FOOTNOTES
[1] I need only mention the diaries of Sir Harry Smith, Blakeney, Shaw, and Tomkinson on our side, and Foy’s private diary and the Memoirs of Fantin des Odoards, St. Chamans, and Thiébault on the French.
[2] He works out the idea in his letter to Talleyrand of May 16, 1806.
[3] Such is the main thesis of chapter I of Napier’s Peninsular War.
[4] It is curious to note how often the name of Charlemagne occurs in Napoleon’s letters during the early months of 1806. It is especially common in his correspondence about the relations of the Papacy and the Empire.
[5] The negotiations for the Confederation were completed in July, and it was formally constituted on Aug. 1, 1806.
[6] See, for example, the very interesting story told by Marshal Jourdan in his Mémoires (p. 9) of the long conversation which the emperor had with him at Verona on June 16, 1805: ‘Tant pour l’affermissement de ma dynastie que pour la sûreté de France,’ concluded Napoleon, ‘un Bourbon sur le trône d’Espagne est un voisin trop dangereux.’
[7] For the full text of this bombastic appeal see Appendix, No. I. Godoy speaks throughout in his own name, not in that of his master.
[8] ‘Je jurai dès lors qu’ils me la paieraient, que je les mettrais hors d’état de me nuire,’ said Napoleon to De Pradt, eighteen months later (Mémoires sur la Révolution d’Espagne, p. 16). The archbishop’s story is amply borne out by the repeated allusions to this unhappy proclamation in Napoleon’s official justification of his conduct in Spain. The Spanish ambassador at Berlin, Don Benito Pardo, was told by Napoleon at the time that he had forgiven the Proclamation, but could not forget it.
[9] Correspondance de Napoléon, xxxii. 59.
[10] The demand was made in the most peremptory fashion, and in almost threatening language. Napoleon writes to Talleyrand that the Spanish division in Tuscany, which was to form part of the expeditionary corps, must march in twenty-four hours after receiving its orders. ‘If they refuse, everything is at an end,’ a most sinister phrase (Napoleon to Talleyrand, March 25, 1807).
[11] This was Article IV of the Seven ‘Secret Articles’ of the Treaty of Tilsit. See for this proposal the notes in Vandal’s Napoléon et Alexandre Ier, vol. i.
[12] The first notice of the ‘Corps of Observation of the Gironde’ is to be found in a dispatch of Masserano, the Spanish ambassador at Paris, dated July 30, which gives notice of the approaching concentration at Bayonne. But the quiet movement of troops in this direction had begun long before the Russian war was over.
[13] Talleyrand declares in his Mémoires (i. 349) that Napoleon kept Champagny, his own minister of foreign affairs, in equal darkness.
[14] See the text in Appendix, No. II.
[15] In the curious exculpatory memoirs which Godoy published in 1835-6, with the aid of d’Esménard, he endeavours to make out that he never desired the principality, and that Napoleon pressed it upon him, because he wished to remove him from about the person of Charles IV. ‘The gift of the principality of the Algarves was a banishment’ (i. 54). This plea will not stand in the face of the fact that Godoy had solicited just such preferment as far back as the spring of 1806; see Arteche, Guerra de la Independencia, i. 148. His real object was to secure a place of refuge at the death of Charles IV.
[16] ‘Le Prince de la Paix, véritable maire du palais, est en horreur à la nation. C’est un gredin qui m’ouvrira lui-même les portes de l’Espagne’ (Fouché, Mémoires, i. 365).
[17] Talleyrand, Mémoires, i. 308-329.
[18] Ibid., i. 378, 379.
[19] The princes that occur in Spanish politics, e.g. Eboli or Castelfranco, were holders of Italian, generally Neapolitan, titles.
[20] Foy, Guerre de la Péninsule, ii. 267.
[21] See the proofs from papers in the Spanish Foreign Office, quoted in Arteche’s Guerra de la Independencia, i. 148.
[22] Toreño, i. 86. The story is confirmed by Savary, in his Mémoires, ii. 221.
[23] That Escoiquiz was a clever man, and not the mere intriguer that he is often called, is (I think) shown not only by the impression which he made upon Napoleon (who called him, in jest, le petit Ximénès) and on De Pradt at Bayonne, but still more by his work, the Conversation avec Napoléon. If he invented it, he must have been a genius, so well has he caught the Emperor’s style; if he only reproduced it he was at least an admirable and picturesque reporter.
[24] Observe ‘Papa Mio’ instead of ‘Padre Mio.’ The Spanish text I have printed as Appendix 3 of this volume. Some say that Godoy dictated the wording of the letter, and did not merely insist that a letter of some sort must be written to secure a pardon. In any case the terms were such as no self-respecting person could have signed. The sentence ‘pido à V. M. me perdone por haberle mentido la otra noche,’ the most vile in the whole composition, are omitted by the courtly De Pradt when he translates it into French.
[25] There is a very black underplot in the story of Baron Colli. When he was caught the French police sent a spy with his credentials to Valençay, to see how far the persons about Ferdinand could be induced to compromise themselves. But the prince’s terror, and abject delation of the supposed baron, stopped further proceedings.
[26] Godoy had the impudence to propose to the prince that he should marry Donna Luisa, the younger sister of his own unfortunate wife, and the cousin of the King. Ferdinand found courage to refuse this alliance.
[27] The intrigues of Escoiquiz had begun as early as March, 1807, the month in which the letters to the King against Godoy were drafted. The negotiation with Beauharnais began in June. These dates are strongly against the idea that Bonaparte was at the bottom of the whole affair; his hand does not appear till July-August. Indeed he was far away in Eastern Germany when Escoiquiz began his interviews with the ambassador.
[28] The manuscript of this decree was in the handwriting of Godoy himself.
[29] Cf. Foy and Toreño, who agree on this point. Napoleon insinuates as much in his letter to Ferdinand of April 16, 1808: ‘I flatter myself that I contributed by my representations to the happy ending of the affair of the Escurial’ (Nap. Corresp., 13,750).
[30] Las Cases, ii. 206.
[31] Composed of 6,500 men under General Taranco, marching from Vigo.
[32] Composed of 9,500 men under Solano, Captain-General of Andalusia, and marching from Badajoz.
[33] Composed of 9,500 men under Caraffa.
[34] It is impossible to doubt that Napoleon’s scheme was already in progress as early as October. On Nov. 13 he sent orders for the secret arming and provisioning of all the frontier fortresses of France (Nap. Corresp., 13,343). On Nov. 24 he directed his chamberlain, De Tournon, to spy out the condition of Pampeluna and the other Spanish border strongholds, and to discover the exact distribution of the Spanish army (13,354). Such moves could have but one meaning.
[35] Note on this point Talleyrand’s Mémoires, i. 333, and Nap. Corresp., 13,402 (Napoleon to Joseph Bonaparte, Dec. 17, 1807).
[36] In Nap. Corresp., 13,588, will be found the orders to General D’Armagnac to get possession of the citadel by menaces if he can, but if he cannot, by the actual use of force. ‘S’il arrivait que le commandant-général de Navarre se refusât à rendre la citadelle, vous employeriez les troupes du Maréchal Moncey pour l’y forcer.’
[37] It will hardly be believed that Napier, in his blind reverence for Napoleon, omits to give any details concerning the seizure of the fortresses, merely saying that they were ‘taken by various artifices’ (i. 13). It is the particulars which are scandalous as well as the mere fact.
[38] Memoirs of Godoy, i. 122. Cf. Arteche, i. 251.
[39] That Murat did not dream of the Spanish crown is, I think, fairly well demonstrated by his descendant, Count Murat, in his useful Murat, Lieutenant de l’Empereur en Espagne (1897). But that after once reading the dispatches, Nap. Corresp., 13,588 and 13,589, he failed to see that his brother-in-law’s intention was to seize Spain, is impossible.
[40] See the letters of March 22-7 in Toreño, Appendix, i. 436-45.
[41] Letter of March 27, in Toreño, Appendix, i. 441.
[42] Ibid., p. 436.
[43] Letter of March 26 in Toreño, i. 439.
[44] The Protest of Charles IV will be found printed in Appendix No. 4.
[45] Nap. Corresp., xvi. 500; see also in Documents historiques, publiés par Louis Bonaparte (Paris, 1829), ii. 290.
[46] It is scarcely necessary to say that the letter which Napoleon is said to have sent Murat on March 29, and which is printed in the Mémorial de Ste-Hélène, is (as Lanfrey and Count Murat have shown) a forgery composed by Napoleon himself long after. It is quite inconsistent with the offer to Louis Bonaparte, and with other letters to Murat of the same week.
[47] It is said that they afterwards turned out to be full of smuggled goods, a private speculation of Savary or his underlings.
[48] Savary, in his mendacious autobiography, denies that he persuaded Ferdinand to start for Bayonne. But he is refuted by two contemporary documents. The young king, in his letter of adieu to his father, states that Savary has convinced him of the necessity of going; while Murat in a dispatch to Bonaparte says that ‘Savary has in no small degree contributed to induce the new court to quit Madrid’ [April 8].
[49] For Don Antonio’s habits we have on Talleyrand’s authority some very curious stories. He spent most of his time of captivity at Valençay sitting in the library, mutilating illustrated books with his scissors, not to make a scrap-book, but to destroy any engravings that sinned against morals or religion!
[50] Cevallos, p. 36.
[51] It was the Duke of Infantado who made this exclamation. See Urquijo’s letter to Cuesta in Llorente’s collection of papers on the Bayonne business.
[52] Escoiquiz, p. 318. Every student of Napoleon should read the whole of the wonderful dialogue between the Emperor and the Canon of Toledo.
[53] Napoleon to Talleyrand, May 6, 1808.
[54] Of this interview we have the version of Napoleon himself in a dispatch to Murat, dated May 1; another by Cevallos, Ferdinand’s minister; a third by De Pradt (afterwards Archbishop of Mechlin), then present at Bayonne.
[55] Dispatch to Murat of May 5.
[56] ‘Prince, il faut opter entre la cession et la mort’ (Cevallos, p. 60).
[57] Toreño, Appendix, i. 466, 467.
[58] The third prisoner was Ferdinand’s uncle, Don Antonio.
[59] This letter, eliminated by the editors of the Correspondance de Napoléon, may be found in Lecestre, Lettres inédites de Napoléon I, i. p. 207.
[60] Napoleon, disapproving of Murat’s action on this point, committed himself to two astounding historical statements. ‘Why trouble about the sword,’ he wrote; ‘Francis I was a Bourbon [!] and he was taken by the Italians, not the Spaniards’ [!!] (Nap. Corresp., 13,724).
[61] Murat to Napoleon, April 22.
[62] Napoleon to Murat, April 26.
[63] Murat to Napoleon, April 30.
[64] Ibarnavarro’s story, written down by himself on September 27, 1808, can be found printed in full on pp. 457-9 of the Appendix to Toreño’s first volume.
[65] For a specimen see the document on p. 462 of Count Murat’s Murat en Espagne (Paris, 1897).
[66] Napier (i. 15) says that Daoiz and Velarde were ‘in a state of excitement from drink,’ a disgraceful French calumny. How could he bear to reproduce such a libel on these unfortunate officers?
[67] The Junta, to soothe the feelings of Madrid, gave out that only 150 Spaniards had fallen. The Moniteur said that 2,000 criminals had been cut down or executed! Murat reported a loss of eighty men only, while Napier says that he has excellent French authority and eye-witnesses to the effect that 750 fell.
[68] Proclamations of May 2 and 3: there are originals in the Vaughan Papers.
[69] The bad cross-roads Cuenca-Teruel and Molina-Teruel hardly count.
[70] He said this to De Pradt (Révolutions d’Espagne, p. 224).
[72] The minister O’Farrill and General Kindelan were the chief exceptions.
[73] So called because it was originally supposed to take the fifth man.
[74] The successful and opportune charge of the regimiento del Rey at Talavera was about the only case which ever came under English eyes.
[75] Napoleon had an ideal proportion of five guns per 1,000 men. But, as we shall show in the next chapter, while dealing with the French armies, he never succeeded in reaching anything like this standard in the Peninsula. Yet his opponents were always worse off.
[76] These last were the rear battalions of the unfortunate Portuguese legion which was in march for the Baltic; they were still on this side of the Pyrenees when the war began, and were hastily utilized against Saragossa.
[77] French generals were much addicted to the pernicious practice of massing the grenadier companies of all the regiments of a division, or an army corps, in order to make a picked battalion or brigade, to be used as a reserve. Junot had four such battalions (grenadiers réunis) at Vimiero, and Victor three at Barossa.
[78] To take a later example, of the three corps d’armée (II, VI, VIII) with which Masséna invaded Portugal in 1810, there were only three regiments with four battalions present; while seventeen had three, eight had two, and ten a single battalion only.
[79] Nodier, Souvenirs de la Révolution, ii. 233-5.
[80] In the campaign of 1810 the 26th, 66th, and 82nd regiments in Masséna’s army had 5th and 6th battalions in the field.
[81] This was done on July 7 (see Nap. Corresp., 14,164). Nos. 1 and 2 became the 114th of the line, 3 and 4 the 115th, 5 and 6 the 116th, 7 and 8 the 33rd léger, 9 and 10 the 117th, 11 the 118th, 13 and 14 the 119th, 17 and 18 the 120th. When the 6th, 7th, and 8th were captured at Baylen, new conscripts had to be brought from France to complete the 116th and replace the 33rd léger.
[82] See Rousset’s excellent La Grande Armée de 1813.
[83] The most distinguished of these was the 13th Cuirassiers, a regiment of new formation, which served throughout the war in Aragon and Catalonia, and was by far the best of Suchet’s mounted corps. For its achievements the reader may be referred to the interesting Mémoires of Colonel de Gonneville.
[84] In Masséna’s army of 1810 the largest cavalry regiment (25th Dragoons) had 650 men. In Suchet’s army in the same year there was one exceptionally strong regiment (4th Hussars) with 759 sabres.
[85] The 2nd Provisional Dragoons of Moncey’s corps had no less than 872 men in June, 1808.
[86] In this case the low proportion was due to want of horses, not to bad roads. Even the forty-two guns were only produced when Bessières had lent Masséna many teams.
[87] I take these figures respectively from Thiébault, Fririon, Lapène, Le Clerc, and Rousset.
[88] Diary of Foy, in Girod de l’Ain’s Vie Militaire du Général Foy, p. 98.
[89] The reader who wishes to see a logical explanation of the phenomenon may find it in the remarks of the Spanish Colonel Moscoso (1812) in Arteche, ii. 394. He explains that the skirmishing line of his compatriots was always too thin to keep back the tirailleurs. The latter invariably pushed their way close up to the Spanish main body, and while presenting in their scattered formation no definite mark for volleys, were yet numerous enough to shoot down so many of their opponents as to shake the Spanish formation before the columns in the rear came up.
[90] e.g. Brunswick-Oels and the Chasseurs Britanniques.
[91] See Blakeney, A Boy in the Peninsular War, edited by Sturges (1899), pp. 189, 190, for an account of this bloody episode.
[92] The reader who is curious as to details of actual bayonet-fighting may consult Grattan for the 88th, and the anonymous ‘T.S.’ of the 71st for Fuentes d’Oñoro, and Steevens of the 20th for Roncesvalles. The charge of Tovey’s company of the latter corps, on the last-mentioned occasion, much resembled one of the incidents of Inkerman.
[93] See Foy’s diary in Girod de l’Ain, p. 277.
[94] Letter to Lord William Russell, July 31, 1826.
[95] Foy, i. 288-90.
[96] Foy, i. 296.
[97] It was usual to supplement the meagre supply of engineers by officers who volunteered from the line.
[98] There were only the ‘Royal Military Artificers’ in very small numbers. The rank and file of the engineer corps did not yet exist.
[99] Murat to Napoleon, May 18.
[101] It is astonishing to find that Napier (i. 114) expressly denies that Cordova was sacked. Foy (iii. 231), the best of the French historians, acknowledges that ‘unarmed civilians were shot, churches and houses sacked, and scenes of horror enacted such as had not been seen since the Christian drove out the Moor in 1236.’ Captain Baste, the best narrator among French eye-witnesses, speaks of assassination, general pillage, and systematic rape. Cabany, Dupont’s laudatory biographer, confesses (p. 89) to drunkenness and deplorable excesses, and allows that Dupont distributed 300,000 francs as a ‘gratification’ among his general officers. Many of the details given above are derived from the official narrative of the Cordovan municipal authorities printed in the Madrid Gazette.
[102] Foy, iii. 233. Cabany (p. 96), on the other hand, says that he was sawn in two between planks. Gille, in his Mémoires d’un Conscrit de 1808 (p. 85), gives other distressing details.
[103] Cuenca lies twenty-five miles off the main Madrid-Valencia road, well to the north of it.
[104] Moncey’s delay of a week at Cuenca provoked Savary (now acting for the invalided Murat) to such an extent, that he sent forward the cavalry-general Excelmans, nominally to take charge of Moncey’s vanguard, really to spur the cautious marshal on to action. But Excelmans was captured on the way by peasants, and sent a prisoner to Valencia.
[105] Moncey induced a good many of these mercenaries to take service with him; but they deserted him when the time of trouble began.
[106] Arteche, Guerra de la Independencia, ii. 150.
[107] But only 1,500 were regulars; the rest were newly incorporated levies.
[108] Foy, generally a very fair calculator of French casualties, gives the marshal’s losses at 2,000 men in all, which seems rather a high figure. Napier (i. 95) says that he had 800 wounded to carry, which supposes a total loss of 1,100 or 1,200. Thiers’ estimate of 300 is as obviously absurd as most of the other figures given by that historian. No such loss would have stopped a French army—even an army of conscripts.
[109] ‘Provincial of Laredo,’ 571 bayonets.
[110] They were a battalion each of the 15th, 47th, and 70th of the line, all old troops, and the 2nd ‘Supplementary Regiment of the legions of Reserve,’ two battalions strong, with a regiment of Polish lancers and the 5th escadron de marche.
[111] The 1st regiment of the Vistula (two batts.) and the 6th bataillon de marche.
[112] Palafox has been so often abused that I take the opportunity of quoting the description of him given by Sir Charles Vaughan, one of the three or four Englishmen who saw him at Saragossa in the day of his power, and the only one who has left his impressions on record. He lived with Palafox for some five weeks in October-November, 1808. ‘This distinguished nobleman is about thirty-four years of age [an overstatement by six years]; his person is of middling stature, his eyes lively and expressive, and his whole deportment that of a perfectly well-bred man. In private life, so far as my daily intercourse gave me an opportunity of judging, his manners were kind, unaffected, and ingratiating. From the great readiness with which he dispatched business, and from the letters and public papers which were written by him with apparent great ease in my presence, I was led to form a very favourable opinion of his talents. There was a quickness in his manner of seizing objects, an impatience until they were accomplished. He was fond of talking of the events of the siege, and anxious to introduce to us men of every class who had distinguished themselves. There was a vivacity in his manner and conversation, an activity in his exertions as an officer, that is rarely met in a Spaniard. It was always a most cheering and interesting thing to ride with him through the streets of Saragossa. The joy and exultation of the people as he passed evidently sprung from the heart. To have acquitted himself to their satisfaction was no mean reward, and forms a sufficient answer to all the unworthy attempts (which I have been disgusted to witness) to depreciate his character’ (Vaughan Papers, from an unpublished journal of 1808).
[113] Napier is always hard on Spanish officers and administrators, but I think that of the whole class Palafox receives the most undeserved contumely from his pen. He holds him to have been a mere puppet, whose strings were pulled by obscure Saragossan demagogues like the celebrated Tio Jorge. He even doubts his personal courage. Both Spanish and French historians unite in taking the Captain-general quite seriously, and I think they are right. His best testimonial is the harsh and vindictive treatment that he received at Napoleon’s hands.
[114] The chief of these buildings inserted in the wall were the convents or Santa Engracia and the Misericordia, and the cavalry barracks.
[115] That Palafox and those about him despaired of the defence is honestly confessed in the Marquis de Lazan’s Campaña del verano de 1808. He and his brother ‘had not believed that an open town defended by untrained peasants could defend itself,’ and the news of Lefebvre’s first repulse astonished as much as it pleased them.
[116] The Spaniards have called this first attack on Saragossa the action of the Eras del Rey, the name of the meadows outside the Portillo and Carmen gates, in which the French columns massed themselves for the attack.
[117] He called them the ‘Regiment of Ferdinand VII,’ and the ‘Second Regiment of the kingdom of Aragon.’
[118] They belonged to the 14th Provisional Regiment, and the accompanying corps were the 4th and 7th bataillons de marche.
[119] 3rd Regiment of the Vistula.