LIII. 1808. Thus, after making every allowance for the detachments CHAP. necessary to maintain the capital and frontier fortresses, and keep up the communications, fifty thousand men, with eighty guns, were ready in the north and centre of Spain to commence offensive operations--a force amply sufficient, if concentrated, to crush any attempt at resistance which could have been made in the Peninsula. But the composition of these troops was very unequal; and though the Imperial Guard and some of the veteran divisions in the capital were in the finest state of discipline and efficiency, yet this was by no means the case with the whole army. All, indeed, partook of the admirable organisation of the French service, yet the ranks were for the most part filled up with raw conscripts, hardly yet instructed in the rudiments of the military art. Had it not been for the excellence of the skeletons on which they were formed, and the officers by whom they were directed, the difference between them and the insurgent peasantry would not have been very considerable. They were very different from the soldiers of Austerlitz, Jena, or Fried- Notes, Ap. land: the enormous consumption of life in those bloody pier, vol. i. campaigns had almost destroyed the incomparable army 72. Nawhich, disciplined on the heights of Boulogne, had so pier, i. 47. long chained victory to the imperial eagles; and what Guerre en Catalogne, remained of it was still on the Oder or the Vistula, to 17, 21. retain the Emperor's supremacy in the north of Europe.1 1 Napoleon's No. 3. Na Thiebault, Duhesme's early forces Such was the situation of the French army when the 37. insurrection at once broke out in every part of the Penin- Progress and sula. It burst forth with such force and unanimity in all of the insurthe provinces, that it could not have been more simulta-rection. neous if an electric shock had at once struck the whole population. With the intelligence of the commotion and massacre at Madrid, a convulsive thrill ran through every fibre of Spain. The sense of their wrongs, the humiliation of their situation, the thirst for vengeance, broke at once upon the people, and one universal cry to arms was heard from one end of the kingdom to the other. Every LIII. 1808. CHAP. where the peasantry met together in tumultuous crowds. From town to town, from village to village, from hamlet to hamlet, the news flew with incredible rapidity; and as the French troops, though in possession of the capital and frontier fortresses, were by no means scattered over the country, the proceedings of the insurgents hardly anywhere met with molestation. The excitement was univer sal: the young and the old, the feeble and the strong, the shepherds of the mountains and the cultivators of the plains, the citizens of the towns and the peasantry of the country, all shared in the general transport. Arms were quickly sent for and obtained from the nearest depots in the district; officers and colonels of battalions elected; provisional juntas of government formed in the chief towns, to direct the affairs of the provinces; and, in the absence of all central authority, local governments soon sprang up in every part of the kingdom. Spain awoke from the slumber of centuries, and started at once to her feet with the vigour and resolution of an armed man. Passing over in disdain the degradation or insignificance of the Bourbon dynasty, the people came forth fresh for 10-12. Foy, the combat, glowing with the recollections of the Cid and Pelajo, and the long struggle with the Moors, and the heroic days of the monarchy.1 Tor. i. 173, 178. Duhesme, iv. 52. Lond. i. 80. 38. Nor was this extraordinary and unanimous burst of Vigorous feeling lost in mere empty ebullition. Resolving, with a first made facility peculiar to themselves, into the pristine elements for carrying of the monarchy, the different provinces, with unparal efforts at on the con test. leled rapidity, formed separate and independent juntas of government, which early gave a systematic direction to their efforts, and effected the formation of numerous and enthusiastic legions for their defence. It was easy to foresee how prejudicial to any combined or efficient general operations this unavoidable partition of the directing power into so many separate and independent assemblies must in the end necessarily prove. But, in the first instance, it tended strongly to promote the pro LIII. 1808. gress of the insurrection, by establishing in every province CHAP. a centre of insulated, detached, and often ill-advised, but still vigorous operations. Before the middle of June, numerous bodies were raised, armed, and to a certain degree disciplined in all the provinces; and a hundred and fifty thousand men were ready to support the regular army. Even the presence of the French garrisons in the capital and the frontier fortresses could not repress the general effervescence. Almost all the regular soldiers in Madrid escaped, and joined the insurgent bands of New 1 Tor. i. Castile; under the very guns of their strong castles of South. i. Montjuich and St Juan de Fernando, alarming symptoms Duhesme, of disaffection appeared in Barcelona and Figueras, and 11, 12, their Spanish garrisons almost all made their escape to 32, 33, the enemy. Spain proved true to her old character; 80, 81. the lapse of eighteen hundred years had made no alter- i. 52. ation on the disposition of her inhabitants.1 173, 175. 335, 337. Foy, iv. Lond. i. Napier, disorders commence insurrection cities. In the northern provinces, especially Catalonia, Astu- 39. rias, Leon, and Galicia, the insurrection took place, and Frightful the provincial juntas were established, in a comparatively which sigregular manner, without any of the usual frightful ebulli- nalised the tions of popular passion. But it was far otherwise in ment of the the cities of the south and east of Spain. The usual in some vehemence and intemperance of the unbridled populace of great towns, was there increased by the fiery intermixture of Moorish blood. Frightful atrocities were committed. At Badajoz, the governor, who endeavoured to restrain the furious multitude which surrounded his house clamouring for arms, was dragged out and murdered; numbers were massacred, on the supposition of being agents or partisans of the French, at Carthagena, Granada, Carolina, Cadiz, and other places; and at Cadiz a fearful altercation took place between the governor, Solano, who refused to commence the hostilities which May 26. were required of him against the French squadron of five ships of the line, which had lain in the harbour since the battle of Trafalgar, and the ardent populace, VOL. VIII. 2 E LIII. 1808. CHAP. who clamoured for an immediate attack. Independent of a secret leaning to the French interest, he naturally hesitated, as an officer of prudence and honour, at taking the decisive step of attacking, without any previous declaration of war or authority from the executive power, a squadron of an allied state which had taken refuge in Cadiz during the hostilities with Great Britain; and he openly expressed an apprehension that, during these dissensions, the English would break in and destroy the fleets of both contending parties. Finding that the popular effervescence was becoming too strong to be openly resisted, he endeavoured to temporise, called a council of war, and gave symptoms of submission to the public wish. But the populace, distrusting his sincerity, broke into his hotel, and chased him into the house of Mr Strange, an English merchant, where he was discovered by a set of bloodthirsty assassins, who dragged him from his place of concealment, notwithstanding the courageous efforts of Mrs Strange to save his life, and massacred him while on the road towards the gallows. He met his fate with dignity and composure, bidding his heroic supporter, 143, Tor. Mrs Strange, farewell till eternity. Don Thomas Morla, Foy, i. 201, the second in command, was next day nominated to the ix. 23, 30. government of Cadiz by popular acclamation, and immediately entered on the duties of his important office.1 May 29. 1 South. i. 341, 356. Nell. i. 134, i. 209, 214. 208. Thiers, 40. with which tion in commenced. May 24. At Valencia the first burst of popular indignation was Massacres accompanied by still more frightful atrocities. Three the revolu- hundred French merchants or traders had long been Valencia established in that city, and when the insurrection broke out there in the end of May, they all, as a measure of precaution, took refuge in, or were sent to the citadel, where they were supposed to be safe from any violence that might arise. An ardent, resolute, and able Franciscan monk, Juan Rico, early acquired, by his powers of public speaking, the lead in the movement; but the junta elected for the government was composed, as in most other instances, of a mixture of persons of patrician and LIII. 1808. plebeian origin. The people, however, from the first CHAP. conceived a jealousy of the nobles; and to such a height did that feeling arrive, that the commander of the troops, Don Fernando Saavedra, was massacred before the eyes May 29. of the Count de Cervellon, a nobleman of the popular side, to whose palace he had fled for safety. This deed of blood was but the prelude to still greater atrocities; and the popular appetite for slaughter being once aroused, the multitude fell, as usual in such circumstances, under the direction of the most worthless and sanguinary leaders. In Valencia there appeared at this period one of those infamous characters who degrade the human race by their cruel deeds, and who is worthy of a place in history beside Robespierre, Collot d'Herbois, and the other political fanatics whose atrocities have for ever stained the annals of the French Revolution. Padre Balthasar Calvo, a canon of Madrid, denounced the fugitives in the citadel to the mob, as being in correspondence with Murat for the purpose of betraying that stronghold to the French troops. As invariably ensues in such moments of excite- June 1. ment, strong assertions passed for proofs with the multi- 236, 240. Foy, iii. tude, and no difficulty was experienced in finding persons 214, 246. to undertake the most sanguinary designs. A general 363, 369. massacre of the unfortunate French was resolved on, and 34, 37. its execution fixed for the 5th June.1 1 Tor. i. South, i. Thiers, ix. 41. cruelty of gents. Mingling perfidy with cruelty, Calvo, on the evening of that day, repaired to the citadel, and told the trem- Atrocious bling inmates, who already had conceived, from vague Calvo and rumours, apprehensions of their fate, that their destruc- the insurtion was resolved on, and that their only remaining chance of safety was to avail themselves of the means of escape which, from an impulse of Christian charity, he had prepared for them. Trusting to these perfidious assurances, the unhappy victims agreed to his proposal, and two hundred of them set forth by the wicket through the walls, which, according to his promise, was left open for them. No sooner had this flight begun, |