Worlds Best Histories France Vol 7 by M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

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The situation left to the insurgents no alternative but that of
submission. During the night, the Marquis of Castellar went out with his
troops by the gates which the French had not yet seized. At six in the
morning, on the 4th December, Madrid surrendered. All the citizens were
disarmed. Napoleon took possession of a small country-house at Chamartin,
and King Joseph held his court at the Pardo, some distance from Madrid;
the rebel town being thus held unworthy to be honored by the presence of
its masters. Several great lords were arrested: the Marquis of St. Simon
was even condemned to death, as a French emigrant in the Spanish service;
but the sentence was badly received by the soldiers, and left unexecuted.
A series of decrees abolished the feudal rights, the Inquisition, and the
custom duties in passing from one province to another. The number of
convents was reduced by a third. The conquests of liberty and civilization
thus imposed on the Spanish by their oppressors naturally became hateful
to them. Thus one of the results of Napoleon's Spanish campaign was to
prepare a reaction in favor of the Inquisition.

While the emperor took possession of Madrid, and endeavored to reduce the
undisciplined spirit of the capital, General Gouvion St. Cyr had been
appointed to bring Catalonia to submission. A man of skill and prudence,
though obstinately attached to his own opinions, St. Cyr was never a
favorite with Napoleon, though he knew his merit. He had entrusted him
with the duty of reducing an isolated province, where his command ran no
risk of being interfered with by contradictory wishes or orders. The
general delayed some time at the siege of Rosas, which he was anxious not
to leave in his rear, and when he at last advanced towards Barcelona,
General Duhesme and his garrison were short of provisions. On his approach
the blockade was raised, and, on the 15th December, General Vives offered
battle to St. Cyr at Cardeden, before Barcelona. The French having left
their artillery behind, so as to advance more quickly, the order was given
to open a road through the enemy's ranks with the bayonet. The soldiers
obeyed, keeping their heads down as they advanced under the fire of the
Spanish; the latter were unable to resist the impetuosity of such an
attack, and the columns of our troops passed through the enemy's lines,
which were soon broken and scattered. The Spanish artillery fell entirely
into our hands, and next day the French entered Barcelona. On the 21st the
entrenched camp on the Llobregat was taken, and complete dispersion of the
Spanish troops in Catalonia soon followed, only a few places still holding
out, which General Gouvion St. Cyr prepared to besiege.

The English, however, henceforward united to the cause of the Spanish
insurrection by a solemn declaration, published on the 15th December, and
everywhere the objects of Napoleon's most persistent hatred, had not yet
undergone the shock of his arms. Having only imperfect information as to
Sir John Moore's operations, the emperor had reckoned with certainty upon
the retreat which that general began at the moment of the attack upon
Madrid, when he found that it was absolutely impossible to concentrate his
forces in time for resistance. Moore was not hopeful as to the results of
the campaign, and had little satisfaction in his Spanish auxiliaries, who
always distrusted foreigners, even when allies; when urged by the Junta,
however, and after receiving instructions from England, he advanced
towards Valladolid, relinquishing his line of retreat upon Portugal, and
directing his march to Corunna. From some intercepted despatches he
believed he might surprise Marshal Soult in the kingdom of Leon, with
inferior forces to his own; and, at the same time, ask Sir David Baird to
join him with his troops, and sent to ask the Marquis Romana for
reinforcements. On the 21st December, the English army, more than 25,000
men strong, had reached Sahagun, near to Marshal Soult's position.

The emperor was not deceived by the first report, that the English had
changed their line of march. He at once penetrated Sir John Moore's
object, and resolved to at once fall upon his rear, and crush him by a
superiority of forces. In a letter to Paris he says, "The English have at
last showed signs of life. They seem now to have abandoned Portugal, and
taken another line of operations. They are marching upon Valladolid, and
for three days our troops have made operations to manoeuvre them, and
advance on their rear. If the English don't make for the sea, and beat us
in speed, they will find it hard to escape us, and will pay dear for their
daring attempt upon the continent."

On the 22nd, the emperor, uniting the divisions of his army with that
rapidity which all his lieutenants had learned from him, set out himself
on march with 40,000 men, in the hope of intercepting the advance of the
English to the coast. The weather had become wet and cold, and when the
French army reached the foot of Guadarrama the snow was falling in thick
masses. The chasseurs of the guard, dismounting, led their horses by hand,
and opened a road to their comrades through the snow. Napoleon himself was
on foot. The snow-storm being followed by rain, their progress was slow.
On receiving a message from Soult that he was at Carrion, and that he
believed the English were one day's journey distant, Napoleon said, "If
they stay one day longer in that position they are lost, for I shall
presently be on their flank."

Sir John Moore was a prudent and skilful soldier, and on receiving
information sufficient to indicate the emperor's intention, he at once
began his retreat towards Corunna. When Marshal Ney, entering Medina from
Rio-Seco, was preparing to march upon Benaventa, the English had already
reached that post, and, after crossing the Ezla, blew up the bridges. When
the French advance-guard, commanded by General Lefebvre-Desnouettes,
arrived before the town the last wagons of the English army were
disappearing in the distance. The cavalry officer too eagerly made his
squadrons ford the river, and Lord Paget, who protected the retreat,
repulsed the attack of the French, and took their general prisoner. The
first detachments of Napoleon's army entered Astorga a short time after
the English had evacuated the place, the Marquis de la Romana, withdrawing
as well as his allies, having followed by the same way. The roads were
much cut up by the wheels and footsteps, besides being encumbered by the
dead bodies of many horses, which the English had killed when too tired to
go on. There were also traces left everywhere by the English army of a
troublesome want of discipline; soldiers left drunk because they could not
keep up in the rapid march which their leader had ordered, houses
pillaged, and the Spanish peasants, oppressed both by their defenders and
their enemies, became every day more distrustful and gloomy. Sir John
Moore complained that he could obtain neither food nor information from
the frightened and discontented population.

On the 2nd January, the Emperor Napoleon changed his plans. Feeling that
the danger of a war with Austria became daily more imminent, and finding
that the English would reach the sea in spite of any efforts of his to
intercept them, and that the brilliant stroke which he intended was daily
becoming more impossible of execution, he entrusted the pursuit of the
enemy to Marshal Soult, who was then nearer him than Ney, and marched with
the imperial guard towards Valladolid. Before arriving there he wrote from
Benaventa to King Joseph, on the 6th January, 1809,--

"My brother, I thank you for what you say regarding the New Year. I have
no hope of Europe being at peace in 1809. On the contrary, I yesterday
signed a decree for a levy of 100,000 men. The hatred of England, the
events at Constantinople, everything forewarns that the hour of rest and
tranquillity has not yet sounded. As to you, your kingdom appears to me to
be almost at peace. The kingdoms of Leon, the Asturias, and New Castile,
only want rest. I hope Galicia will soon be pacified, and that the English
will leave the country. Saragossa must soon fall; and General St. Cyr,
with 30,000 men, will soon attain his object in Catalonia."

The English were in fact preparing to leave Spain; and though the
determination was quite recent, it was with a sense of depression, which,
in the case of the general, was increased by the sad plight of his array
and its want of discipline. Their disorder was at its worst when at last
they reached the small town of Lugo (6th January, 1809), exhausted by the
bad weather, want of food, and excess of brandy and other strong liquors.

Sir John Moore had resolved to offer battle to the French, and the hope of
fighting had restored courage and obedience to the soldiers. He waited
three days for Marshal Soult, but the French general's forces were
diminished by the rapidity of the pursuit, and he did not accept the offer
of fighting. Moore resumed his march towards Corunna, reckoning to find,
on his arrival at the coast, the transport vessels which were necessary
for his army. When at last, on the 11th January, he came in sight of the
sea, not a single sail appeared over its vast extent. The contest becoming
inevitable, Sir John ordered the bridges over the Mero to be blown up, and
took up his position on the heights which command Corunna.

Marshal Soult had been delayed, by the necessity of repairing the bridges
and rallying a division of his army which had fallen behind; and when at
last, on the morning of the 16th, he attacked the English positions, the
long-expected transports were crowding into the harbor, and a way of
escape was open to the English army. A keenly-contested struggle took
place, however, around the small village, Elvina, occupied by the troops
of Sir David Baird, who was severely wounded. Sir John went to the
assistance of his lieutenant, and when leading his men within range to the
front, had his arm and collarbone shattered by a ball. He was carried back
to the town by his soldiers, in a dying condition. The English still
retaining their positions at nightfall, their embarkment was now certain,
and General Hope, who had taken the command, pushed forward the
preparations for departure.

Sir John Moore had just expired. "You know well," said he to his friend
Colonel Anderson, "that this is how I always wished to die." After a short
pause, he added, "I hope the English people will be satisfied; I hope that
my country will do me justice." Without losing time in procuring a coffin,
his soldiers dug a grave with their swords, and committed to earth the
body of their general, still wrapped in his military cloak. The English
army, which he had saved by his prudence and resolution, then hurriedly
embarked, "and left him alone in his glory," as the poet has finely put
it. Several weeks afterwards, when Marshal Ney took possession of Corunna,
he had a stone placed on the tomb of his heroic enemy.

From Valladolid, where he was still staying, the Emperor Napoleon directed
the movements of his armies; fortifying the defences of Italy, and
commanding the movements of the troops intended for Germany, he at the
same time wrote to all the princes of the Rheinish Confederation,
reminding them peremptorily of their engagements, and referring to the
lengthened war preparations of Austria as equivalent to a declaration of
war. "Russia, as well as myself, is indignant at the extravagant conduct
of Austria," he wrote to the King of Wurtemberg, on the 15th January; "we
cannot conceive what madness has taken possession of the court of Vienna.
When your Majesty reads this letter I shall be in Paris. One part of my
army of Spain is now returning, to form an army of reserve; but,
independently of that, without touching a single man of my army of Spain,
I can send into Germany 150,000 men, and be there myself to advance with
them upon the Inn at the end of February, without counting the troops of
the Confederation. I suppose that your Majesty's troops are ready to march
on the slightest movement; you are sensible of the great importance, if
war is absolutely necessary, of carrying it on in our enemy's territory,
rather than leaving it to settle on that of the Confederation. I beg of
your Majesty to let me know in Paris your opinion on all those points. Can
the waters of the Danube have acquired the property of the river Lethe?"

At the same time, to instruct King Joseph in the government of Spain, at
the moment when that prince was about to visit his capital again, he thus
wrote to him, at Prado:--"General Belliard's movement is excellent; a
score of worthless fellows ought to be hanged. To-morrow I am to have
seven hanged here, known to have had a share in all the excesses, and a
nuisance to the respectable people, who have secretly denounced them, and
who now regain courage on finding themselves rid of them. You must do the
same at Madrid. Five-sixths of the town are good, but honest folks should
be encouraged, and they cannot be so except by keeping in check the riff-
raff. Unless a hundred or so of rioters and ruffians are got rid of,
nothing is done. Of that hundred, get twelve or fourteen shot or hanged,
and send the rest into France to the galleys. I think it necessary,
especially at the first start, that your government should show a little
vigor against the riff-raff. They only like and respect those whom they
fear, and their fear alone may procure you the love and esteem of the rest
of the nation.

"The state of Europe compels me to go to spend three weeks in Paris, and
if nothing prevent I shall return here about the end of February. I
believe I wrote you to make your entry into Madrid on the 14th. Denon
wishes to take some paintings. I should prefer you to take all that are in
the confiscated houses and suppressed convents, and make me a present of
about fifty of its master-pieces, for the Paris museum. At the proper time
and place I shall give you others. Send for Denon, and give him a hint of
this. You understand that they must be really good; and it is said you are
immensely rich in that kind."

King Joseph retook possession of his capital with a great display of
magnificence, the brilliant success of the French arms having rallied
round him the timid, and the discontented keeping silence. Before setting
out for Paris, where he arrived on the 24th, the emperor said, "The attack
upon Valentia must not be thought of until Saragossa is taken, which must
be during the month of February:" and Marshal Lannes, who had charge of
the siege operations for a month, justified the hopes of his master. On
the 21st February, 1809, Saragossa at last surrendered, having been the
object of several French attacks since June, 1808.

After the battle of Tudela the whole of the army in Aragon had fallen back
upon Saragossa. Joseph Palafox had shut himself up in it with his two
brothers, and the country population having followed in great numbers,
100,000 human beings were crowded together behind the ramparts of the
town, in its old convents, within the dull walls of its embattled houses--
almost everywhere without outside windows, and already threatening the
enemy with their gloomy aspect. Throughout the province, at the call of
the defenders of Saragossa the insurgent peasants intercepted the convoys
of provisions intended for the French army, and the besiegers no less than
the besieged suffered from want of food.

Napoleon had undervalued the resistance of the inhabitants of Saragossa.
Always ordering the movements of his troops himself, and from a distance,
he had sent Marshal Moncey with insufficient forces; and soon after, Junot
was entrusted with the attack. The sallies of the Spanish were easily
repulsed, but each assault cost a large number of men. The Aragonian
riflemen, posted on the ramparts or the roofs of the houses, brought down,
without exposing themselves, the bravest of our grenadiers. Everywhere the
women brought the artillery-men food and ammunition; and one of them,
finding a piece abandoned, applied the match to it herself, and continued
firing it for several days. The whole of the population fought on the
walls until they should have to fight in the streets and houses.

From redoubt to redoubt, from convent to convent, General Junot had slowly
advanced, till the middle of January, 1809. When at last Marshal Lannes
appeared before Saragossa, he had called to his assistance large
reinforcements; and the troops posted in the suburbs, and who had not yet
shared in the action, dispersed the hostile crowd there. The attack
commenced with a vigor which quite equalled the energy of the resistance;
and on the 27th January, after a general assault, which was deadly and
long-continued, the entire circuit of the walls was carried by the French
troops. It is a maxim of war that every town deprived of the protection of
its walls capitulates, or surrenders at discretion; but in Saragossa the
real struggle--the struggle of the populace--was only beginning. On the
28th, Lannes wrote to the emperor: "Never, sire, have I seen such keen
determination as in putting our enemies here on their defence. I have seen
women come to be killed at a breach. Every house has to be taken by storm;
and without great precaution we should lose many soldiers, there being in
the town 30,000 or 40,000 men, besides the inhabitants. We now hold Santa-
Engracia as far as the Capucine convent, and have captured fifteen guns.
In spite of all the orders I have given to prevent soldiers from rushing
forward, their ardor getting the better of them has given us 200 wounded
more than we ought to have."

And a few days afterwards: "The siege of Saragossa resembles in nothing
any war we have hitherto had. It is a business requiring great prudence
and great energy. We are obliged to take every house by mining or assault.
These wretches defend themselves with a keen determination which is
inconceivable. In a word, sire, it is a horrible war. At this moment three
or four parts of the town are on fire, and it is crushed with shells, yet
our enemies are not intimidated. We are laboring might and main to get to
the faubourg; and once we are masters of it, I hope the town will not long
hold out."

During the first siege of Saragossa, Marshal Lefebvre, on getting
possession of one of the principal convents, sent to Joseph Palafox the
short despatch: "Head-quarters, Santa-Engracia. Capitulation." And the
defender of the place replied: "Head-quarters, Saragossa. War to the
knife." It was war to the knife, to the musket, to the mine, which was
pursued from house to house, from story to story. To go along the streets,
the French soldiers were obliged to slip past close to the walls, the
enemy being so keen and eager that a shako or coat held up on the point of
a sword to deceive them was instantly riddled with balls. More than one
detachment after taking a building were suddenly blown up, by being
secretly undermined. Our soldiers in their turn replied by some important
underground works, which were ably organized by Lacoste, colonel of the
engineers. From the 29th January to the 18th February the same struggle
was pursued, with the same keen determination. A day was chosen for the
assault of the faubourg, which General Gazan had long invested. The troops
were impatient to make this last effort, being both irritated and
depressed. They both suffered and saw others suffer. The misery in the
town, however, was greater than the besiegers could suspect. A terrible
epidemic was decimating those who were left of the defenders of Saragossa.
Joseph Palafox himself was dying.

After the breach was opened in the ramparts of the faubourg, a frightful
explosion announced the destruction of the immense University buildings,
laying open to our soldiers the Coso, or Holy Street, which passed through
the whole town. The ground was everywhere mined, and the very heart of
Saragossa was at its last extremity, when the Junta of Defence at last
yielded to the necessity which was bearing them down, and a messenger
presented himself before Marshal Lannes in the name of Don Joseph Palafox.
We have seen the painful illusions created by the isolation of a besieged
town: the defenders of Saragossa believed that the Spanish had been
victorious everywhere, and it was only on the word of honor of Marshal
Lannes that they accepted the sad truth. The 12,000 men of the garrison
who had resisted all the horrors of the siege, surrendered as prisoners of
war. Of 100,000 inhabitants who had crowded Saragossa, 54,000 had
perished. There were heaps of dead bodies round the old church, Our Lady
del Pilar, object of the passionate devotion of the whole population. In
their real heart, and at the first moment of victory, the French soldiers
felt for the defenders of Saragossa an admiration mixed with anger and
alarm. Rage alone animated the heart of their most illustrious leader.
Napoleon had sometimes honored the resistance of his enemies, as at
Mantua; now, on his attaining the height of power and glory, he no longer
admitted that the Spanish should defend their independence against a
usurpation stained with perfidy. "My Brother," he wrote to King Joseph on
the 11th March, "I have read an article in the _Madrid Gazette_, giving an
account of the taking of Saragossa, in which they eulogize those who
defended that town--no doubt to encourage those of Valencia and Seville.
That is certainly a strange policy. I am sure there is not a Frenchman who
has not the greatest scorn for those who defended Saragossa. Those who
allow such vagaries are more dangerous for us than the insurgents. In a
proclamation, mention is already made of Saguntum: that, in my opinion, is
most imprudent."

Many things at this juncture chafed the mind of the imperious master of
the world. He had left Spain immediately after a series of successes,
without deceiving himself as to their importance and decisive value with
reference to the permanent establishment of the French monarchy in Madrid.
He foresaw the difficulties and perpetually recurring embarrassments of a
command being divided, when the nominal authority of King Joseph was
unable to govern lieutenants who were powerful, distinguished, and
jealous. To obviate this inconvenience, and maintain that unity of action
which he considered an indispensable element of success, he had kept to
himself the supreme direction of the military operations, and attempted to
govern the war in Spain from a distance, at the moment when he was
organizing and recruiting his armies to support in Germany a determined
struggle against all the forces of the Austrian empire. Italy, Holland,
the Rhenish Confederation, all the states which he had founded or subdued,
claimed his support or vigilance. Russia remained quiet because she was
powerless and disarmed, but a serious check would have speedily thrown her
with ardor on the side of his enemies. Russia, compelled by recent
treaties and pressing interests, concealed under friendly phrases a secret
indifference, and the beginning of her enmity: being, moreover, occupied
by her own conquests, by the uncompleted subjugation of Finland, and a
renewal of her struggle with Turkey. England, irritated and humiliated by
the check undergone by her attempts at intervention in Spain, was
energetically preparing new and more successful efforts. In presence of so
many enemies, concealed or declared--compelled to regulate so many
affairs, the government, oppression, and conquest of so many races--
Napoleon, on returning to Paris after his Spanish campaign, had found
men's dispositions changed, and precursory signs of an open discontent
which he was not accustomed to meet or to suffer.

Even in Spain the rumor of this modification of the national thought had
already reached Napoleon's ears: he had read it in the letters of his most
intimate correspondents, and imagined it even in the eyes of his soldiers.
The rage of the despot burst forth one day in Valladolid: when passing
along the ranks of the troops he was leaving behind, on hearing some of
them muttering he is said to have snatched from the hand of a grenadier a
musket, which seemed awkwardly held, exclaiming, "You wretch! you deserve
to be shot, and I have a good mind to have it done! You are all longing to
go back to Paris, to resume your habits and pleasures:--well, I shall keep
you under arms till you are eighty."

On reaching France, and especially Paris, Napoleon thought the atmosphere
felt charged with resistance and disobedience. There was more freedom of
speech, and men's thoughts were more daring than their words. Those whom
he distrusted now came nearer, and others had taken the liberty to
criticise his intentions and his acts. Even in the Legislative Body, the
arrangements of the code of criminal justice, recently submitted to the
vote, had undergone a rather lively discussion. Fouche had the courage to
raise the question of the succession to the throne, when speaking to the
Empress Josephine herself about the necessity of a divorce. The most
daring had ventured to anticipate the possibility of a fatal accident in
the chances of war, some affirming that Murat aimed at the crown. The
Arch-chancellor Cambaceres, who always showed prudence and ability in his
relations with his former colleague, now his master, attempted in vain to
calm the increasing irritation of his mind. His anger burst forth against
Talleyrand during a sitting of the Ministerial Council. For several months
previously a coldness and distrust had reigned between the emperor and
this confidant of several of the gravest acts of his life--who was always
self-possessed even when he seemed devoted, too clever ever to give
himself up entirely, and invariably impassible in manner and feature.
Napoleon poured forth his displeasure in a long speech, reminding
Talleyrand of advice he had formerly given him, being carried away both by
his passion and the desire to compromise and humiliate a man whose
intrigues he was afraid of. At the conclusion of this noisy scene, still
more humiliating for the emperor than for the minister, Talleyrand quietly
withdrew, limping through the galleries, among the officers and courtiers,
astonished at the noise which had reached even them, and looking at him
with curiosity or spite. It was the starting-point of that secret
animosity to which Talleyrand was afterwards to give cold and biting
expression, when, in 1813, after a similar scene, he said, "You have a
great man there, but badly brought up!" Napoleon's anger did not last
long, although his distrust remained fixed. Talleyrand's pride underwent
numerous eclipses. Commencing, however, from that day, the separation
between them became irreparable; and when the emperor's decadence began,
Talleyrand was already gained over to other hopes, and ready to serve
another cause.