Cadiz, however, was the point whereon all eyes were at this time turned, in expectation of great events. Victor had been left to command the siege, if siege it may be called. The French occupied the shore of the bay, fortified their own position, and endeavoured to annoy the shipping and the town; a regular attack upon the isle was too perilous for them to attempt. Fort Matagorda was the only point from which it was thought possible that they could injure the town: it had been built for the defence of the arsenal, opposite to the broadest part of that tongue of land which connects Cadiz with the Isle of Leon. From thence it was apprehended they might with the largest land mortars throw shells to the gates of the city; Ormond indeed had planted his cannon there, in the fruitless attempt upon Cadiz in Queen Anne’s reign. The fort, like the other land-works, had been dismantled upon their approach; but when it was seen that they were beginning to reconstruct it, it was deemed advisable that they should be dispossessed, and that the post should be maintained as long as possible against them. Accordingly they were compelled to abandon it, and the hasty works which could be re-erected were garrisoned by a party of British soldiers and seamen under Captain Maclean. They defended it for nearly two months, till it was reduced to a heap of ruins; and having lost in the last two days sixteen killed and fifty-seven wounded, were brought off by the boats of the British squadron, under the fire of the enemy’s batteries, with little loss. The manner in which this weak fort was defended taught the French what they might expect if they should attempt the Isle of Leon, for the defence of which a formidable line of works behind the Santi Pietri had now been executed under the direction of General Sir Thomas Graham, who had arrived from England to command the auxiliary forces there. These works extended to the ocean on the right, and on the left occupied the Caraccas as an advanced post. The French also were more intent upon securing themselves in their cantonments than upon annoying the Spaniards. They fortified Puerto Real, Puerto Santa Maria, and Chiclana, formed entrenched camps between these places, and strengthened the Trocadero, where they established batteries from whence to bombard the town. Having presently found the inefficiency of the field artillery, which was all that they had brought with them, they fished up the guns from the French and Spanish ships which had been wrecked upon that coast after the battle of Trafalgar. Most of the heavy pieces with which two-and-twenty batteries were now mounted were recovered in this manner from the sea.

The French, though disappointed in their main object here by Alburquerque’s sagacity, and the prompt assistance of the British forces, were in high spirits. They were in a fine country; their quarters were at once commodious and secure; and a few weeks after their arrival the winds and waves threw into their possession no inconsiderable booty. For during a tremendous gale, which continued four days with unabated violence, three line of battle ships, one frigate, and about forty merchantmen were driven12 to the side of the bay which they occupied, and went on shore at the height of the spring side. The men were taken out by the boats of the British squadron, and the ships were set on fire by the enemy’s red-hot shot; but no small part of the lading fell into their ♦Cruel usage of the French prisoners in the bay.♦ hands. During the tempest the French on board the prison ships could not receive their supplies of provisions and water from the shore; their signals of distress were disregarded by the Spaniards; and if the British Admiral had not sent his boats to their relief as soon as the gale abated, very many more of these miserable men than actually perished must have fallen victims, the Spaniards being in no haste to encounter the swell for the sake of enemies whom they seem to have considered as out of the pale of humanity. In the case of these prisoners, indeed, they had cast off all compassion, and the obduracy of the national character was fully manifested towards them, the negligence of the government being in this instance hardly less criminal than the avarice ♦1810.
May.♦ and brutality of those whom it employed. Admiral Pickmore perceiving with how little care the pontoons were secured, proposed to the Spanish Admiral that chains should be used as bridles to their cables; application was made to the Admiral in command at the Caraccas; they were promised from time to time, but never sent; and, as the British Commander had foreseen, ♦May 15.♦ the prisoners in the Castilla, nearly 700 in number, and mostly officers, cut the cable one night, when wind and tide were in their favour, ♦Escape of two prison ships.♦ and hoisting a sail which they had made from their hammocks, ran for the opposite coast. English boats were presently sent after them, while it was doubted whether the vessel had not by accident parted from her anchor; but when they reached her it was impossible to board, the pontoon being light, her ports all down, no steps on the side, nor ropes over it, and the French prepared, not only with musketry, but with cannon-ball of twenty-four and thirty-six pounders, which had been used for ballast in the vessel: two hundred men were stationed to throw these by hand, and the boats were presently disabled when such missiles were showered upon them. Fort Puntales and the gun and mortar boats opened their fire upon the pontoon, the vessel was burnt, but the fugitives, with little loss, effected their escape13.

A week later the French had nearly obtained possession of a rich prize. The S. Elmo, line of battle ship, with 250,000l. on board, in attempting to work out of the bay, got under their battery of S. Catalina. She was saved by the exertions of the officers and men in all the boats of the British squadron. Having turned her head round, the greater part of them went on board, and fought her guns with good effect till out of the enemy’s reach. The French had better fortune with the Argonauta pontoon; the prisoners on board that vessel, about six hundred in number, followed the example of their comrades in the Castilla; a third of these were killed by the fire which was kept up upon them; the remainder escaped from the burning hulk. But though the Spaniards had taken no precautions for rendering such attempts impracticable, they felt how dangerous it was to keep so large a body of prisoners in the bay while a French army was in possession of the shores. Two ships of the line were at this time under orders to carry part of them to the Canaries; and more would have been sent to Majorca and Minorca, whither 5000 had been transported in the preceding year, if the inhabitants had not at this crisis been in a state of excitement, which would have rendered a farther importation dangerous both to the prisoners themselves and to the government. Serious disturbances had broken out in both islands, not from any spirit of disaffection, but from distress, and indignation that so many of these unhappy persons should be cast among them, and no adequate means provided for their subsistence. The Minorcans were less likely to be patient under such misgovernment than any other Spaniards, remembering the prosperity and good order which they had enjoyed while their island was in possession of the English: with them, however, the ebullition of ♦Insurrection against the prisoners at Majorca.♦ popular feeling past harmlessly off, while Majorca became the scene of a disgraceful and dreadful tragedy. Some fugitives landed at Palma from those parts of the south which had lately fallen under the French yoke; they brought horrible tales concerning the invasion of Andalusia and the conduct of the invaders; and the people, excited by these horrors, cried out for vengeance upon the prisoners. Troops were called out to protect these unfortunate men, but the soldiers would not act against their countrymen; and when the commander, General Reding, as the only means of saving the prisoners, consented that they should be sent to the desert island of Cabrera, many were butchered in his presence, in spite of his entreaties and exertions, and many thrown into the sea, before the embarkation could be effected; nor could it have been effected, if the soldiers had not at length been provoked to fire upon the mob.

Five thousand at first, and afterwards half as many more, were landed upon Cabrera, a rocky island about fifteen miles in circumference, with no other inhabitants than a handful of soldiers, who were stationed there to prevent the Barbary corsairs from making it a place of rendezvous. A few tents were provided for the superior officers, the remainder were left to shelter themselves as they could. There was but one spring on the island, and in summer this was dry: they discovered some old wells, which had been filled up, and which, when cleared, yielded bad water, and very little of it. The supplies from Palma were sent so irregularly, sometimes owing to the weather, but far more frequently to inhuman negligence, that scores and hundreds of these miserable creatures ♦Their inhuman treatment there.♦ died of hunger and thirst; many were in a state of complete nakedness, when in mere humanity clothing was sent them by the British commander in the Mediterranean: and at other times they were kept alive by barrels of biscuit and of meat which the English ships threw overboard for them, to be cast on shore. But in the third year of their abode, the captain of a Spanish frigate, whose name ought to have been recorded, remonstrated so effectually upon the manner of their treatment, that from that time they were regularly supplied with food. He gave them potatoes and cabbage and tobacco seed, from which they raised sufficient for their consumption; and having by persevering labour, ♦Mémoires d’un Officier Français, Prisonnier en Espagne, 255, 287.♦ without any other tools than a single knife, broken six feet into a rock, on the surface of which there was appearance enough of moisture to excite their hopes, they obtained a supply of water. Some of them used the skulls of their own dead, for want of other vessels, to contain it; ... and others, with no such excuse of necessity, manufactured buttons from their bones! About 1500 entered the Spanish service rather than endure a banishment to which no end could be foreseen; and some 500, chiefly officers, were in compassion removed to England. At the end of the war not more than 2000 remained in Cabrera, nearly half of those who had been landed there having sunk under their sufferings. The Spaniards departed from the straight path of probity when they broke the terms of capitulation which had been granted ♦See vol. i. p. 501.♦ at Baylen. They committed that breach of faith in deference to popular outcry, and to the sophistry of one who soon proved himself a traitor, ... the most odious of all those men whom the Revolution either found wicked or made so: and in the subsequent treatment of the prisoners humanity was as little regarded, as honour had been in detaining them. Many and grievous were the errors which the Spaniards committed in the course of the war; but this is the only part of its history which will be remembered for them as a national reproach.

On the other hand, the French had as yet abated nothing of that insolent cruelty with which they began the contest, supposing that they could intimidate the Spanish nation. Soult, ♦May 9.♦ who had recommended that all the commanding ♦See vol. iii. p. 446.♦ officers employed in Spain should be impassible, ... incapable of any feeling by which they might even possibly be moved to compunction, ... issued at this time an edict not less extraordinary than Kellermann’s. After various enactments, some of which were as impracticable as they were rigorous, imposing penalties upon the inhabitants of those districts in which the patriotic parties should commit any crimes, as this Frenchman was pleased to denominate their hostilities against the invaders of their country; he pronounced, “that there was no Spanish army, except that of his Catholic Majesty, King Joseph Napoleon; all parties, therefore, which existed in the provinces, whatever might be their number, and whoever might be their commander, should be treated as banditti, who had no other object than robbery and murder; and all the individuals of such parties who might be taken in arms should be immediately condemned and shot, and their bodies exposed along ♦Counter edict of the Regency.♦ the highways.” When the Regency found that this decree was actually carried into effect, they ♦Aug. 15.♦ reprinted it, with a counter decree by its side, in French and Spanish, declaring anew, “that every Spaniard capable of bearing arms was in these times a soldier; that for every one who should be murdered by the French, in consequence of the edict of the ferocious Soult, who called himself Duke of Dalmatia, the three first Frenchmen taken in arms should infallibly be hanged; three for every house which the enemy burnt in their devastating system, and three for every person who should perish in the fire.” Soult himself they declared unworthy of the protection of the law of nations, while his decree remained unrepealed. They gave orders, that if he were taken, he should be punished as a robber; and they took measures for circulating both decrees throughout Europe, to the end that all persons might be informed of the atrocious conduct of these enemies of the human race; and that those inhabitants of the countries which were in alliance with France, or, more truly, which were enslaved by her, who were unhappy enough to have children, or kinsmen, or friends serving in the French armies in Spain, might see the fate prepared for them by the barbarity of a monster, who thought by such means to subdue a free and noble nation.