CHAP. LII. 1807. 15. of Fontaine Oct. 27. To this secret treaty of spoliation was annexed a convention, prescribing the model in which the designs of the contracting powers should be carried into effect. By this Convention it was agreed, that a corps of twenty-five thousand French bleau. infantry and three thousand cavalry should forthwith enter Spain and march across that country, at the charge of the court of Madrid, to Lisbon; while one Spanish corps of ten thousand men should enter the province of EntreDouro-e-Minho, and march upon Oporto, and another of the like force take possession of Alentejo and Algarves. The contributions in the central provinces, which were to be placed in sequestration, were all to be levied for the behoof of France; those in Northern Lusitania and the principality of Algarves for that of Spain. Finally, another French corps of forty thousand men was to assemble at Bayonne by the 20th November at latest, in order to be ready to enter Portugal and support the first corps, in case the English should send troops to the assistance of Portugal or menace it with an attack; but this last corps was on no account to enter Spain without the consent of both the contracting parties. As the principal object of this treaty was to give France possession of Lisbon and the maritime forces of Portugal, it was communicated in substance to the Emperor of Russia, and a Russian squadron of eight ships of the line, under Admiral Siniavin, passed the Dardanelles and steered for Lisbon to support Convention the French army, and prevent the escape of the Portu411, 412 guese fleet, a short time before the army under Junot Sav. iii. 145. broke up from Bayonne for the Portuguese frontier, and viii. 701. long before any rupture had taken place between England and the cabinet of St Petersburg. 1* 1 See the in Foy, ii. Martens, These treaties were not merely a flagrant act of iniquity * "On reaching Lisbon," says Thiébault, "we found there eight sail of the line and a frigate, under Admiral Siniavin's order. This fleet, which, in consequence of the alliance between France and Russia, and the war of the latter with England, was to afford us an additional guarantee for the protection of the harbour, gave us in the sequel far more apprehension than security."— THIEBAULT, Exp. de l'Armée Franç. en Portugal, 86, 87. The presence of the LII. 1807. 16. perfidious towards on the part of both the contracting powers, inasmuch as CHAP. they provided for the partition of a neutral and unoffending power, which had even gone so far as to yield implicit obedience, by its proclamation of the 20th October, eight Napoleon's days before they were signed, to all the demands of the designs, both partitioning cabinets; but they were yet more detestable Spain and from involving a double perfidy towards the very parties the Peace, in who were in this manner made the instruments of the this treaty. ambitious designs of the French Emperor. While Godoy was amused, and for the time secured in the French interest, by the pretended gift of a principality, his downfall had in reality been resolved on by Napoleon, who had never forgiven the proclamation of 5th October 1806; and this specious lure was held out without any design of really conferring it upon that powerful favourite, merely in order to remove him from the Spanish court, and make way for the great designs of the French Emperor in both parts of the Peninsula. The French force, which was stipulated to assemble at Bayonne in the end of November, was not intended to act against either the English or Portugal, but to secure the frontier fortresses of Spain for Napoleon himself; and the Spanish forces, which were to be marched into the northern and southern provinces of Portugal, were not designed to secure any benefit for his Most Catholic Majesty, but to strip his dominions of the few regular troops which, after the departure of Romana, still remained for the defence of the monarchy, in order to prepare its subjugation for the French Emperor. So little care was taken to disguise this intention, that, by a decree soon after from Milan, Junot, the commander of the French invading force, was appointed governor of Portugal, and he was ordered to carry on the administration of the whole in the Emperor's name, which was accordingly done.* His Russian fleet, however, is stated by Lord Londonderry, whose means of information were far superior to those of the French military historian, to have been purely accidental.-LONDONDERRY, i. 37. * By Junot's proclamation, dated 1st February 1808, proceeding on the LII. 1807. Dec. 26. 1 Godoy's CHAP. tory contains many examples of powerful monarchs combining iniquitously together to rob their weaker neighbours; but this is perhaps the first instance on record in which the greater of the partitioning powers, Mem. i. 55, in addition to the spoliation of a neutral and unoffending tion, Sav, state, bought the consent of its inferior coadjutors in the Hard. x. 91, scheme of iniquity by the perfidious promise of some 19. of those spoils which it destined exclusively for its own aggrandisement.1 Introduc iii. 246, 247. 92. Tor. i. 17. It may easily be believed that, when such were the His secret views entertained at this period by the French Emperor, to Junot in the letter of the Prince of Asturias, written at the sugof Portugal. gestion of Beauharnais, offering his hand to a princess of instructions his invasion Nov. 3. the imperial family, was not likely to receive a very cordial reception. It was permitted, accordingly, to remain without an answer; and meanwhile the march of Junot across the Peninsula was pressed by the most urgent orders from the imperial headquarters. Early in November, General Clarke, the minister of war, wrote, by Napoleon's command, a letter to that marshal, in which he was ordered to advance as far as Ciudad Rodrigo between the 1st to the 15th November, and to reach Lisbon at latest by the 30th. His orders were to proclaim peace to Portugal, and alliance and friendship to its prince regent; but meanwhile to press on with ceaseless activity, 3 D'Abr. xi. and at all hazards get possession of the fortresses and fleet x. 97, 98. at Lisbon, before they could be reached by the English forces.2* Junot was not backward in acting upon the 27. Hard. Milan decree of 23d December 1807, it was declared-"The house of Braganza has ceased to reign in Portugal; and the Emperor Napoleon, having taken under his protection the beautiful kingdom of Portugal, wishes that it should be administered and governed over its whole extent, in the name of his Majesty, and by the general-in-chief of his army."-See TORENO, i. 49; and Foy, iii. 343. *He was specially ordered, "on no account to stop, whether the Prince Regent did or did not declare war against England; to move on rapidly towards the capital, receiving the proposals of the Portuguese government without returning any written answer, and to use every possible effort to arrive there as quickly as possible, as a friend, in order to effect the seizure of the Portuguese fleet. Should the Portuguese government have already declared war against England, you are to answer-'My instructions are to march straight on Lisbon, LII. 1807. perfidious policy thus prescribed to him: but in the exe- CHAP. cution of it he encountered the most serious difficulties; and such was the rapidity of his march, and the state of disorganisation to which his corps was reduced by the severity of the weather and the frightful state of the roads, that if any resistance whatever had been attempted by the Portuguese government, he must infallibly have been destroyed. At first he proceeded, by easy marches and in good order, by Burgos, Valladolid, and Salamanca, through the north of Spain; though he everywhere underwent the utmost privations, from the failure of the Spanish authorities to furnish the prescribed supplies to his troops, -a failure of which the English armies afterwards had such bitter experience. But when he reached Ciudad Rodrigo, Nov. 19. the orders he received to hasten his advance were so 106, 110. urgent,* that he deemed it necessary to press on by the Foy, ii. 335. route of Alcantara and Abrantes, with the most extra-100. Lond. ordinary expedition, and disregard everything but the one grand object in view. He accordingly issued a proclama- viii. 328. Nov. 17. 1 Hard. x. South. i. i. 31, 32. Nevis, 190, 200. Thiers, without balting a single day; my mission is to close that great harbour against England. I would be entitled to attack you by main force, but it is repugnant to the great soul of Napoleon, and to the French character, to occasion the effusion of blood. If you make no assemblages of troops; if you dispose them so as to cause me no disquietude; if you admit no auxiliary till the negotiations set on foot at Paris are terminated, I have orders to consent to it.' This is the footing on which you must represent matters: you must hold out that you are arriving merely as an auxiliary; meanwhile, a courier, despatched twentyfour hours after the arrival of the main body of the army at Lisbon, will transmit the real intentions of the Emperor, which will be, that the proposals made are not accepted, and that the country must be treated as a conquered territory. It is on this principle that we have acted in Italy, where the property of all Portuguese subjects has already been put under sequestration. By proceeding in this manner, you will, without firing a shot, make yourself master of ten sail of the line and valuable arsenals; that is the grand object, and to attain it you must never cease to hold out that you come not to make war but to 2 Hard. x conciliate.” The secret instructions of Junot, written by the Emperor with his 97, 98. own hand, were of the same tenor:-" They enjoined Junot," says the Duchess of Abrantes, “to do everything in order to gain possession, not of the person of the Prince of Brazil, but of certain other persons therein named, and above all, of the city, forts, and fleet of Lisbon."-D'ABRANTÈS, Xi. 27. * "On no account halt in your march even for a day. The want of provisions could be no reason for doing so, still less the state of the roads. Twenty thousand men can march and live anywhere, even in a desert."-NAPOLEON to JUNOT, Nov. 2, 1807; TORENO, i. 35. LII. CHAP. tion to the inhabitants, in which he disclaimed any hostile intentions, and declared he came only as an ally, and to save them from the hostility of the English.* 1807. 18. Two days afterwards the army entered Portugal, where Extraordin- they soon gave convincing proofs how little their declared ties of his resolution of protecting property and abstaining from ary difficul march through Portugal. every species of outrage was to be relied on. Pillage of every sort was systematically practised by all grades, from the commander-in-chief to the common soldier. Junot faithfully executed his instructions to employ the language of conciliation, but act upon the principle of the most decided hostility. Such conduct naturally made the inhabitants fly his approach; and this circumstance, joined to the forced marches the soldiers were compelled to make, and the excessive severity of the rains, soon reduced the army to the most frightful state of disorder. Added to this, the rugged, impracticable nature of the roads, or rather mountain paths, which they were obliged to traverse in descending the right bank of the Tagus, between Alcantara and Abrantes, destitute of bridges and almost impassable for carriages, produced such an effect upon the French army, that in a few days it was as much disorganised as it would have been by the most disastrous defeat. Discipline was soon at an end; the commands of the officers were no longer attended to; the roll of the drum was drowned in the roar of the tempests; the soldiers, drenched from head to foot, lay down on the wayside without either food or shelter; and this finely-appointed army, six-and-twenty thousand strong when it left Bayonne, amounted, when it reached Abrantes * "The Emperor Napoleon sends me into your country at the head of an army, to make common cause with your well-beloved sovereign against the tyrant of the seas, and save your beautiful capital from the fate of Copenhagen. Discipline shall be rigidly preserved ; I give you my word of honour for it; but the smallest resistance will draw down the utmost severity of military execution. The Portuguese, I am persuaded, will discern their true interests, and, seconding the pacific views of their Prince, receive us as friends; and the city of Lisbon, in an especial manner, will behold us with pleasure within its walls, at the head of such an army as can alone preserve it from the eternal enemies of the Continent." |