CHAP. 1808. July 13. and on the 13th July, Cuesta moved forward with the united forces, amounting to twenty-five thousand infantry, four hundred cavalry, and thirty pieces of cannon, to RIO SECO. Bessières' force was much less numerous, amounting only to fifteen thousand men, and twenty-five guns; 1 Nap. i. 106. but of these nearly two thousand were admirable horseTor. ii. 347, men, and the composition of the whole was such as more than to counterbalance the inferiority in point of num 348. Foy, iii. 302, 308. 20. Battle of Rio Seco. July 14. 2 Foy, iii. 310, 313. Tor. ii. 352. Nap. i 107. bers.1 The dispositions of Cuesta for the battle were as faulty as the resolution to hazard it was ill advised. Contrary alike to the rules of the military art, and the dictates of common sense on the subject, he drew up his troops in two lines at the distance of a mile and a half from each other. The first, ten thousand strong, under Blake, with fifteen pieces of cannon, but in great part composed of raw levies, was stationed on a plateau in advance, of rugged and difficult access; the second, fifteen hundred toises (nine thousand feet) in the rear, led by Cuesta in person, consisted of fifteen thousand men, almost all regular soldiers, and fifteen guns. The few cavalry they had were with the first line. Bessières, perceiving at once the advantage which this extraordinary disposition offered to an enterprising attack, prepared to avail himself to the utmost of it by throwing the bulk of his forces into the wide chasm between the two lines, so as to overwhelm the first before the second could come up to its assistance. Penetrating rapidly into the open space between the two parts of the army, he attacked Blake both in flank and rear with such vigour, that in an instant his lines were broken, his artillery taken, his men dispersed. As soon as he saw the rout of his first line, Cuesta moved forward with the second to the attack, and succeeded in reaching the enemy before the disorder consequent on their rapid success and pursuit had been repaired. The consequences had well-nigh proved fatal to the victors. Cuesta's right wing, advancing swiftly and steadily forward in good order, overthrew several French battalions which had not fully recovered their ranks, and captured four guns.2 This disaster, like that experienced by Zach's grenadiers at Marengo, might, with a less skilful commander or less steady troops, have turned the fortune of the day; for the LIV. 1808. Defeat of the example of disorder is contagious, and the confusion was CHAP. already spreading into the French centre, when Bessières, with the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, twelve hundred strong, charged Cuesta's right, which had become exposed 21. by the rapidity of its advance, in flank, with great vigour; Spaniards. and Merle's division, returning from the pursuit of Blake, renewed the combat in front. A short but sanguinary struggle ensued. The Spanish infantry fought bravely, and for a few minutes the fate of the battle hung by a thread; but at length they were broken, and the loud shouts of victory, which had been raised in the Castilian ranks, passed to the French side. After this it was no longer a battle, but a massacre and rout; the Spaniards broke and dispersed on all sides, leaving eighteen guns, and their whole ammunition, besides two thousand prisoners, in the hands of the enemy. Three thousand had fallen on the field, while the loss of the victors did not exceed twelve hundred men. The town of Rio Seco, taken in the pursuit, was sacked and plundered with merciless severity, and all the nuns in the convents were subjected to the brutal violence of the soldiery. Few days have been more disastrous to Spain, for, worse than the loss of artillery and prisoners, it destroyed all confidence in the ability of their troops to withstand the enemy in the field; while to Napoleon it was the source of unbounded, and, as it turned out, undeserved exultation. "It is Villa Viciosa," he exclaimed, when the joyful intelligence arrived at Bayonne; "Bessières has placed Joseph on the throne of Spain.”* Deeming the war over, 1 South. i. he left that fortress, and pursued his journey by Bordeaux Foy, iii. 310, for the French capital: while Joseph, relieved now of all 313.Tor. ii. anxiety in regard to his communications, pursued his Nap. i. 107. journey to Madrid, where he arrived, as already mentioned, on the 21st July.1 Napoleon was premature in this judgment: Rio Seco placed Joseph on the throne of Madrid; but it neither * In allusion to the battle at Villa Viciosa, where Philip V. and the Duke de Vendôme gained a complete victory over the Allies, which decided the Succession War in favour of the house of Bourbon. But the comparison was the reverse of the truth: for at Villa Viciosa, Philip and the Spaniards combated for Spain against foreign armies; and the affair was decisive, for the whole military force of both sides was collected in one field; whereas at Rio Seco the general of an intrusive king sought to beat down the native troops of Castile, and a fragment only of the military strength of either side was engaged.-See Foy, iv. 47. 480, 481. 352, 354. CHAP. 1808. 22. Further pre finished the war, nor maintained him there. He did not, however, on that account suspend his military preparations: nine thousand Poles, who had entered the service of France, were directed, with four regiments of infantry parations of and two of cavalry from the Grand Army in Germany, Napoleon for the war. towards the Pyrenees. All the princes of the Rhenish Confederacy received orders to send a regiment each in the same direction: the guards of Joseph followed him to Spain from Naples. Tuscany and the kingdom of Italy were commanded to send their contingents to reinforce Duhesme in Catalonia. Reinforcements to the amount of forty thousand men were thus provided, which all arrived in Spain during the three following months, but too late to arrest the progress of misfortune. While both the French Emperor and his royal brother were indulging in the sanguine hope that all was terminated, a dreadful disaster had occurred in Andalusia, and a blow been struck on the banks of the Guadalquivir which resounded from one end of Europe to the other.1 1 Foy, 48, 49. iv. 23. March of Dupont into Andalusia. June 2. Dupont, who was at Toledo when the insurrection broke out in all parts of Spain, received, on the 24th May, an order from Murat, then lieutenant-general of Spain, to move upon Cadiz, by the route of the Sierra Morena, Cordova, and Seville. He was to be joined in Andalusia by four thousand men and ten guns drawn from the army of Portugal. Having immediately set out, he experienced no resistance while traversing the open plains of La Mancha; and in the Sierra Morena found the villages indeed deserted, but no enemy to dispute his progress. At Andujar, however, where he arrived on the 2d June, he received information of the real state of matters in that province, that Seville, Cadiz, and all the principal towns were ruled by juntas, which had declared war against France; that the army at St Roque had joined the patriot cause, and that the peasants by tens of thousands were flocking into the burghs to enrol themselves under the national banners. Alarmed by this intelligence, Dupont wrote to Madrid for reinforcements, and, after establishing 2 Tor. i. 320, an hospital at Andujar and taking measures of precaution Foy, iii. 224, to secure his rear, set out four days afterwards, and con227. Nap. i. tinued his march towards Cordova, still following the left bank of the Guadalquivir.2 This road, however, after run June 7. 112. ning eight-and-twenty leagues on that bank of the river, crosses it at Vinta de Alcolea by a long bridge of nineteen arches, strongly constructed of black marble. It was at its extremity that the Spaniards awaited the enemy. CHAP. LIV. 1808. 24. The end of the bridge on the left bank was fortified by a tête-du-pont; twelve guns were mounted on the right bank to enfilade the approach to it, and three thousand Capture of regular troops, supported by ten thousand armed pea- Vinta de the bridge of sants, waited in Alcolea to dispute the passage; while Alcolea. the heights on the left bank, in the rear of the French, were occupied by a cloud of insurgents ready to fall on them behind as soon as they were actively engaged with the more regular force in the front. The French general, seeing such preparations ready for his reception, delayed the attack till the following morning, and meanwhile made his dispositions against the numerous enemies by whom he was surrounded. This was no difficult matter: a very small part only of the Spanish force was adequate to the encounter of regular soldiers. At daybreak on the following morning, General Fresia, with a battalion of June 8. infantry and a large body of cavalry, attacked the peasants on the left bank, and by a few charges dispersed them at the same time a column with ease broke into the tête-du-pont, the works of which were not yet finished, and rapidly charging across the bridge, of which the arches had not been cut, routed the Spanish troops at 1 Foy, iii. : 113. Tor. i. Alcolea on the opposite side with such loss that all their 224, 230. artillery was taken. Echevarria, the commander, despair- Nap. i. 112; ing of defending Cordova, fled with such precipitance, 320, 321. that before night he reached Ecija, twelve leagues from the field of battle.1 Abandoned to their own resources, and destitute of any leaders for their guidance, the magistrates having all fled 25. sack of on the first alarm, the inhabitants of Cordova, before which Taking and the French presented themselves the same day, were in Cordova. no condition to resist the invaders. The gates nevertheless were shut, and the old towers which flanked their approaches filled with armed men, by whom, as the cannon of the enemy approached, a feeble fire was kept up. A parleying for surrender, however, took place, and the conferences were going on, when, under pretence of a few random shots from some windows, the guns were dis LIV. 1808. CHAP. charged at the gates, which were instantly burst open; the troops rushed into the town, where hardly any resistance was made, but which notwithstanding underwent all the horrors of a place carried by assault. A scene of indescribable horror ensued, fraught with acute but passing suffering to the Spaniards, with lasting disgrace to the French. A universal pillage took place. Every public establishment was sacked, every private house plundered. Armed and unarmed men were slaughtered indiscriminately; women ravished; the churches plundered; even the venerable cathedral, originally the muchloved mosque of the Ommiade Caliphs, which had survived the devastations of the first Christian conquest, six hundred years before, was stripped of its riches and ornaments, and defiled by the vilest debauchery. Nor was this merely the unbridled license of subaltern insubordination, too common on such occasions with the best disciplined forces. The general-in-chief and superior officers themselves set the first example of a rapacity as pernicious as it was disgraceful; and from the plunder of the Treasury and Office of Consolidation, Dupont contrived to realise above 10,000,000 reals, or £100,000 sterling. Not content with this hideous devastation, the French general, when the sack had ceased, overwhelmed the city by an enormous contribution. It is some consolation, amidst so frightful a display of military license and unbridled cupidity, that a righteous retribution speedily overtook its perpetrators; that it was the load of their public and private plunder which shortly after retarded 323. Nap. i. their retreat along the banks of the Guadalquivir; and that it was anxiety to preserve their ill-gotten spoil Lond. i 87. which paralysed their arms in the field, and brought an unheard-of disgrace on the French standards.1* 1 Foy, iii. 229, 231. Tor. i. 321, 113. South. i. 475, 476. *Colonel Napier says, (i. 114, 1st edit.) "As the inhabitants took no part in the contest, and received the French without any signs of aversion, the town was protected from pillage, and Dupont fixed his headquarters there." It would be well if he would specify the authority on which this assertion is made, as it is directly contrary to the united testimony of even the most liberal French and Spanish historians. Foy says, with his usual admirable candour, "To some musket-shots, discharged almost by accident from the windows, the French answered by a continued discharge, and speedily burst open the gates. Men without arms, without the means of resistance, were slaughtered in the streets; the houses, the churches, even the celebrated mosque, which the Christians had converted into a cathedral, were alike sacked. The ancient capital of the Ommiade Caliphs, the greatest kings which Spain ever beheld, saw scenes of horror renewed such as it had not witnessed since the city was |