign: their choice had of course been settled beforehand: it fell on Joseph Buonaparte, King of Naples; and ere it was announced, that personage was already on his way to Bayonne. Ninety-five Notables of Spain met him in that town; and swore fealty to him and a new Constitution, the manufacture of course of Napoleon. Joseph, on entering Spain, was met by unequivocal symptoms of scorn and hatred:—nay, one great battle had already been fought between the French and the patriots:—but, the main road being strongly occupied throughout with his brother's troops, he reached Madrid in safety.
Lucien Buonaparte, it is understood, received the first offer of this crown; but he did not envy the condition of his brother's royal vassals, and declined the dangerous honour. Murat had expected it, and much resented his disappointment; but Napoleon did not consider him as possessed of the requisite prudence, and he was forced to accept the succession to the vacant throne of Naples.
Joseph had become not unpopular in Naples, and being a peaceful man, would gladly have remained in that humbler kingdom; but Napoleon no more consulted the private wishes of his subaltern princes on such occasions, than he did those of his generals in the arrangements of a campaign.
On the 24th of July (says Colonel Napier), "Joseph was proclaimed King of Spain and the Indies, with all the solemnities usual upon such occasions; not hesitating to declare himself the enemy of eleven millions of people, the object of a whole nation's hatred; calling, with a strange accent, from the midst of foreign bands, upon that fierce and haughty race to accept of a constitution which they did not understand, and which few of them had even heard of; his only hope of success resting on the strength of his brother's arms; his claims on the consent of an imbecile monarch and the weakness of a few pusillanimous nobles, in contempt of the rights of millions now arming to oppose him."
On the 4th of July the King of England addressed his Parliament on the subject which then fixed the universal enthusiasm of his people. "I view" (said he) "with the liveliest interest the loyal and determined spirit manifested in resisting the violence and perfidy with which the dearest rights of the Spanish nation have been assailed. The kingdom thus nobly struggling against the usurpation and tyranny of France, can no longer be considered as the enemy of Great Britain, but is recognised by me as a natural friend and ally." It has been already mentioned that the British commanders in the neighbourhood of Spain did not wait for orders from home to espouse openly the cause of the insurgent nation. The Spanish prisoners of war were forthwith released, clothed, equipped, and sent back to their country. Supplies of arms and money were liberally transmitted thither; and, Portugal catching the flame and bursting into general insurrection also, a formal treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, was soon concluded between England and the two kingdoms of the Peninsula.
This insurrection furnished Great Britain with what she had not yet possessed during the war, a favourable theatre whereon to oppose the full strength of her empire to the arms of Napoleon; and the opportunity was embraced with zeal, though for some time but little skill appeared in the manner of using it. The Emperor, on the other hand, observed with surprise and rage the energy of the Spaniards, and not doubting that England would hasten to their aid, bent every effort to consummate his flagitious purpose. "Thus" (says a distinguished writer) "the two leading nations of the world were brought into contact at a moment when both were disturbed by angry passions, eager for great events, and possessed of surprising power."[59]
Napoleon, from the extent and population of his empire, under the operation of the Conscription Code was enabled to maintain an army 500,000 strong; but his relations with those powers on the continent whom he had not entirely subdued were of the most unstable character, and even the states which he had formally united to France were, without exception, pregnant with the elements of disaffection. It was therefore impossible for him to concentrate the whole of his gigantic strength on the soil of Spain. His troops, moreover, being drawn from a multitude of different countries and tongues, could not be united in heart or in discipline like the soldiers of a purely national army. On the other hand, the military genius at his command has never been surpassed in any age or country: his officers were accustomed to victory, and his own reputation exerted a magical influence over both friends and foes. The pecuniary resources of the vast empire were great, and they were managed so skilfully by Buonaparte that the supplies were raised within the year, and in a metallic currency.
His ancient enemy was omnipotent at sea; and if the character of her armies stood at the moment much lower both at home and abroad than it ever deserved to do, this was a mistake which one well-organised campaign was likely to extinguish. England possessed at this time a population of twenty millions, united in the spirit of loyalty and regarding the Spanish cause as just, noble and sacred: a standing army of 200,000 of the best troops in the world, an immense recruiting establishment, and a system of militia which enabled her to swell her muster to any limit. Her colonies occupied a large share of this army; but there remained at her immediate command a force at least equal to that with which Buonaparte had conquered Austria and Prussia. Her credit was unbounded; and her commerce not only supplied means of information altogether unrivalled, but secured for her the secret goodwill of whole classes in every country. England possessed Generals worthy to cope with the best of Buonaparte's Marshals, and in the hour of need discovered that she possessed one capable of confronting, and of conquering, the great Emperor himself. Finally, she possessed the incalculable advantage of warring on the side of justice and freedom, against an usurper, whose crimes were on the same gigantic scale with his genius. The remembrance of their leader's perfidy weighed heavily on the moral strength of the French army throughout the approaching contest; while a proud conviction that their cause was the right sustained the hearts of the English.
Upon them, ultimately, the chief burden and the chief glory of the war devolved: yet justice will ever be done to the virtuous exertions of their allies of the Peninsula. At the moment when the insurrection occurred, 20,000 Spanish troops were in Portugal under the orders of Junot; 15,000 more, under the Marquis de Romana, were serving Napoleon in Holstein. There remained 40,000 Spanish regulars, 11,000 Swiss, and 30,000 militia; but of the best of these the discipline, when compared with French or English armies, was contemptible. The nobility, to whose order the chief officers belonged, were divided in their sentiments—perhaps the greater number inclined to the interests of Joseph. Above all, the troops were scattered, in small sections, over the face of the whole country, and there was no probability that any one regular army should be able to muster so strong as to withstand the efforts of a mere fragment of the French force already established within the kingdom. The fleets of Spain had been destroyed in the war with England: her commerce and revenues had been mortally wounded by the alliance with France and the maladministration of Godoy. Ferdinand was detained a prisoner in France. There was no natural leader or chief, around whom the whole energies of the nation might be expected to rally. It was amidst such adverse circumstances that the Spanish people rose everywhere, smarting under intolerable wrongs, against a French army, already 80,000 strong, in possession of half the fortresses of the country, and in perfect communication with the mighty resources of Napoleon.
There are authors who still delight to undervalue the motives of this great national movement; according to whom the commercial classes rose chiefly, if not solely, from their resentment of the pecuniary losses inflicted on them by Godoy's alliance with the author of the "continental system"; the priesthood because Godoy had impoverished the church, and they feared that a Buonapartean government would pursue the same course to a much greater extent; the peasantry because their priests commanded them. All these influences unquestionably operated, and all strongly; but who can believe in the absence of others infinitely above these, and common to all the Spaniards who, during six years, fought and bled, and saw their towns ruined and their soil a waste, that they might vindicate their birthright, the independence of their nation? Nor can similar praise be refused to the great majority of the Portuguese. Napoleon summoned a body of the nobles of that kingdom also to meet him early in the year at Bayonne: they obeyed, and being addressed by the haughty usurper in person, resisted all his efforts to cajole them into an imitation of the Spanish Notables, who at the same time and place accepted Joseph for their King. They were in consequence retained as prisoners in France during the war which followed; but their fate operated as a new stimulus upon the general feeling of their countrymen at home, already well prepared for insurrection by the brutal oppression of Junot.
The Spanish arms were at first exposed to many reverses; the rawness of their levies, and the insulated nature of their movements, being disadvantages of which it was not difficult for the experienced Generals and overpowering numbers of the French to reap a full and bloody harvest. After various petty skirmishes, in which the insurgents of Arragon were worsted by Lefebre Desnouettes, and those of Navarre and Biscay by Bessieres, the latter officer came upon the united armies of Castile, Leon and Galicia, commanded by the Generals Cuesta and Blake, on the 14th of July, at Riosecco, and defeated them in a desperate action, in which not less than 20,000 Spaniards died. This calamitous battle it was which opened the gates of Madrid to the intrusive king—whose arrival in that capital on the 20th of the same month has already been mentioned.
But Joseph was not destined to remain long in Madrid: the fortune of war, after the great day of Riosecco, was everywhere on the side of the patriots. Duhesme, who had so treacherously possessed himself of Barcelona and Figueras, found himself surrounded by the Catalonian mountaineers, who, after various affairs, in which much blood was shed on both sides, compelled him to shut himself up in Barcelona. Marshal Moncey conducted another large division of the French towards Valencia, and was to have been further reinforced by a detachment from Duhesme. The course of events in Catalonia prevented Duhesme from affording any such assistance; and the inhabitants of Valencia, male and female, rising en masse, and headed by their clergy, manned their walls with such determined resolution, that the French marshal was at length compelled to retreat. He fell back upon the main body, under Bessieres, but did not effect a conjunction with them until his troops had suffered miserably in their march through an extensive district, in which every inhabitant was a watchful enemy.
A far more signal catastrophe had befallen another powerful corps d'armée, under General Dupont, which marched from Madrid towards the south, with the view of suppressing all symptoms of insurrection in that quarter, and, especially, of securing the great naval station of Cadiz, where a French squadron lay, watched, as usual, by the English. Dupont's force was increased as he advanced, till it amounted to 20,000 men; and with these he took possession of Baylen and La Carolina, in Andalusia, and stormed Jaen. But before he could make these acquisitions, the citizens of Cadiz had universally taken the patriot side; the commander of the French vessels had been forced to surrender them; and the place, having opened a communication with the English fleet, assumed a posture of determined defence. General Castaños, the Spanish commander in that province, meanwhile, having held back from battle until his raw troops should have had time to be disciplined, began at length to threaten the position of the French. Jaen was attacked by him with such vigour, that Dupont was fain to evacuate it, and fall back to Baylen, where his troops soon suffered severe privations, the peasantry being in arms all around them, and the supply of food becoming from day to day more difficult. On the 16th of July, Dupont was attacked at Baylen by Castaños, who knew from an intercepted despatch the extent of his enemy's distress: the French were beaten, and driven as far as Menjibar. They returned on the 18th, and attempted to recover Baylen; but, after a long and desperate battle, in which 3000 of the French were killed, Dupont, perceiving that the Spaniards were gathering all around in numbers not to be resisted, proposed to capitulate. In effect, he and 20,000 soldiers laid down their arms at Baylen, on condition that they should be transported in safety into France. The Spaniards broke this convention, and detained them as prisoners—thus, foolishly as well a wickedly, imitating the perfidy of Napoleon's own conduct to Spain. This battle and capitulation of Baylen were termed by the Emperor himself the Caudine forks of the French army. He attributed the disaster to treachery on the part of Dupont: it was the result of the rashness of the expedition, and the incompetency of the conductor. The richest part of Spain was freed wholly of the invaders: the light troops of Castaños pushed on, and swept the country before them; and within ten days, King Joseph perceived the necessity of quitting Madrid, and removed his headquarters to Vittoria.
In the meantime Lefebre Desnouettes, whose early success in Arragon has been alluded to, was occupied with the siege of Zaragossa—the inhabitants of which city had risen in the first outbreak, and prepared to defend their walls to the last extremity. Don Jose Palafox, a young nobleman of no great talents, who had made his escape from Bayonne, was invested with the command; but the real leaders were the priests and some of the private citizens, who selected him for the prominent place as belonging to a family of eminent distinction in their kingdom, but in effect considered and used him as their tool. Some Spanish and Walloon regiments, who had formed the garrisons of strong places treacherously seized by the enemy before the war commenced, had united with Palafox, and various bloody skirmishes had occurred—ere the French general was enabled to shut them up in Zaragossa and form the siege. The importance of success in this enterprise was momentous, especially after the failure of Moncey at Valencia. Napoleon himself early saw, that if the Valencians should be able to form an union with the Arragonese at Zaragossa, the situation of the Catalonian insurgents on the one side would be prodigiously strengthened; while, on the other hand, the armies of Leon and Galicia (whose coasts offered the means of continual communication with England) would conduct their operations in the immediate vicinity of the only great road left open between Madrid and Bayonne—the route by Burgos. He therefore had instructed Savary to consider Zaragossa as an object of the very highest importance; but the corps of Lefebre was not strengthened as the Emperor would have wished it to be, ere he sat down before Zaragossa. The siege was pressed with the utmost vigour; but the immortal heroism of the citizens baffled all the valour of the French. There were no regular works worthy of notice: but the old Moorish walls, not above eight or ten feet in height, and some extensive monastic buildings in the outskirts of the city, being manned by crowds of determined men, whose wives and daughters looked on, nay, mingled boldly in their defence—the besiegers were held at bay week after week, and saw their ranks thinned in continual assaults without being able to secure any adequate advantage. Famine came and disease in its train, to aggravate the sufferings of the townspeople; but they would listen to no suggestions but those of the same proud spirit in which they had begun. The French at length gained possession of the great convent of St. Engracia, and thus established themselves within the town itself: their general then sent to Palafox this brief summons: "Headquarters, Santa Engracia—Capitulation"; but he received for answer: "Headquarters, Zaragossa—War to the knife." The battle was maintained literally from street to street, from house to house, and from chamber to chamber. Men and women fought side by side, amidst flames and carnage; until Lefebre received the news of Baylen, and having wasted two months in his enterprise, abandoned it abruptly, lest he should find himself insulated amidst the general retreat of the French armies. Such was the first of the two famous sieges of Zaragossa.
The English government meanwhile had begun their preparations for interfering effectually in the affairs of the Peninsula. They had despatched one body of troops to the support of Castaños in Andalusia; but these did not reach the south of Spain until their assistance was rendered unnecessary by the surrender of Dupont at Baylen. A more considerable force, amounting to 10,000, sailed early in June, from Cork, for Coruña, under the command of the Honourable Sir Arthur Wellesley. This armament, originally designed to co-operate with another from India in a great attack on Mexico, had its destination altered the moment the Spanish Insurrection was announced. Sir Arthur, being permitted to land at what point of the Peninsula he should judge most advantageous for the general cause, was soon satisfied that Portugal ought to be the first scene of his operations, and accordingly lost no time in opening a communication with the patriots, who had taken possession of Oporto. Here the troops which had been designed to aid Castaños joined him. Thus strengthened, and well informed of the state of the French armies in Spain, Sir Arthur resolved to effect a landing and attack Junot while circumstances seemed to indicate no chance of his being reinforced by Bessieres.
It is, perhaps, an evil unavoidable in the institutions of an old and settled government, that men rarely, very rarely, unless they possess the advantages of illustrious birth and connection, can hope to be placed in situations of the highest importance until they have passed the prime vigour of their days. Sir Arthur Wellesley, fortunately for England and for Europe, commenced life under circumstances eminently favourable for the early development and recognition of his great talents. To his brother, the Marquis Wellesley's rank as Governor-General of India, he owed the opportunity of conducting our armies in the East at a time of life when, if of inferior birth, he could hardly have commanded a battalion; and the magnificent campaign of Assaye so established his reputation, that shortly after his return to Europe he was entrusted without hesitation with the armament assembled at Cork.
It was on the 8th of August, 1808—a day ever memorable in the history of Britain—that Sir Arthur Wellesley effected his debarkation in the bay of Mondego. He immediately commenced his march towards Lisbon, and on the 17th came up with the enemy under General Laborde, strongly posted on an eminence near Roriça. The French contested their ground gallantly, but were driven from it at the point of the bayonet, and compelled to retreat. The British General, having hardly any cavalry, was unable to pursue them so closely as he otherwise would have done: and Laborde succeeded in joining his shattered division to the rest of the French forces in Portugal. Junot (recently created Duke of Abrantes) now took the command in person; and finding himself at the head of full 24,000 troops, while the English army were greatly inferior in numbers, and miserably supplied with cavalry and artillery, he did not hesitate to assume the offensive. On the 21st of August he attacked Sir Arthur at Vimiero. In the language of the English General's despatch, "a most desperate contest ensued"; and the result was "a signal defeat," Junot, having lost thirteen cannon and more than two thousand men, immediately fell back upon Lisbon, where his position was protected by the strong defile of the Torres Vedras.
This retreat would not have been accomplished without much more fighting, had Sir Arthur Wellesley been permitted to follow up his victory, according to the dictates of his own understanding and the enthusiastic wishes of his army. But just as the battle was about to begin, Sir Harry Burrard, an old officer of superior rank, unfortunately entitled to assume the chief command, arrived on the field. Finding that Sir Arthur had made all his dispositions, General Burrard handsomely declined interfering until the fortune of the day should be decided; but he took the command as soon as the victory was won, and more cautiously than wisely, prevented the army from instantly advancing, as Sir Arthur Wellesley proposed, upon the coast road towards Mafra, and thus endeavouring to intercept the retreat of Junot upon Lisbon. Sir Harry, having made this unhappy use of his command, was, the very next day, superseded in his turn by Sir Hew Dalrymple, the Governor of Gibraltar; another veteran more disposed to imitate the prudence of Burrard than the daring of Wellesley.
Shortly after the third general had taken the command, Junot sent Kellerman to demand a truce, and propose a convention for the evacuation of Portugal by the troops under his orders. Dalrymple received Kellerman with more eagerness of civility than became the chief of a victorious army, and forthwith granted the desired armistice. Junot offered to surrender his magazine, stores, and armed vessels, provided the British would disembark his soldiers, with their arms, at any French port between Rochefort and L'Orient, and permit them to take with them their private property; and Dalrymple did not hesitate to agree to these terms, although Sir John Moore arrived off the coast with a reinforcement of 10,000 men during the progress of the negotiation. The famous "Convention of Cintra" (most absurdly so named, as it was in fact concluded thirty miles from Cintra) was signed accordingly on the 30th of August; and the French army wholly evacuated Portugal in the manner provided for. The English people heard with indignation that the spoilers of Portugal had been suffered to escape on such terms; and the article concerning private property gave especial offence, as under that cover the French removed with them a large share of the plunder which they had amassed by merciless violence and rapacity during their occupation of the Portuguese territories. A parliamentary investigation was followed by a court-martial, which acquitted Dalrymple. In truth it seems now to be admitted, by competent judges, that after Burrard had interfered so as to prevent Wellesley from instantly following up the success of Vimiero, and so enabled Junot to re-occupy Lisbon and secure the pass of the Torres Vedras, it would have been imprudent to decline the terms proffered by a repelled, but still powerful enemy—who, if driven to extremities, could hardly fail to prolong the war, until Napoleon should be able to send him additional forces from Spain. Meanwhile Portugal was free from the presence of her enemies; England had obtained a permanent footing within the Peninsula; what was of still higher moment, the character of the British army was raised not only abroad, but at home; and had the two insurgent nations availed themselves, as they ought to have done, of the resources which their great ally placed at their command, and conducted their own affairs with unity and strength of purpose, the deliverance of the whole peninsula might have been achieved years before that consummation actually took place.
The Portuguese, however, split into factions—under leaders whose primary objects were selfish, who rivalled each other in their absurd jealousy of England, afforded to her troops no such supplies and facilities as they had the best title to demand and expect, and wasted their time in petty political intrigues, instead of devoting every energy to the organisation of an efficient army, and improving the defences of their naturally strong frontier. The Spaniards conducted themselves with even more signal imprudence. For months each provincial junta seemed to prefer the continuance of its own authority to the obvious necessity of merging all their powers in some central body, capable of controlling and directing the whole force of the nation; and after a supreme junta was at last established in Madrid, its orders were continually disputed and disobeyed—so that in effect there was no national government. Equally disgraceful jealousies among the generals prevented the armies from being placed under one supreme chief, responsible for the combination of all their movements. In place of this it was with difficulty that the various independent generals could be prevailed on even to meet at Madrid, and agree to the outline of a joint campaign; and that outline seemed to have no recommendation except that its gross military defects held out to each member of the Council the prospect of being able to act without communication, for good or for evil, with any of the others. The consequences of these shameful follies were calamitous: and but for events which could not have been foreseen, must have proved fatal: for the gigantic resources of the common enemy were about to be set in motion by Napoleon himself; who, on hearing of the reverses of Dupont, Lefebre, and Junot, perceived too clearly that the affairs of the Peninsula demanded a keener eye and a firmer hand than his brother's.
Three Spanish armies, each unfortunately under an independent chief, were at length in motion: their nominal strength was 130,000 men; in reality they never exceeded 100,000. Had they been combined under an able general, they might have assaulted the French army, now not exceeding 60,000, with every likelihood of success; for the position first taken up by King Joseph, after his retreat into the north, was very defective; but the Spaniards chose their basis of operations so absurdly, and were so dilatory afterwards, that Napoleon had time both to rectify Joseph's blunders and to reinforce his legions effectually, before they were able to achieve any considerable advantage.
Blake, who commanded on the west, extended his line from Burgos to Bilboa; Palafox, on the east, lay between Zaragossa and Sanguessa; Castaños, general of the central army, had his headquarters at Soria. The three armies thus lay in a long and feeble crescent, of which the horns were pushed towards the French frontier; while the enemy, resting on three strong fortresses, remained on the defensive until the Emperor should pour new forces through the passes of the Pyrenees. It was expected that the English army in Portugal would forthwith advance, and put themselves in communication either with Blake or with Castaños; and had this junction occurred soon after the battle of Virniero, the result might have been decisive: but Wellesley was recalled to London to bear witness on the trial of Dalrymple; and Sir John Moore, who then assumed the command, received neither such supplies as were necessary for any great movement, nor any clear and authentic intelligence from the authorities of Madrid, nor finally any distinct orders from his own government—until the favourable moment had gone by. In effect, Napoleon's gigantic reinforcements had begun to show themselves within the Spanish frontier, a week before the English general was in a condition to commence his march.
The Emperor, enraged at the first positive disgraces which had ever befallen his arms, and foreseeing that unless the Spanish insurrection were crushed ere the Patriots had time to form a regular government and to organise their armies, the succours of England, and the growing discontents of Germany, might invest the task with insurmountable difficulties, determined to cross the Pyrenees in person, at the head of a force capable of sweeping the whole Peninsula clear before him "at one fell swoop." Hitherto no mention of the unfortunate occurrences in Spain had been made in any public act of his government, or suffered to transpire in any of the French journals. It was now necessary to break this haughty silence. The Emperor announced accordingly that the peasants of Spain had rebelled against their King; that treachery had caused the ruin of one corps of his army; and that another had been forced, by the English, to evacuate Portugal: demanding two new conscriptions, each of 80,000 men—which were of course granted without hesitation. Recruiting his camps on the German side, and in Italy, with these new levies, he now ordered his veteran troops, to the amount of 200,000, including a vast and brilliant cavalry, and a large body of the Imperial Guards, to be drafted from those frontiers, and marched through France towards Spain. As these warlike columns passed through Paris, Napoleon addressed to them one of those orations which never failed to swell the resolution and pride of his soldiery on the eve of some great enterprise. "Comrades," said he, "after triumphing on the banks of the Danube and the Vistula, with rapid steps you have passed through Germany. This day, without a moment of repose, I command you to traverse France. Soldiers, I have need of you. The hideous presence of the leopard contaminates the peninsula of Spain and Portugal. In terror he must fly before you. Let us bear our triumphant eagles to the Pillars of Hercules: there also we have injuries to avenge. Soldiers! you have surpassed the renown of modern armies; but have you yet equalled the glory of those Romans, who, in one and the same campaign, were victorious on the Rhine, and the Euphrates, in Illyria and on the Tagus? A long peace, a lasting prosperity, shall be the reward of your labours. A real Frenchman could not, should not rest, until the seas are free and open to all. Soldiers, what you have done, and what you are about to do, for the happiness of the French people and for my glory, shall be eternal in my heart!"
Having thus dismissed his troops on their way, Buonaparte himself travelled rapidly to Erfurt, where he had invited the Emperor Alexander to confer with him. It was most needful that before he went to Spain himself, he should ascertain the safety of his empire on the other side; and there was much in the state of Germany that might well give rise to serious apprehensions. Austria was strengthening her military establishment to a vast extent, and had, by a recent law, acquired the means of drawing on her population unlimitedly, after the method of Napoleon's own conscription code. She professed pacific intentions towards France, and intimated that her preparations were designed for the protection of her Turkish frontier; but the Emperor Francis positively declined to acknowledge Joseph Buonaparte as King of Spain; and this refusal was quite sufficient for Napoleon. In Prussia, meantime, and indeed all over Germany, a spirit of deep and settled enmity was manifesting itself in the shape of patriotic clubs (the chief being called the Tugend-bund, or Alliance of Virtue), which included the young and the daring of every class, and threatened, at no distant period, to convulse the whole fabric of society with the one purpose of clearing the national soil of its foreign oppressors. Napoleon affected to deride, but secretly estimated at its true importance, the danger of such associations, if permitted to take firm root among a people so numerous, so enthusiastic, and so gallant. Lastly, there is every reason to believe that, cordial as the Czar's friendship had seemed to be at Tilsit, Buonaparte appreciated the unpopularity of his "continental system" in Russia, and the power of the aristocracy there, far too accurately, not to entertain some suspicion that Alexander himself might be compelled to take the field against him, should England succeed in persuading Austria and Germany to rise in arms during his own absence in Spain. For these reasons he had requested the Czar's presence at Erfurt; and this conference was apparently as satisfactory to either as that of Tilsit had been. They addressed a joint letter to the King of England, proposing once more a general peace; but as they both refused to acknowledge any authority in Spain save that of King Joseph, the answer was of course in the negative. Buonaparte, however, had obtained his object when he thus exhibited the Czar and himself as firmly allied. He perceived clearly that Austria was determined on another campaign; gave orders for concentrating and increasing his own armies, accordingly, both in Germany and Italy; and—trusting to the decision and rapidity of his own movements, and the comparative slowness of his ancient enemy—dared to judge that he might still bring matters to an issue in Spain, before his presence should be absolutely necessary beyond the Rhine.
On the 14th of October the conferences of Erfurt terminated; on the 24th Napoleon was present at the opening of the Legislative Session in Paris; two days after he left that capital, and reached Bayonne on the 3rd of November, where he remained, directing the movements of the last columns of his advancing army, until the morning of the 8th. He arrived at Vittoria the same evening: the civil and military authorities met him at the gates of the town, and would have conducted him to a house prepared for his reception, but he leapt from his horse, entered the first inn that he observed, and calling for maps and a detailed report of the position of all the armies, French and Spanish, proceeded instantly to draw up his plan for the prosecution of the war. Within two hours he had completed his task. Soult, who had accompanied him from Paris, and whom he ordered to take the command of Bessieres' corps, set off on the instant, reached Briviesca, where its headquarters were, at daybreak on the 9th, and within a few hours the whole machinery was once more in motion.
Napoleon had, early in October, signified to Joseph that the French cause in Spain, would always be favoured by acting on the offensive, and his disapproval of the extent to which the King had retreated had not been heard in vain. General Blake's army had already been brought to action, and defeated disastrously by Moncey, at Espinosa; from which point Blake had most injudiciously retreated towards Reynosa, instead of Burgos, where another army, meant to support his right, had assembled under the orders of the Count de Belvedere.
Soult now poured down his columns on the plains of Burgos. Belvedere was defeated by him at Gomenal even more easily than Blake had been at Espinosa. The latter, again defeated by the indefatigable Soult, at Reynosa, was obliged to take refuge, with what hardly could be called even the skeleton of an army, in the seaport of St. Ander. Thus the whole of the Spanish left was dissipated; and the French right remained at liberty to march onwards at their pleasure.
Palafox meanwhile had effected at length a junction with Castaños; and the combined Spanish armies of the centre and the east awaited the French attack, on the 22nd of November, at Tudela. The disaster here was still more complete. Castaños and Palafox separated in the moment of overthrow; the former escaping to Calatayud with the wreck of his troops, while the latter made his way once more to Zaragossa.
Napoleon now saw the main way to Madrid open before him—except that some forces were said to be posted at the strong defile of the Somosierra, within ten miles of the capital; while Soult, continuing his march by Carrion and Valladolid, could at once keep in check the English, in case they were still so daring as to advance from Portugal, and outflank the Somosierra, in case the mountains should be so defended as to bar the Emperor's approach in that direction to Madrid. Palafox was pursued, and soon shut up in Zaragossa by Lannes. That heroic city on the east, the British army on the west, and Madrid in front, were the only far-separated points on which any show of opposition was still to be traced—from the frontiers of France to those of Portugal, from the sea coast to the Tagus.
Napoleon, with his guards and the first division, marched towards Madrid. His vanguard reached the foot of the Somosierra chain on the 30th of November, and found that a corps of 12,000 men had been assembled for the defence of the pass, under General St. Juan. No stronger position could well be fancied than that of the Spaniards: the defile was narrow, and excessively steep, and the road completely swept by sixteen pieces of artillery. At daybreak, on the 1st of December, the French began their attempt to turn the flanks of St. Juan: three battalions scattered themselves over the opposite sides of the defile, and a warm skirmishing fire had begun. At this moment Buonaparte came up. He rode into the mouth of the pass, surveyed the scene for an instant, perceived that his infantry were making no progress, and at once conceived the daring idea of causing his Polish lancers to charge right up the causeway in face of the battery. The smoke of the skirmishers on the hill-sides mingled with the thick fogs and vapours of the morning, and under this veil the brave Krazinski led his troopers impetuously up the ascent. The Spanish infantry fired as they passed them, threw down their arms, abandoned their entrenchments, and fled. The Poles speared the gunners, and took possession of the cannon. The Spaniards continued their flight in such disorder that they were at last fain to quit the road to Madrid, and escape in the direction, some of Segovia, others of Talaveyra. On the morning of the 2nd, three divisions of French cavalry made their appearance on the high ground to the north-west of the capital.
During eight days the inhabitants had been preparing the means of resistance. A local and military junta had been invested with authority to conduct the defence. Six thousand regular troops were in the town, and crowds of the citizens and of the peasantry of the adjoining country were in arms along with them. The pavement had been taken up, the streets barricadoed, the houses on the outskirts loopholed, and the Retiro, a large but weak edifice, occupied by a strong garrison. Terrible violence prevailed—many persons suspected of adhering to the side of the French were assassinated; the bells of churches and convents rung incessantly; ferocious bands paraded the streets day and night: and at the moment when the enemy's cavalry appeared, the universal uproar seemed to announce that he was about to find a new and a greater Zaragossa in Madrid.
The town was summoned at noon; and the officer employed would have been massacred by the mob but for the interference of the Spanish regulars. Napoleon waited until his infantry and artillery came up in the evening, and then the place was invested on one side. "The night was clear and bright" (says Napier); "the French camp was silent and watchful; but the noise of tumult was heard from every quarter of the city, as if some mighty beast was struggling and howling in the toils." At midnight the city was again summoned; and the answer being still defiance, the batteries began to open. In the course of the day the Retiro was stormed, and the immense palace of the Dukes of Medina Celi, which commands one side of the town, seized also. Terror now began to prevail within; and shortly after the city was summoned, for the third time, Don Thomas Morla, the governor, came out to demand a suspension of arms. Napoleon received him with anger, and rebuked him for the violation of the capitulation at Baylen. "Injustice and bad faith," said he, "always recoil on those who are guilty of them." Many an honester Spaniard was obliged to listen in silence to such words from the negotiator of Fontainebleau and Bayonne.
Morla was a coward, and there is no doubt a traitor also. On returning to the town he urged the necessity of instantly capitulating; and most of those in authority took a similar part, except Castellas, the commander of the regular troops. The peasantry and citizens kept firing on the French outposts during the night; but Castellas, perceiving that the civil rulers were all against further resistance, withdrew his troops and sixteen cannon in safety. At eight in the morning of the 4th, Madrid surrendered. The Spaniards were disarmed, and the town filled with the French army. Napoleon took up his residence at Chamartin, a country house four miles off. In a few days tranquillity seemed completely re-established. The French soldiery observed excellent discipline: the shops were re-opened, and the theatres frequented as usual. Such is in most cases the enthusiasm of a great city!
Napoleon now exercised all the rights of a conqueror. He issued edicts abolishing the Inquisition, all feudal rights, and all particular jurisdictions; regulating the number of monks; increasing, at the expense of the monastic establishments, the stipends of the parochial clergy; and proclaiming a general amnesty, with only ten exceptions. He received a deputation of the chief inhabitants, who came to signify their desire to see Joseph among them again. His answer was, that Spain was his own by right of conquest; that he could easily rule it by viceroys; but that if they chose to assemble in their churches, priests and people, and swear allegiance to Joseph, he was not indisposed to listen to their request.
This was a secondary matter: meantime the Emperor was making his dispositions for the completion of his conquest. His plan was to invade forthwith Andalusia, Valencia and Galicia, by his lieutenants, and to march in person to Lisbon. Nor was this vast plan beyond his means; for he had at that moment 255,000 men, 50,000 horses, and 100 pieces of field artillery, actually ready for immediate service in Spain: while 80,000 men and 100 cannon, besides, were in reserve, all on the south side of the Pyrenees. To oppose this gigantic force there were a few poor defeated corps of Spaniards, widely separated from each other, and flying already before mere detachments: Seville, whose local junta had once more assumed the nominal sovereignty, and guarded in front by a feeble corps in the Sierra Morena; Valencia, without a regular garrison; Zaragossa, closely invested, and resisting once more with heroic determination; and the British army under Sir John Moore. The moment Napoleon was informed that Moore had advanced into Spain, he abandoned every other consideration, and resolved in person to march and overwhelm him.
The English general had, as we have already seen, been prevented by circumstances over which he could have no control, from commencing his campaign so early as he desired, and as the situation of the Spanish armies, whom he was meant to support, demanded. At length, however, he put his troops, 20,000 in number, into motion, and advanced in the direction of Salamanca; while a separate British corps of 13,000, under Sir David Baird, recently landed at Coruña, had orders to march through Galicia, and effect a junction with Moore either at Salamanca or Valladolid. The object of the British was of course to support the Spanish armies of Blake and Belvedere in their defence: but owing to the delays and blundering intelligence already alluded to, these armies were in a hopeless condition before Sir John Moore's march began.
The news of the decisive defeat of Castaños, at Tudela, satisfied Moore that the original purpose of his march was now out of the question; but, having at length effected a junction with Baird, he felt extreme unwillingness to retreat without attempting something. He continued to receive from Madrid the most solemn assurances that the resistance of the capital would be desperate: and, with more generosity than prudence, resolved to attack Soult, then posted behind the Carrion. In doing so he fancied it possible that he should defeat an important branch of the enemy's force, intercept the communications of the Emperor's left flank, give Romana time to re-organise an army in Galicia, create a formidable diversion in favour of the south of Spain, if not of Madrid—and, at worst, secure for himself a safe retreat upon Coruña; from which port his troops might be sent round without difficulty to Seville, to take part in the defence of that part of the Peninsula which was yet unbroken and the seat of the actual government.
But Buonaparte, hearing on the 20th of December of the advance of Moore, instantly put himself at the head of 50,000 men, and marched with incredible rapidity, with the view of intercepting his communications with Portugal, and in short hemming him in between himself and Soult. Moore no sooner heard that Napoleon was approaching, than he perceived the necessity of an immediate retreat; and he commenced accordingly a most calamitous one through the naked mountains of Galicia, in which his troops maintained their character for bravery, rallying with zeal whenever the French threatened their rear, but displayed a lamentable want of discipline in all other part of their conduct. The weather was tempestuous; the roads miserable; the commissariat utterly defective; and the very notion of retreat broke the high spirits of the soldiery. They ill-treated the inhabitants, drank whatever strong liquors they could obtain, straggled from their ranks, and in short lost the appearance of an army except when the trumpet warned them that they might expect the French charge. Soult hung close on their rear until they reached Coruña; and Moore perceived that it would be impossible to embark without either a convention or a battle. He chose the braver alternative. The French were repelled gallantly; and the British were permitted to embark without further molestation. In the moment of victory (January 16, 1809) Sir John Moore fell, mortally wounded by a cannon-shot: his men buried him in his cloak; and the French, in testimony of their admiration of his gallantry, erected a monument over his remains.
Napoleon came up with the troops in pursuit of Moore at Benevente, on the 29th of December, and enjoyed for a moment the spectacle of an English army in full retreat. He saw that Moore was no longer worthy of his own attention, and entrusted the consummation of his ruin to Soult.
It excited universal surprise that the Emperor did not immediately return from Benevente to Madrid, to complete and consolidate his Spanish conquest. He, however, proceeded, not towards Madrid, but Paris; and this with his utmost speed,—riding on post-horses, on one occasion, not less than seventy-five English miles in five hours and a half. The cause of this sudden change of purpose, and extraordinary haste, was a sufficient one; and it ere long transpired.
Napoleon had foreseen that Austria, hardly dissembling her aversion to the "continental system," and openly refusing to acknowledge Joseph as King of Spain, would avail herself of the insurrection of that country, necessarily followed by the march of a great French army across the Pyrenees, as affording a favourable opportunity for once more taking arms, in the hope of recovering what she had lost in the campaign of Austerlitz. His minister, Talleyrand, had, during his absence, made every effort to conciliate the Emperor Francis; but the warlike preparations throughout the Austrian dominions proceeded with increasing vigour—and Napoleon received such intelligence ere he witnessed the retreat of Moore, that he immediately countermanded the march of such of his troops as had not yet reached the Pyrenees,—wrote (from Valladolid) to the princes of the Rhenish league, ordering them to hold their contingents in readiness—and travelled to Paris with extraordinary haste. He reached his capital on the 22nd of January; renewed the negotiations with Vienna; and, in the meantime, recruited and concentrated his armies on the German side—thus adjourning, and as it turned out for ever, the completion of the Spanish conquest.
On the 6th of April, Austria declared war; and on the 9th, the Archduke Charles, Generalissimo of armies which are said to have been recruited, at this period, to the amount of nearly 500,000 men, crossed the Inn at the head of six corps, each consisting of 30,000; while the Archduke John marched with two other divisions towards Italy, by the way of Carinthia; and the Archduke Ferdinand assumed the command of a ninth corps in Galicia, to make head against Russia, in case that power should be forced or tempted by Napoleon to take part in the struggle. Napoleon, having so great an army in Spain, could not hope to oppose numbers such as these to the Austrians; but he trusted to the rapid combinations which had so often enabled him to baffle the same enemy; and the instant he ascertained that Bavaria was invaded by the Archduke Charles, he proceeded, without guards, without equipage, accompanied solely by the faithful Josephine, to Frankfort, and thence to Strasbourg. He assumed the command on the 13th, and immediately formed the plan of his campaign.
He found the two wings of his army, the one under Massena, the other under Davoust, at such a distance from the centre that, if the Austrians had seized the opportunity, the consequences might have been fatal. On the 17th of April, he commanded Davoust and Massena to march simultaneously towards a position in front, and then pushed forward the centre, in person, to the same point. The Archduke Lewis, who commanded two Austrian divisions in advance, was thus hemmed in unexpectedly by three armies, moving at once from three different points; defeated and driven back, at Abensberg, on the 20th; and utterly routed, at Landshut, on the 21st. Here the Archduke lost 9000 men, thirty guns, and all his stores.
Next day Buonaparte executed a variety of movements, considered as among the most admirable displays of his science, by means of which he brought his whole force, by different routes, at one and the same moment upon the position of the Archduke Charles. That prince was strongly posted at Eckmuhl, with full 100,000 men. Napoleon charged him at two in the afternoon; the battle was stern and lasted till nightfall, but it ended in a complete overthrow. The Austrians, besides their loss in the field, left in Napoleon's hands 20,000 prisoners, fifteen colours, and the greater part of their artillery; and retreated in utter disorder upon Ratisbonne. The Archduke made an attempt to rally his troops and defend that city, on the 23rd; but the French stormed the walls and drove the Austrians through the streets: and their general immediately retreated into Bohemia: thus; in effect, abandoning Vienna to the mercy of his conqueror.
Napoleon was wounded in the foot during the storming of Ratisbonne, and for a moment the troops crowded round him in great alarm; but he scarcely waited to have his wound dressed, threw himself again on horseback, and restored confidence by riding along the lines.
Thus, in five days, in spite of inferiority of numbers, and of the unfavourable manner in which his lieutenants had distributed an inferior force, by the sole energy of his genius did the Emperor triumph over the main force of his opponent.
He reviewed his army on the 24th, distributing rewards of all sorts with a lavish hand, and, among others, bestowing the title of Duke of Eckmuhl on Davoust; and forthwith commenced his march upon Vienna. The corps defeated at Landshut had retreated in that direction, and being considerably recruited, made some show of obstructing his progress; but they were defeated again and totally broken at Ehrensberg, on the 3rd of May, by Massena, and on the 9th Napoleon appeared before the walls of the capital. The Emperor had already quitted it, with all his family, except his daughter, the Archduchess Maria Louisa, who was confined to her chamber by illness. The Archduke Maximilian, with the regular garrison of 10,000 men, evacuated it on Napoleon's approach; and though the inhabitants had prepared for a vigorous resistance, the bombardment soon convinced them that it was hopeless. It perhaps deserves to be mentioned, that on learning the situation of the sick princess, Buonaparte instantly commanded that no fire should be directed towards that part of the town. On the 10th a capitulation was signed, the French troops took possession of the city, and Napoleon once more established his headquarters in the imperial palace of Schoenbrunn.
In the meantime, the Archduke Ferdinand had commenced the war in Poland, and obtaining the advantage in several affairs, taken possession of Warsaw; but the news of Eckmuhl recalled this division to the support of the main army, under the Archduke Charles; and the Russian troops not only retook Warsaw, but occupied the whole of the Austro-Polish provinces. Alexander, however, showed no disposition to push the war with vigour, or to advance into Germany for the support of Napoleon. In Italy, in like manner, the Archduke John had at first been successful. But after defeating Eugene Beauharnois, Napoleon's viceroy, and taking possession of Padua and Vicenza, this prince also was summoned to retrace his steps, in consequence of the catastrophe at Eckmuhl. Eugene pursued him into Hungary, and defeated him in a great battle at Raab. Colonel Schill, the Prussian partisan already mentioned, had availed himself of the concentration of Napoleon's troops for the Austrian campaign, to take up arms, though without any authority from his sovereign, in the hope that the national resentment would burst out in an universal insurrection; and the Duke of Brunswick, son to him who was mortally wounded at Jena, had also appeared in Lusatia, and invited all true Germans to imitate the heroic conduct of the Spaniards. These occurrences threatened a general burst of war wherever the Tugend-bund and other patriotic associations had for some time been strongly influencing the popular mind. The battle of Eckmuhl, however, diffused new awe all over the north of Germany. The troops of Saxony checked the Duke of Brunswick's progress, and Schill's heroic band were at last shut up in Stralsund, where their leader perished in a sortie; thus, and only thus, escaping the vengeance of Napoleon.
Among the mountains of the Tyrol, the native zeal of a few hardy peasants achieved more than all the mighty population of Germany. This ancient province of the house of Austria had been, in sinful violation of all the rights of mankind, transferred to the hated yoke of Bavaria, by the treaty of Presburg. The mountaineers no sooner heard that their rightful sovereign was once more in arms against Napoleon, than they rose (early in April), under the guidance of Hofer, a gallant peasant, seized the strong passes of their country, and, in the course of four days, made every French and Bavarian soldier quartered among them a prisoner,—with the exception of the garrison of the fortress of Kufstein. Napoleon caused Lefebre to march into the country with his division; but Hofer posted his followers on the edge of precipices, from which they fired on the French columns with the skill of practised marksmen, and rolled down torrents of stones with such effect, that Lefebre was compelled to retreat. Austria, however, having enough of work at home, could not afford to sustain the efforts of these heroic peasants by any detachment of regular troops. On the retirement of Lefebre, they issued from their hills and wasted the neighbouring territory of Bavaria; but the general issue of the campaign left them at the mercy of Napoleon, who suppressed the insurrection, finally, by overwhelming numbers, and avenged it by massacring Hofer and all who had taken a prominent part in the cause of freedom.
These popular movements, however, could not be regarded with indifference by him who had witnessed and appreciated the character of the Spanish insurrection. Napoleon well knew, that unless he concluded the main contest soon, the spirit of Schill and Hofer would kindle a general flame from the Rhine to the Elbe; and he therefore desired fervently that the Austrian generalissimo might be tempted to quit the fastnesses of Bohemia, and try once more the fortune of a battle.
The Archduke, having re-established the order and recruited the numbers of his army, had anticipated these wishes of his enemy, and was already posted on the opposite bank of the Danube, which river, being greatly swollen, and all the bridges destroyed, seemed to divide the two camps, as by an impassable barrier.
Napoleon determined to pass it; and after an unsuccessful attempt at Nussdorff, met with better fortune at Ebersdorff, where the river is broad and intersected by a number of low and woody islands, the largest of which bears the name of Lobau. On these islands Napoleon established the greater part of his army, on the 19th of May, and on the following day made good his passage, by means of a bridge of boats, to the left bank of the Danube; where he took possession of the villages of Asperne and Essling, with so little show of opposition, that it became evident the Archduke wished the inevitable battle to take place with the river between his enemy and Vienna.
On the 21st, at daybreak, the Archduke appeared on a rising ground, separated from the French position by an extensive plain; his whole force divided into five heavy columns, and protected by not less than 200 pieces of artillery. The battle began at four p.m., with a furious assault on the village of Asperne; which was taken and retaken several times, and remained at nightfall in the occupation, partly of the French, and partly of the assailants, who had established themselves in the church and churchyard. Essling sustained three attacks also; but there the French remained in complete possession. Night interrupted the action; the Austrians exulting in their partial success; Napoleon surprised that he should not have been wholly victorious. On either side the carnage had been terrible, and the pathways of the villages were literally choked with the dead.
Next morning the battle recommenced with equal fury; the French recovered the church of Asperne; but the Austrian right wing renewed their assaults on that point with more and more vigour, and in such numbers, that Napoleon guessed the centre and left had been weakened for the purpose of strengthening the right. Upon this he instantly moved such masses, en échelon, on the Austrian centre, that the Archduke's line was shaken; and for a moment it seemed as if victory was secure.
At this critical moment, by means of Austrian fireships suddenly sent down the swollen and rapid river, the bridge connecting the island of Lobau with the right bank was wholly swept away. Buonaparte perceived that if he wished to preserve his communications with the right of the Danube, where his reserve still lay, he must instantly fall back on Lobau; and no sooner did his troops commence their backward movement, than the Austrians recovered their order and zeal, charged in turn and finally made themselves masters of Asperne. Essling, where Massena commanded, held firm, and under the protection of that village and numerous batteries erected near it, Napoleon succeeded in withdrawing his whole force during the night. On the morning of the 23rd the French were cooped up in Lobau and the adjacant islands—Asperne, Essling, the whole left bank of the river, remaining in the possession of the Austrians. On either side a great victory was claimed; and with equal injustice. But the situation of the French Emperor was imminently hazardous: he was separated from Davoust and his reserve; and had the enemy either attacked him in the islands, or passed the river higher up, and so overwhelmed Davoust and relieved Vienna, the results might have been fatal. But the Archduke's loss in these two days had been great; and, in place of risking any offensive movement, he contented himself with strengthening the position of Asperne and Essling, and awaiting quietly the moment when his enemy should choose to attempt once more the passage to the left bank, and the re-occupation of these hardly contested villages.
Napoleon availed himself of this pause with his usual skill. That he had been checked was true, and that the news would be heard with enthusiasm through Germany he well knew. It was necessary to revive the tarnished magic of his name by another decisive battle: and he made every exertion to prepare for it. Some weeks, however, elapsed ere he ventured to resume the offensive. On the 4th of July he had at last re-established thoroughly his communication with the right bank, and arranged the means of passing to the left at a point where the Archduke had made hardly any preparation for receiving him. The Austrians, having rashly calculated that Asperne and Essling must needs be the objects of the next contest as of the preceding, were taken almost unawares by his appearance in another quarter. They changed their line on the instant; and occupied a position, the centre and key of which was the little town of Wagram.
Here, on the 6th of July, the final and decisive battle was fought. The Archduke had extended his line over too wide a space; and this old error enabled Napoleon to ruin him by his old device of pouring the full shock of his strength on the centre. The action was long and bloody: at its close there remained 20,000 prisoners, besides all the artillery and baggage, in the hands of Napoleon. The Archduke fled in great confusion as far as Znaim, in Moravia. The Imperial Council perceived that further resistance was vain: an armistice was agreed to at Znaim; and Napoleon, returning to Schoenbrunn, continued occupied with the negotiation until October.
In this fierce campaign none more distinguished himself than Lannes, Duke of Montebello. At Ratisbonne he headed in person the storming party, exclaiming, "Soldiers, your general has not forgotten that he was once a grenadier." At the battle of Asperne his exertions were extraordinary. He was struck, towards the close of the day, by a cannon-shot, which carried off both his legs. The surgeons, on examining the wound, declared it mortal. He answered them with angry imprecations, and called with frantic vehemence for the Emperor. Napoleon came up, and witnessed the agonies of the dying marshal, who blasphemed heaven and earth that he should be denied to see the end of the campaign. Thus fell Lannes, whom, for his romantic valour, the French soldiery delighted to call the Roland of the camp.
The war, meanwhile, had been pursued with mixed fortune in the Peninsula. Zaragossa, after sustaining another siege with fortitude not unworthy of the first, was at length compelled to surrender in the month of February. Sir Arthur Wellesley, being restored to the command of the British army in Portugal, landed at Lisbon on the 22nd of April, and immediately marched upon Oporto, which Soult had occupied early in the year. Soult was defeated under the walls of the town, and forthwith began his retreat towards Galicia, which he effected under circumstances as miserable as had attended Sir John Moore's march on Coruña in the preceding campaign. Sir Arthur was prevented from urging the pursuit of Soult by the intelligence that Marshal Victor was laying Andalusia waste, being opposed only by Cuesta, a bigoted old general, and an army which had lost heart by repeated disasters. The English leader perceived that if he marched into Galicia, Victor must possess the means of instantly re-occupying Portugal; and resolved, in place of following Soult, to advance towards this more formidable enemy. He effected a junction with Cuesta at Oropesa, on the 20th of July, and marched along the Tagus towards the position of Victor. He, however, having a force at least double that of Wellesley, assumed the offensive, and attacked the allies, on the 28th, at Talaveyra de la Reyna. The battle ended in the total defeat and repulsion of Victor; but Wellesley found it impossible to advance further into Spain, because Ney, Soult and Mortier were assembling their divisions, with the view of coming between him and Portugal. The English retired, therefore, to Badajos, and thence to the Portuguese frontier.
On the eastern side of the Peninsula, Blake, advancing with the view of recovering Zaragossa, was met on the 19th of June by Marshal Suchet, Duke of Albufera, and totally routed. The central Spanish army, under Ariezaga, attempted, with equal ill-fortune, to relieve Madrid. King Joseph, accompanied by Soult, Victor, and Mortier, met them at Ocaña on the 19th November, and broke them utterly. In December Girona surrendered to Augereau; and the intrusive King appeared to be in possession of far the greater part of Spain. But his command extended no further than the actual presence of his brother's legions. Wherever they were posted, all was submission; beyond their lines the country remained as hostile as ever. The soldiery of the defeated armies dispersed themselves in small bands, watching every opportunity to surprise detachments and cut off supplies; and, in spite of all their victories, the situation of the invaders became every hour more embarrassing. In Portugal, meanwhile, the English general (created Lord Wellington after the battle of Talaveyra) was gradually organising a native force not unworthy of acting under his banners; and on that side it was obvious that, unless Napoleon made some extraordinary exertions, the French cause was wholly undone.
Portugal was safe; and the character of the British army had been raised by another splendid victory in Spain; but these were trivial advantages compared with what Lord Wellington might have achieved, had his government placed him, as they could easily have done, at the head of an army of 80,000 or 100,000 men, while Napoleon was occupied with the campaign of Essling and Wagram. Instead of strengthening Wellington's hands in an efficient manner, the English cabinet sent 40,000 troops, under the command of the Earl of Chatham, an indolent or incompetent general, to seize the isle of Walcheren, and destroy the shipping and works at the mouth of the Scheld; nor was this ill-judged expedition despatched from Britain until the first of August, three weeks after the decisive battle of Wagram had been fought and won. Lord Chatham took Flushing, and fixed his headquarters at Middleburg; but Bernadotte (Prince of Ponte Corvo) put Antwerp into such a state of defence that the plan of besieging that city was, ere long, abandoned. A pestilence, meantime, raged among the marches of Walcheren; the English soldiers were dying by thousands. The news of the armistice of Znaim arrived; and Lord Chatham abandoned his conquests. A mere skeleton of his army returned to their own country, from the most disastrous expedition which England had undertaken since that of Carthagena, seventy years before.
The announcement of the armistice with Austria put an end, in effect, to all hostile demonstrations on the continent, the Peninsula alone excepted. The brave Schill (as has already been said) was happy enough to fall in the field: his followers, being at last compelled to surrender at Stralsund, were treated as rebels, and died with the constancy of patriots. The Duke of Brunswick, who had by this time obtained considerable successes in Franconia, found himself abandoned, in like manner, to the undivided strength of Napoleon. At the head of a few regiments, whose black uniform announced their devotion to the one purpose of avenging their former sovereign, the Duke succeeded in cutting his way to the Baltic, where some English vessels received him. Germany, in apparent tranquillity, awaited the result of the negotiations of Vienna.
Napoleon, a few days after he returned from Moravia to Schoenbrunn, escaped narrowly the dagger of a young man, who rushed upon him in the midst of all his staff, at a grand review of the Imperial Guard. Berthier and Rapp threw themselves upon him, and disarmed him at the moment when his knife was about to enter the Emperor's body. Napoleon demanded what motive had actuated the assassin. "What injury," said he, "have I done to you?" "To me, personally, none," answered the youth, "but you are the oppressor of my country, the tyrant of the world; and to have put you to death would have been the highest glory of a man of honour." This enthusiastic youth, by name Stabbs, son of a clergyman of Erfurt, was, justly—no doubt—condemned to death, and he suffered with the calmness of a martyr.
Buonaparte led at Schoenbrunn nearly the same course of life to which he was accustomed at the Tuileries; seldom appearing in public; occupied incessantly with his ministers and generals. The length to which the negotiations with Austria were protracted excited much wonder; but he had other business on hand besides his treaty with the Emperor Francis, and that treaty had taken a very unexpected shape.
It was during his residence at Schoenbrunn that a quarrel, of no short standing, with the Pope reached its crisis. The very language of the Consular Concordat sufficiently indicated the reluctance and pain with which the head of the Romish church acquiesced in the arrangements devised by Buonaparte, for the ecclesiastical settlement of France; and the subsequent course of events, but especially in Italy and in Spain, could hardly fail to aggravate those unpleasant feelings. In Spain and in Portugal, the resistance to French treachery and violence was mainly conducted by the priesthood; and the Pope could not contemplate their exertions without sympathy and favour. In Italy, meantime, the French Emperor had made himself master of Naples, and of all the territories lying to the north of the papal states; in a word, the whole of the peninsula was his, excepting only that, narrow central stripe which still acknowledged the temporal sovereignty of the Roman Pontiff. This state of things was necessarily followed by incessant efforts on the part of Napoleon to procure from the Pope a hearty acquiescence in the system of the Berlin and Milan decrees; and thus far he at length prevailed. But when he went on to demand that his holiness should take an active part in the war against England, he was met by a steady refusal. Irritated by this opposition, and, perhaps, still more by his suspicion that the patriots of the Spanish Peninsula received secret support from the Vatican, Buonaparte did not hesitate to issue a decree in the following words: "Whereas the temporal sovereign of Rome has refused to make war against England, and the interests of the two kingdoms of Italy and Naples ought not to be intercepted by a hostile power; and whereas the donation of Charlemagne, our illustrious predecessor, of the countries which form the Holy See, was for the good of Christianity, and not for that of the enemies of our holy religion, we, therefore, decree that the duchies of Urbino, Ancona, Macerata, and Camarino, be for ever united to the kingdom of Italy."