New Castille swarmed with guerrillas, among whom were some of the most distinguished chiefs. D. Ventura Ximenez made himself formidable in the parts about Toledo, till one day in action his horse carried him into the enemy’s ranks; his people rescued him, but not till he had received two sabre wounds and a pistol-shot. They carried him to Navalucillos, where he died. A price had been set upon his head; his body therefore was disinterred by the French, and the head carried to Toledo, that the dragoon who had shot him might receive the reward. In this province there were some of the vilest depredators who under the name of guerrillas infested Spain. ♦Guerrilla banditti.♦ For as in times of pestilence or earthquake, wretches are found obdurate enough in wickedness to make the visitation a cover for their guilt, and enrich themselves by plunder; so now, in the anarchy of Spain, they whose evil disposition had been restrained, if not by efficient laws, yet in some degree by the influence of settled society, abandoned themselves, when that control was withdrawn, to the impulses of their own evil hearts. These banditti plundered and murdered indiscriminately all who fell into their hands. The guerrilla chief, D. Juan Abril, caught a band of seven, who made Castille the scene of their depredations; and he found in their possession gold and silver bars, and other property, to the amount of half a million reales. A ruffian belonging to one of these bands was taken by the French, and in order to save his life, offered to show them the place where his comrades had secreted their booty; accordingly a commissioner from the criminal Junta of Madrid, with two alguazils, and an escort of forty horse, was appointed to go with him. The deposit was in the wood of Villa Viciosa, eight leagues from the capital, and there they found effects to the value of more than 700,000 reales. But D. Juan Palarea, the Medico, from whose party the bandit had originally deserted, had obtained intelligence of their movements, and intercepted them on their return; five only of the escort escaped, six were made prisoners, the rest were killed; and the commissioner was put to death, as one whose office precluded him from mercy, and even from commiseration.

Of the wretches whom this dissolution of government let loose upon mankind, the banditti were the boldest, ♦Crimes of José Pedrazuela and his wife.♦ but not the worst. A more extraordinary and flagitious course was chosen by José Pedrazuela, who had been an actor at Madrid. He assumed the character of a commissioner under the legitimate Government, and being acknowledged as such in the little town of Ladrada in Extremadura, condemned and executed, under a charge of treason, any persons whom from any motive he chose to destroy: the victims were carried at night to a wood, where their graves had been made ready, and there their throats were cut, or they were shot, or beaten to death. The people supposing him to be actually invested with the authority which he assumed, submitted to him in terror, as the French had done to Collot d’Herbois and the other monsters whom this Pedrazuela was imitating. His wife, Maria Josefa Garcia della Valle, was privy to the imposture, and if possible exceeded him in cruelty. Before they could withdraw, as they probably designed to do when they had sufficiently enriched themselves, Castaños heard of their proceedings, and instantly took measures for arresting them in their career of blood. They were brought to trial at Valencia de Alcantara; thirteen of these midnight murders were proved against them: it was said that in the course of three months they had committed more than threescore. The man was hanged and quartered, the woman strangled by the garrote. The Spaniards had not brought upon themselves the guilt of revolution, but they were visited by all its horrors!

The better guerrilla chiefs maintained order where they could, and whenever any of the banditti fell into their hands, ordered them to summary execution. There was another class of criminals whom they took every opportunity of bringing under the laws of their outraged country, ... those Spaniards who took an active part in the Intruder’s service. The alcalde of Brihuega was ♦The alcalde of Brihuega.♦ notorious for his exertions against those who were suspected of corresponding with the national Government, or in any way aiding it; his wife was passionately attached to the same cause, and the Empecinado one day intercepted a dispatch from her to the nearest French commander: he entered the town, and made her and her husband prisoners. The dispatch had provoked a barbarous spirit in the men, for they cut off the woman’s hair, shaved her eyebrows, tarred and feathered her, and in that condition paraded her through the streets; after which they delivered them both to the Junta of the province for judgment. The Empecinado seems to have had an especial pleasure in pursuing traitors of this description. He had set intelligencers ♦Rigo.♦ upon one Rigo, who, having affected great zeal in the national cause, fled afterwards to the capital, obtained a considerable appointment there, and became a persecutor of all who carried on any communication with the Government or the armed Spaniards. This man was keeping his marriage-day at a house a little way from Madrid, when, during the wedding-feast, the Empecinado entered the court-yard at the head of a sufficient band, and demanded that Rigo should be delivered up, saying no injury should be offered to any other of the party. Flight or resistance were alike impossible; the miserable traitor was surrendered into his hands, and sent immediately under a trusty escort to Cadiz; the officer into whose charge he was given being enjoined not to depart from that city till he should have seen him ♦Joseph’s escape from the Empecinado.♦ put to death in the great square. Joseph himself narrowly escaped a similar fate from the same daring adventurer. He was dining at La Alameda, six miles from Madrid, on the road to Guadalaxara, with Gen. Belliard, and a festive party, when their entertainment was interrupted by an alarm that the Empecinado was approaching, and they fled hastily towards the capital, for not a moment was to be lost. The Intruder had a second escape on the road from Guadalaxara: the Empecinado knew his movements, and six days after the French had boasted of having totally defeated him, and dispersed his band of brigands, he took post at Cogolludo, and pursued Joseph so closely that more than forty of his rear-guard were cut off at Torrejon and El Molar, before they could come within protection of the garrison of Madrid. So little indeed had that garrison the command of the surrounding country, that a whole party which had been sent out from thence were one day taken and hung by the way-side, within a short distance from the walls.

In this dreadful warfare blood called for blood; cruelty produced retaliation, and retaliation was retaliated by fresh cruelties. Eight of the Empecinado’s men were taken in the Guadarrama mountains, and nailed to the trees there, for the purpose of intimidating their fellows: such a spectacle had the sure effect of exasperating them, and the same number of Frenchmen were soon nailed to the same trees, in the same spirit of inhuman vengeance.

A lieutenant of his party, Mesa by name, went over to the French, and engaged to bring them the head of this dreaded partisan; his interest was so good, and his proposals so plausible, that they gave him the rank of captain in one of the Spanish regiments which the Intruder was raising, and sent him with a company of 200 Spanish cavalry to perform his promise; when they came near Guadalaxara, the men put him to death, and joined their countrymen in arms. Such an example might have taught Joseph and his ministers how little they could depend upon the Spaniards, who by misery, or severe usage, were forced into his service. Half naked and ill-fed, kept in miserable prisons, or at the hardest work, upon the canals, where such work was at hand, winter and summer, sometimes up to the middle in water, they enlisted with the determination of making their escape. In the course of five months not less than 12,000 entered with this purpose; and on the first opportunity that offered, whole companies, including the officers, deserted, with arms and baggage. The celebrity of the Empecinado encouraged them to these attempts, and his movements in the vicinity of Madrid facilitated their escape. Like the other distinguished guerrilla leaders, he soon obtained rank from the national Government, but he looked to it neither for pay nor supplies. ♦Junta of Guadalaxara.♦ The Junta of Guadalaxara used the utmost exertions to assist him; the members of this Junta performed their duty with perfect fidelity in a situation where they were continually in extreme danger, from the vicinity of a strong enemy’s force. They were as often in the woods and wilds as in human habitations, and yet they collected stores, clothing, and money for the armies, while in this state of outlawry under the intrusive Government; and they circulated a newspaper which they printed in the mountains near the sources of the Tagus.

The Empecinado was supposed to have 500 horse under his command, and 2,200 foot; but this force was perpetually varying in number, according to the chance of war; and the guerrillas generally acted with better ♦The Medico.♦ success in small parties. The Medico’s party was estimated at 300 horse. This leader, joining with the band of D. Casimero Moraleja, fell in with 140 of the enemy’s troops, escorting a convoy from Madrid, about four leagues from Toledo, near Yuncles. Some twenty Juramentados, as the Spanish recruits were called because of the oath which was administered to them when they entered the Intruder’s service, immediately laid down their arms; the others, of whom ♦Fourscore French burnt in a chapel.♦ fourscore were French grenadiers under the Chef-d’escadron Labarthe, took possession of an Ermida, and refused to surrender when they were summoned, little apprehending the horrible alternative. The Spaniards set fire to the building on all sides; no mercy was shown to those who endeavoured ♦Naylies, 275.♦ to escape from the flames; eight persons only were happy enough to be made prisoners in time; the bodies13 of all the rest were left in the smoking ruins.

These details were published in the Regency’s Gazette; there was nothing revolting to the public mind in such horrors, because the Spaniards had been accustomed to cruelties, by the history of their American conquests (wherein the enormities of the conquerors have not been concealed), and by the Inquisition: and if the heart of the nation had not thus previously been hardened, the nature of this war must have hardened it. The decree of the intrusive Government for putting to death every Spaniard who should be taken in arms had not indeed been carried into effect; too many had been taken to render this possible in a christian country; ministers and generals, who might have braved the guilt, shrunk from the odium of enforcing such a measure; and it may be deemed certain, that if the French troops had been commanded to enforce it, they would not have obeyed. But toward the guerrillas the soldiers could entertain no feeling either of honour or humanity: they put to death all ♦Naylies, 274.♦ who were taken in arms and not in uniform; not regarding, or probably not considering, that a great proportion of the regular troops were in that condition! It was not to be expected that they should ask themselves on which side the provocation was given, and with whom the cruelty began. And yet, barbarous as Buonaparte’s predatory system of war necessarily made them, and with all the irritation which the guerrillas occasioned, they were less barbarous than those who were in authority over them: prisoners whom they spared in the field were, in obedience to rigid orders, shot if they lagged upon their march into captivity; and even after they had entered France, numbers were thus ♦Lord Blayney, i. 487.♦ put to death in cold blood. All who were regarded as brigands, who acted in the provincial Juntas, or against whom any proof appeared of acting under the Juntas, or giving intelligence or assistance to the guerrillas, were executed by the summary sentence of some arbitrary tribunal. Heads were exposed on poles, bodies left hanging upon the gallows, or the trees; and in the market-place of large towns, the wall against which the victims were shot was pierced with bullets, and the ground blackened with blood! Nowhere was this system of terror pursued more unrelentingly ♦Old Castille.♦ than in Old Castille, and yet nowhere were the guerrillas more active or more formidable. In ten parties, under known leaders, their numbers were estimated at 1,300 horse, and 2,500 foot. D. Geronimo Merino, the priest of Villabrau, known by the name of ♦The Cura.♦ El Cura, was the most remarkable of them for the ferocity with which he acted against enemies who were made ferocious by the dreadful circumstances in which they were placed. It was not to be expected that the Spaniards should make this allowance for their invaders; but they did not claim it for themselves; they proclaimed for admiration and example actions at which humanity should shudder: it became a matter of praise among them, as in the days of Pizarro and Garcia de Paredes, to possess the qualities of a ruffian; and if the appearance14 corresponded to the manners and character, the popular hero was perfect in his vocation. Yet mercy appears to have been more frequently shown by the guerrillas than extended to them. They obtained consideration with their own Government, and with the English, by bringing in prisoners, and were encouraged so to do; whereas the French soldiers knew that if an armed Spaniard were taken he would be put to death, and might consider it merciful at once to slay a fallen enemy, rather than deliver him over to execution. The guerrillas also, by conveying their prisoners to one of the Spanish fortresses, or to a part of the country where the allies were in force, obtained a respite, for the time, from that life of incessant vigilance and insecurity, exertion and exposure, which, without some such occasional relief, no bodily strength could have long supported. It was by the peasantry that the greatest cruelties were committed upon such miserable Frenchmen as fell into their hands, ♦Rocca, 145.♦ and by the women, who are said to have sometimes vied with the worst American savages in their unutterable barbarities.

There were fewer of the roving guerrillas in Aragon, because something with the name of an army was kept on foot there, and in such a state that the regular service differed little from the course of life to which the adventurers were reduced. In no other part of Spain was the intrusive Government administered with greater ability and vigilance, nor more in the spirit of remorseless oppression and rapacity. The whole yearly revenue which had been raised in that province before the invasion, amounted to from ten to twelve millions of reales: the French exacted twelve per month as the ordinary contribution; they called for extraordinary payments when they pleased; and after these official exactions, the Aragonese were not exempted from the common lot of their countrymen in being at the mercy of every plunderer. What guerrilla parties there were in this part of the country were less heard of, because on all sides there were chiefs whose reputation, founded upon repeated successes, drew to their parties the men who would otherwise have been dispersed ♦The Canterero.♦ in smaller bands. Anicio Algere, the Potter, whose scene of action was about Jaca, was the only one who obtained any degree of celebrity here. But along the great line of communication for the French armies, and especially the high road from the Bidassoa to Madrid, where it was of most importance for the enemy to secure the ways, and where most precautions were taken for securing them, there the guerrillas were most active and most daring. At the entrance of the villages houses were fortified with ditches, parapets, embrasures for field-pieces, and loop-holes for musquetry, and ditches and parapets across the roads. These stations served a double purpose; for here at every step the sick and wounded, who were on their way to France, were inspected with a vigilance so severely exercised, that it seemed as if the persons in authority, who could not escape from this hateful service, found a malignant satisfaction in disappointing others of their expected deliverance. They sometimes remanded men who had passed at several posts; and there were cases in which the wound or the malady (aggravated, perhaps, by so cruel a disappointment) proved ♦Naylies.♦ fatal at the very place where the sufferer had been refused permission to proceed, upon the plea that he was not sufficiently disabled!

Everywhere, but more especially at Irun and all the frontier places, accounts were kept for the guerrillas of the troops, who passed through, both of those who were entering the country, and of invalids on their way from it. Every artifice was used to delay the enemy when it was desired that one of these parties should have time to come up for attack, or for securing a retreat. For this purpose the priest or the alcalde would officiously prepare refreshments, while some messenger, with all the speed of earnest good will, conveyed the necessary intelligence. This would have occurred in ordinary wars; but the treachery with which they had been invaded, and the cruelties which were continually practised against them, made the Spaniards regard any vengeance, however treacherous, as an act of justice. ♦Alcalde of Mondragon.♦ An alcalde and his son were put to death at Mondragon for having at different times assassinated more than two hundred Frenchmen. When they were led to execution, they exulted in what they had done, accounting it among their good and meritorious works; and they said to their countrymen, ♦Lord Blayney.♦ that if every Spaniard had discharged his duty as well as they had done, the enemy would ere then have been exterminated, and the land been free.

It was in this part of Spain that the most noted guerrilla leaders appeared, the Empecinado only excepted; the most mountainous and rugged country being most favourable to their mode of warfare. There ♦Asturias.
Porlier.♦ were many bands in Asturias; the most numerous was that which Porlier had raised; but Porlier was a man of family, who had rank in the army, and his people had more of the feeling and character of soldiers than was commonly found in such companies. There were many also in the Montaña, where Longa obtained a good name. The French endeavoured to counteract this system of national hostility, in the province of Soria, by forcing the men into their own service: with this view they ordered a conscription, and the alcalde of Valdenebro was put to death by them in Burgo de Osma, for not having enforced it in obedience to their authority. They called for all single men from fifteen to forty years of age, and all married ones whose marriage was not of earlier date than the year on which this dreadful struggle ♦D. José Duran.♦ was begun. D. José Duran, an old officer who had grown gray in the regular service, and whom the Junta of Soria had appointed to the command there and in Rioja, impeded the execution of this scheme, ♦Nov. 20.♦ by his enterprises and his edicts: he threatened such of the inhabitants as were disposed to obey the orders of the enemy, lest their own safety might be compromised; and he interdicted the use of the word in that acceptation, saying it was their religion and their liberty which were compromised by such obedience, and that no Christian and true Spaniard could incur the guilt of such a compromise. He forbade any inhabitant of the province to enter Soria while the enemy kept a garrison there, on pain of being regarded as a traitor, whatever motive or excuse he might allege. He declared that every person obeying an order of the intrusive Government should be put to death, ... every village burnt, ... so that nothing might exist in Spain which had contributed towards its subjugation. Whenever the enemy approached a village, the inhabitants were enjoined to leave it, driving all their cattle into the mountains; and they were commanded not to leave provision of any kind in their houses, unless it were poisoned; to the end that either by want or by poison, the enemy, who were employed in destroying an unoffending people, might be themselves destroyed. The state of feeling may be understood in which such an edict could be issued by a provincial Junta who lived in hourly peril, and whose dearest connexions were the victims of foreign barbarity; but when the edict itself was sanctioned by the national Government—for sanctioned it was by being allowed to appear in the Regency’s Gazette unannulled and uncensured—it became a national disgrace.

When the guerrillas of Asturias, the Biscayan provinces, Soria, or Rioja, were closely pressed by the enemy, they usually sought refuge in Navarre, or the higher parts of Aragon: here they had their chief strength. The French, indeed, complained, in their intercepted dispatches, that these bands gave the law in Navarre, levied contributions there, and even collected the duties at the frontier custom-houses. For this ♦Xavier Mina.♦ superiority they were beholden to Xavier Mina. His career was short, but remarkable not less for the signal successes which he obtained, than for his hair-breadth escapes. On one occasion he and his little party were driven to seek refuge on a rock near Estella, where they defended the only accessible side till night-fall, and escaped during the darkness by letting themselves down the precipice by a rope. In the course of five months after his first appearance in the field, his celebrity was such that he might have raised an army from among the youth of Navarre and Upper Aragon, if there had been means to arm, and officers to discipline them: owing to the want of these, and chiefly of officers, he never had more than 1,200 under his command; greater numbers would have embarrassed him, these he was capable of directing: voluntary rations were provided for them by the villages, and for ammunition and money he looked to the enemy, calling the wood of Tafalla his powder-magazine and his mint. As a farther resource, he levied the duties of which the French complained, and he collected the rents belonging to the convents and churches, as having in this extremity reverted to the nation; and from these funds he was enabled to pay liberally and regularly for intelligence. The wisdom of his measures, not less than the chivalrous spirit of enterprise which he displayed, made him so formidable to the enemy, that his capture was considered by them as more important than a victory, when accident threw ♦Xavier Mina made prisoner.♦ him into their hands. Chance had delayed the advance of a convoy for which he was waiting: he was informed of the delay, but proposed to wait still; and went himself on horseback with only one companion, by moonlight, to reconnoitre the ground. The enemy, who would have thought no precautions necessary against a Spanish army at that time, stood in such fear of Mina, that they had formed a double line of outposts, and sent out patroles; by some of whom he and his comrade were surprised, dismounted, and taken. It is remarkable that he was not put to death as soon as identified, for he had been proscribed as a leader of banditti, and his capture as such was exultingly announced; but some person of more generosity than those who thus reviled him must have interfered; and where so little that has the character of honour or humanity can be recorded, it must be regretted that we know not to whom this redeeming act should be ascribed.

When Mina’s followers had thus lost their leader, disputes arose concerning the command; and there being no one whose personal qualifications were generally acknowledged, it was resolved to choose his uncle for his name’s sake, for in that name there was a strength. His uncle, Francisco Espoz y Mina, was born in 1781, in the village of Ydozin, upon a little farm, the sole patrimony of his family, to which he succeeded on his father’s death. His education consisted in having merely been taught to read and write; and husbandry had been his only occupation, till under the impulse of the general feeling he took arms against the oppressors of his country; and having, according to his own account, done to them all the hurt he could as long as he remained in his own house, he enlisted as a volunteer in Doyle’s battalion. Soon afterwards, using that freedom which the times allowed, he joined his nephew’s guerrilla, and on the evening after the young hero’s capture, he left the band apparently with the intention of betaking himself to some other course of life; a deputation of seven persons followed him, and urged him to take the command, which having against his will accepted, he began to exercise with a strength of character that never halted in half measures. One of his first acts was to put down those who resisted the authority which he claimed as commander-in-chief of the guerrillas of Navarre, and in which the Junta of Aragon confirmed him. A certain Echeverria had aspired to this rank; he had some 800 men in his company, consisting mostly of German deserters, who inflicted more evil upon the peasantry than upon the French. Espoz y Mina, with about half that force, surprised and arrested him, had him shot with three of his principal comrades, and incorporated the men in his own band. A gang of forty ruffians, with a woman by name Martina for their leader, infested Biscay and Alava, and committed so many murders, that the cry of the land went forth against them; he dispatched a party, who surprised half these banditti with their execrable mistress at their head, and they were sent to summary execution. Espoz y Mina himself narrowly escaped from the treachery of another adventurer, who for his evil countenance was known by the appellation of Malcarado. This man had been a shepherd, and afterwards a serjeant in Mina’s troop. He, too, intended to make war upon his own account; but finding that this would not be permitted by the new guerrilla chief, who suffered no banditti to exercise their vocation within his reach, he deemed it better to make terms with the French than be exposed to danger on both sides; feigning, therefore, to serve under Espoz y Mina, he gave general Pannetier information of his movements, ... and drew off the advanced guard from before the village of Robres, so as to give a French detachment opportunity to enter while the chief was in bed. The alarm roused him but just in time; he defended himself at the entrance of the house with the bar of the door for want of any other weapon, till his faithful follower, Luis Gaston, came to his assistance and brought a horse. Enough of his people collected to make head against the enemy, rout them, and rescue their prisoners. Immediately he pursued Malcarado, and having what was deemed sufficient evidence of his treason, ordered him to be shot, and the priest of the village and three alcaldes to be hanged, side by side, as his accomplices.

A leader who acted always thus decisively, in disregard of forms, upon the apparent justice of the case, inspired his followers with confidence, and obtained submission everywhere. Where his orders were not executed with the alacrity of good-will, they were obeyed for fear. The alcaldes of every village were required to give him immediate information whenever they received orders from the French for making any requisition: it was at the hazard of their lives to do this; but so surely as they failed to do it, they were seized in their beds and shot. The miserable people were thus continually placed between two dangers; but their hearts were with Mina; they were attached to him by self-interest as well as by national feeling, for he encouraged them to trade with France, receiving money from the rich traders for passports, by which means he was enabled both to pay his men, and to reward his spies liberally; and thus also he obtained many articles which it would otherwise have been difficult to procure. Circumstances having forced him into a way of life which he would not have chosen, he devoted himself to it with his whole heart and soul; and his strength both of constitution and character were equal to their trials. It is said that two hours’ sleep sufficed for him; when he lay down it was with his pistols in his girdle, and the few nights which he slept under a roof were passed with less sense of security than he felt in the wilds, although his first care was to secure the doors, and guard against a surprisal. He was not encumbered with baggage; the nearest house supplied the wardrobe when he changed his linen; and he and his men wore sandals that they might more easily ascend the heights in the hair-breadth adventures to which they were exposed. His powder was made in a cave among the mountains; sometimes he obtained it from Pamplona, notwithstanding the vigilance of the enemy. His hospital was in a mountain village; when the French more than once endeavoured to surprise it, timely intelligence was given, and the villagers carried the sick and wounded in litters, upon their shoulders, into the fastnesses. He kept no man in his troop who was known to be addicted to women, lest by their likeliest means he might be betrayed. No gaming was allowed among his men, nor were they permitted to plunder; when the fight was over every one might keep what he could get; but woe to him who should lay hand on the spoil before the struggle was at an end, and the success had been pursued to the utmost!

In such enterprises as those of the two Minas and the other guerrilla chiefs, the Timours, the Babers, and Khouli Khans of Eastern history, were trained; but neither men nor officers were likely to be formed in them for the operations of regular war. The restraints, the subordination, the principle of obedience which the soldier is compelled to learn, of the necessity of which his understanding is convinced, and to which, if his disposition be good, he conforms at last morally as well as mechanically, these in no slight degree counteract the demoralizing tendencies of a military life, and compensate for its heart-hardening ones. The good soldier becomes a good citizen when his occupation is over; but the guerrillas were never likely to forego the wild and lawless course in which they were engaged; and, therefore, essential as their services now were, thoughtful men looked with the gloomiest forebodings to what must be the consequence of their multiplication, whenever this dreadful struggle should be ended; they anticipated the ♦Sem. Patr. No. 82, p. 338.♦ utter ruin of Spain. The course of events, however, was not to be controlled; circumstances had produced this irregular force, and there was now no possibility of defending the country without it. Lord Wellington had felt how hopeless it was to act in concert with a Spanish army, wherein good intentions were frustrated by obstinate counsels, and courage rendered unavailing by insubordination; but he felt at this time of what importance it was to have a nation in his favour, and how materially the movements of the enemy were impeded and their difficulties increased by the guerrilla parties who acted along their whole line, from the Pyrenees to the frontiers of Beira. Massena’s situation became every day more trying; the French in Spain were so little able to feed his army, that he was obliged to have his biscuit from France, when it had to be escorted 800 miles through a hostile country! It was as difficult for him to send dispatches as to receive supplies; and the first intelligence which Buonaparte obtained of his situation after he advanced to the lines of Torres Vedras, was brought from London, by persons employed in smuggling guineas to the continent.