There was no force in Extremadura which could oppose any obstacle to this plan. When the pass of Somosierra was lost, San Juan, who commanded there, cut his way sword in hand through a squadron of Poles, and by by-roads reached Segovia, where he found the troops who had retired from Sepulveda. From thence he marched to Guadarrama, united with the Extremaduran troops under General Heredia, and descended to the Escurial, because he was without provisions in the pass. There they received orders to hasten to Madrid, and enter that city by the gate of Segovia. On the way exaggerated reports were spread of the strength of the enemy; suspicion increased the insubordination of the soldiers; the artillery and baggage-men forsook their charge and fled, and several corps broke up. The whole of Heredia’s van-guard dispersed in this manner, in spite of all San Juan’s efforts to detain them; they would rally, they said, at Talavera: this word went through the army, and served as a pretext for every one who chose to fly. The two generals had only a handful of men with them when they approached Madrid, and then they discovered that the city had been betrayed. No other course remained for them than to repair to Talavera, in the hope of rallying what would still form a considerable force. The rabble of the army, sufficiently faithful to their appointment, bent their way to that city, plundering as they went along; and there San Juan met them, unhappily for himself. The wretches who had been foremost in subverting discipline, and instigating the troops to break up, began to apprehend punishment if the army should again assume a regular form; and this was likely to be the case immediately, for many thousands (many having escaped from Madrid) were now collected there, and the government had already begun to take measures for re-equipping them. It was easy for these villains to raise a cry against San Juan: all men knew the importance of the position at Somosierra; but there were few who knew with what insufficient means the general had been supplied. Mobs never reason, least of all when they are under the influence of fear; and the Spanish troops had suffered so much from incapacity, that when any person was denounced as a traitor, it seemed like a relief to themselves, and an act of justice to their country, to vent their vengeance upon him. The cry against San Juan became general: a friar went at the head of a party to the convent of the Augustines, where he had taken up his quarters, and they cried out that they were come to put ♦Dec. 7.♦ Benito San Juan to death. San Juan attempted to expostulate, but in vain. He drew his sword to defend himself, and immediately he was pierced with their bullets. The rabble dragged the body to a gibbet, and hung it there; next they sought for Heredia, that they might kill him also; but he eluded their search. As soon as their fury was allayed, the instigators of these excesses secured themselves by flight; and the troops, who had been misled, perceived the consequences of their lawless conduct. If San Juan had indeed been a traitor, they felt that they ought to have delivered him up to the proper tribunal; ... by taking vengeance into their own hands they had made themselves obnoxious to the laws. Whom too could they trust, whom were they to obey? Instead, therefore, of forming a new army, as they had designed, at Talavera, they dispersed again, not having now any rallying place appointed, but each man going whither he thought best. Some took the road to Andalusia, some to Avila: the Extremadurans, who were the most numerous, went to their homes.

The dispersion of the soldiers called forth a severe edict. It began by stating, that the martial laws of Spain had affixed no punishment for officers who deserted their colours or stations, it never having been supposed that men of such rank could possibly be guilty of such a crime. But now it had unhappily been seen that many officers, forgetful of all honour and duty, had fled, scattering disorder and terror wherever they went, and pretending treason in their generals as an excuse for their own conduct; whereas they themselves had been the worst enemies of their country, by abandoning their generals in the most critical moments. The Junta, therefore, pronounced sentence of death against every officer who absented himself from his colours without permission, and confiscation of his property for the relief of the widows and orphans of soldiers in his parish. Soldiers were made liable to the like penalty; any person who harboured a deserter was to be punished by confiscation of his property, and the same penalty was denounced against all magistrates who suffered deserters to remain within their jurisdiction. But all who, within fifteen days, should present themselves to the nearest authority in order to rejoin the army, were exempted from the pains in this decree.

Four days after the murder of San Juan, and the dispersion of his army, two divisions of French cavalry, under Milhaud and Lasalle, entered Talavera. They found the body of the Spanish General still on the gibbet, and this murder furnished Buonaparte with a new subject of invective against the Spaniards; though this, and the thousand deaths, and all the untold crimes, and all the unutterable miseries with which the peninsula was filled, were the consequences of his own single conduct, the fruits of his individual wickedness. Lasalle fell in with sixteen Englishmen upon the road, stragglers from General Hope’s detachment, and it was related in the bulletins39 of Buonaparte, as an exploit worthy of remembrance and commendation, that a division of French cavalry, falling in with sixteen Englishmen who had lost their way, put them to the sword. This was but a small part of the force which was destined to proceed in this direction. As soon as Madrid had been delivered up, Lefebvre was ordered to advance from Valladolid towards Lisbon. First he advanced to Segovia, which he entered unresisted. The people were dispirited by the panic and flight of their armies; but it should not be forgotten for their exculpation, that the more generous and heroic spirits, having flocked to their country’s standard among the foremost levies, had already received their crown of martyrdom, or were clinging to the wreck of the two great armies of the north and the centre, or were consummating the sacrifice of duty in Zaragoza. In one place only between Valladolid and the capital did this part of the French army experience any opposition. The pass of Guadarrama was open to them: General Hope had been stationed there, but was recalled by Sir John Moore, and there were no native troops to supply his place. But when the enemy descended ♦The French take possession of the Escurial.♦ upon the Escurial, and proceeded to take possession of that palace, the magnificent monument of a victory which Spain had achieved over France in open, honourable war, and in a fair field, they found the peasantry assembled to defend the seat and sepulchres of their kings. Undisciplined as they were, ill-armed, and with none to direct their efforts, they stood their ground till they were overpowered by practised troops, superior in numbers as well as in arms; and the French, after the slaughter of these brave peasants before the gates, took up their quarters in the palace of the Philips. He who founded that stately pile, could he then have beheld from his grave what was passing around him, would have seen the consequences of that despotic system which he and his father established upon the ruins of the old free constitution of Spain.

It was a noble feeling which led these peasants to sacrifice themselves in defence of the Escurial, and the action did not pass unnoticed by those able and enlightened Spaniards whose patriotic writings at this time did honour to themselves and to their country. “Nothing,” said Don Isidro de Antillon, “is more worthy of public interest, and nothing will more excite the admiration of posterity, than a deed like this. If indeed we had only armies to oppose to Buonaparte, infallibly we should become his slaves; the victory would be the usurper’s beyond all resource. But it is the collective strength of our inhabited places, the defence of our walls, the obstinate and repeated resistance of the people in the streets and gateways, along the roads and upon the heights, wherever they can cut off or annoy the detachments of the enemy, ... the universal spirit of insurrection, now become as it were the very element of our existence; this it is which disconcerts his plans, which renders his victories useless, and after a thousand vicissitudes and disasters, will finally establish the independence and the glory of Spain.”

Lefebvre entered Madrid on the 8th of December. Buonaparte reviewed his division in the Prado, and dispatched it to Toledo, while Sebastiani with another division marched for Talavera. In that city, by the 19th, about 25,000 French were assembled, including 5000 cavalry. The wiser inhabitants fled before their arrival, preferring the miseries of emigration to the insults and atrocities which they must otherwise have endured: for the exaction of heavy contributions, which reduced half the people to beggary, was the least evil those towns endured that fell under the yoke of the French. Every where the soldiers were permitted to plunder; no asylum could secure the women from their unrestrained brutality; churches and convents were profaned with as little compunction as dwelling-houses were broken open; and in many instances, the victims were exposed naked in the streets. The Spanish government exclaimed loudly against these enormities. “In other times,” they said, “war was carried on between army and army, soldier and soldier; their fury spent itself upon the field of battle; and when courage, combined with fortune, had decided the victory, the conquerors behaved to the conquered like men of honour, and the defenceless people were respected. The progress of civilization had tempered the evils of hostility, till a nation which so lately boasted that it was the most polished in the world, renewed, in the 19th century, the cruelty of the worst savages, and all the horrors which make us tremble in perusing the history of the irruptions of the barbarians of old. Like tygers, these enemies make no distinction in their carnage, ... the aged, the infants, the women, ... all are alike to them, wherever they can find blood to shed.”

This appeal could be of no avail against a tyrant who, in the very origin of the war, had shown himself dead to all sense of justice, humanity, and even of honour, which sometimes supplies their place; nor against generals and officers who could serve him in such a cause. Such men could be taught humanity only by the severest retaliation. The language which the government addressed to their own subjects might be more effectual. “What resource have you,” said they, “in submission and in cowardice? If by this abasement you could purchase a miserable existence, that perhaps with base minds might exculpate you. But you fly to your houses to perish in them, or to be idle spectators of the horrors which these ruffian soldiers are preparing for you! Yes! wait for them there, and they will not tarry long ere they come and shed before your eyes the blood of the innocent victims whom you will not defend. Old fathers, wretched mothers, prepare to receive your daughters released from the arms of an hundred barbarians only when they are in the act of death! or if they recover life, to curse it in the bitterness of unextinguishable shame; tell them to reproach those cowardly husbands, those base lovers, who are content to live, and see them plunged in this abominable infamy. But they will not be suffered to live; hand-cuffed and haltered, they will be dragged out of their country; they will be made soldiers by force, though they would not become so from honour and a sense of duty; there they will be exposed in the foremost ranks to the fire of the enemy; there they will not be able to fly; ... the toil, the danger, and death will be theirs; the glory and the spoil will be their conquerors’, and the crowns which they win will be for the tyrant, the cause of all this misery.”

It had been happy for Spain if the government had always acted as energetically as it wrote; but it should be remembered in justice to the Spaniards, that the dispersion of the troops was in many instances an act of self-preservation, so utterly were they left without supplies of food or clothing, by the inexperience and incompetence of every military department. Even against the testimony and the reproaches of its own government, the Spanish nation stands acquitted. Never did men suffer more patiently, or fight more bravely, than Blake’s army. There was no want of courage at Tudela; and of the remains of the army which fought there, a large proportion was at this very time defending Zaragoza with a heroism unexampled in modern times, upon any other soil. Wherever, indeed, a new army was to be collected, soldiers were not wanting. After San Juan’s death, Galluzo was appointed to the command; he took his post at the bridge of Almaraz to defend the left bank of the Tagus; and in a few days had collected about 8000 soldiers, ... many of them were without arms, ... most of them barefooted, and now unhappily accustomed to flight and desertion. Nevertheless they assembled; for every man felt individually brave, and it was only the want of discipline, which, by preventing them from feeling confidence collectively, made panic contagious in the moment of danger. The province of Extremadura immediately provided money for these troops; this province, though the least populous in the peninsula, had particularly distinguished itself by its exertions; it had raised and equipped, wholly at its own expense, 24,000 men, and had supplied ammunition and arms of every kind from Badajoz to the other provinces.

There are four bridges between Talavera and the confluence of the Tietar with the Tagus; the Puente del Arzobispo, or the Archbishop’s, the Puente del Conde, or the Count’s, the bridge of Almaraz, and the Puente del Cardinal, or the Cardinal’s. With his present feeble and inefficient force Galluzo had no other means of protecting Extremadura than by breaking down, or defending these bridges; if he could effect this, the province would be secure from an attack on the side of Talavera. Almaraz was the most important of these points; here he planted ten pieces of cannon and two mortars, and stationed 5000 men. The more surely to prevent the enemy from winning the passage he mined the bridge; but so firmly had this noble pile been built, that when the mine was fired, the explosion only served to injure it without rendering it impassable. Don Francisco Trias was sent with 850 men to the Puente del Arzobispo; on his way he met the engineer, who had previously been dispatched to break it down, but who had been prevented from attempting it by the enemy, so that this bridge was already in their power. Trias, therefore, took his position with the view of checking the incursions of the French on this side, and ordered Don Antonio Puig, with such assistants as he could procure from the magistrates of Talavera la Vieja, to destroy the Puente del Conde, and provide for the defence of that point, and of three fords upon the same part of the river. When this officer arrived he had neither a single soldier under his command, nor arms for the peasantry; the latter want was soon supplied; the peasantry were zealous, and some of the stragglers joined him.

The bridge of the Cardinal was assigned to the keeping of a battalion of Walloon Guards and a squadron of the volunteers of Extremadura, under Brigadier Don Francisco Durasmiel. Galluzo also stationed his reserve at Jaraicejo, under Brigadier Don Josef Vlazquez Somosa, and sent another field officer to Truxillo to collect and organize the stragglers who might either voluntarily join him, or be detained by the patroles. While the General was making these dispositions for the defence of the province, the Junta of Badajoz made the greatest exertions to supply the wants of this new army, and its efforts were well seconded by the Extremaduran people. Half a million of reales was raised in loans and free gifts within a week; all the cloth of Torremocha and of other clothing towns was applied to the use of the army, ... no other work was carried on in the monastery of Guadalupe than that of making earthen vessels for their cookery; and commissaries were sent to the sixteen villages nearest the bridge of Almaraz to see that rations of bread for 5000 men were daily delivered there. These measures were so effectual, that the troops were soon comfortably clothed, and after the first day they had no want of any thing.

It was, however, scarcely to be hoped that so small and ill-compacted a force could maintain its ground, in a country which offered them no advantages for defence against such an army as the French had assembled in Talavera. After some skirmishes with the advanced guard at Almaraz, and some slight attacks upon the Puente del Conde, which were designed chiefly to keep the Spaniards on the alarm, and divert their attention from the side where the real attack was intended, Sebastiani crossed the Puente del Arzobispo on the 24th of December, and attacked Trias in front and on his right flank with superior numbers. The Spaniards did not yield till after a vigorous resistance; and then retreated by the Sierra to Castanar de Ibor. On the same day, about two hours after noon, the Puente del Conde was attacked, and the fords. The bridge was bravely defended by Don Pablo Murillo, whose distinguished talents were now first displayed. Puig guarded the fords, and they repelled the enemy every where till night; when, being informed of the defeat of Trias, and that Sebastiani had proceeded by Peralera de Garbin and Bohonal towards Almaraz, Puig perceiving that he must be taken in the rear if he continued in his present position, retreated to Peralera de Garbin behind the French, and from thence to Castanar de Ibor.

The news of these disasters reached Galluzo at night. Immediately he apprehended that the object of the enemy, who were marching by Valdecasa, Valdecañas, and other points, to Romangordo and Miravete, was to cut off the retreat of his whole division. To prevent this he ordered all the artillery, except four pieces, which formed a battery on the left of the bridge, to retire with the main force to Jaraicejo, for which place he himself set off at midnight with his Aide-de-camps and the cavalry, leaving three companies in charge of the remaining battery under Captain Don Xavier de Hore. This officer was attacked on the following morning by the French; the battery was ill-placed, and Hore perceived that the ammunition-carts were within reach of the enemy’s fire. He ordered them to be removed behind a bank which would shelter them; ... the muleteers were no sooner out of his sight, than they cut the traces, and fled with their beasts, imitating the conduct of some infantry who took to flight. The enemy soon made themselves masters of the bridge and the battery, and secured some prisoners, ... though but few; for before the French could lay planks over the broken bridge, and pass in sufficient number, most of the Spaniards effected their escape, and afterwards rejoined the General at Miajadas.

Galluzo’s first thought was to make a stand at Jaraicejo, and with this intent he dispatched orders to General Henestrosa to join him from Truxillo with all the troops which he had collected, and requested the Junta to supply him with as large a force of armed peasantry as possible. But no sooner did he learn that the bridge of Almaraz had been forced, than he gave up this purpose, and resolved to fall back upon Truxillo, apprehending that the enemy might intercept his retreat. His apprehension degenerated into panic, when false intelligence was brought him that the French had entered Deleitosa, a village something less than eight miles to the south-east. This intelligence was followed by other reports equally false and more alarming, which the knavish and the traitorous invented, and the fearful and the suspicious easily believed. The retreat had been begun in perfect order, but the army, before it reached Truxillo, was in a state of total disorganization. Galluzo, confounded at the first approach of danger, (for if he had deliberately resolved to attempt resistance, the pass of Miravete would have been the place which he would have chosen, after the bridge was forced,) called a council of war; it was agreed that the defence of Extremadura was no longer possible, and that he should retreat into Andalusia. A chapel, which had been converted into a powder magazine, was now blown up, that it might not fall into the hands of the enemy. The explosion, and the preparations which were made for further flight, excited the utmost terror in the inhabitants of Truxillo, and their lamentations increased the confusion and alarm of the soldiers. It now became a rout; ... most of the troops deserted, plundering the towns and villages through which they passed. Those who still followed the General were no longer under any restraint; they went through Miajadas, Medellin, and Quintania, and in four days reached Zalamea, above an hundred miles from Jaraicejo. Here it had been appointed to halt, and here Galluzo found himself with not more than a thousand men. Nothing could be worse than the conduct of the men during their flight; ... some sold their muskets, ... some threw them away, ... houses were broken open, and upon one individual a piece of church plate was found, ... a species of robbery which excites peculiar horror in Spain. The officers, instead of endeavouring to restrain these excesses, were some of them active themselves in pillage; it is probable, indeed, that had they done their duty, the men would have discharged theirs; for those officers to whom the more difficult task of bringing off the artillery had been entrusted, and who were therefore picked men, effected their object: though without an escort, they lost only two pieces of cannon, and carried seventeen to Miajadas, ... from whence part were sent to Badajoz, the rest followed Galluzo to Zalamea. Trias also effected a far more dangerous retreat than his commander in good order. He set forward from Castanar for Fresnedoso, and when within a mile of the place, learnt that the French were there, having won the bridge of Almaraz. He had now to tread back his steps, and endeavour to reach Jaraicejo. After a day’s march he found that the French were there also, and making for Truxillo, again discovered the enemy in possession of the place to which he was bound. Nevertheless he preserved discipline in his little troop, and that preserved confidence; instead of losing his men by desertion, he collected stragglers as he went, and arrived at Zalamea with a larger force than Galluzo himself had brought there.

Before the incapacity of Galluzo was thus decidedly manifested, it had been in agitation to remove him from the command, and appoint Cuesta in his place. This General, as an arrested person, followed the Junta on their retreat from Aranjuez. It so happened, that while he was at Merida, some soldiers belonging to the scattered army of Extremadura gathered together in that city, and the owner of the house in which Cuesta lodged persuaded them to demand him for their leader, as it were by acclamation. The Junta of Merida upon this sent up a representation to the Central Junta, requesting that Cuesta might be appointed to the command. It was replied, that this ought not to be done without the approbation of the Junta of Badajoz, which had made such signal exertions in the patriotic cause, and was not willing to supersede Galluzo, whom it had appointed. But now, after this disorderly flight, he was immediately deprived of the command, and put under arrest, and Cuesta was nominated to succeed him. Cuesta’s errors were overlooked, because no doubt of his motives was entertained; and at a time when the cry of treachery once raised against a commander was sufficient to break up an army, it was an object of considerable importance to find a leader in whom the men would confide. At this moment the whole of Extremadura to the very walls of Badajoz was open to the enemy, and the Junta trembled for Seville. Brigadier Don Josef Serrano Valdenebro was sent with as many men as he could collect to guard Santa Olaya and El Ronquillo, in the western passes of the Sierra Morena, and co-operate with Cuesta in covering Andalusia on that side. These means of defence would have been as ineffectual as they were feeble, if Buonaparte had not thought it of more importance at this time to drive the English out of Spain, than to pursue his victories in the south.