CHAPTER XV.

THE PENINSULAR WAR, 1808-14.

 

In dealing with the political schemes of Napoleon it is not always easy to discover what is end and what is means : whether a particular project is carried out merely for its own sake, or is also intended as a step towards some further goal. This is preeminently the case with the invasion of Portugal, described in a previous chapter. It has often been maintained that when the Emperor launched Junot’s corps against Lisbon he was thinking of nothing more than bringing Portugal into line with his other vassal-states in the matter of the Continental System. A careful study of his manoeuvres, however, would seem to make it certain that he was also using the whole affair as a cover for a long- projected attack on Spain.

So far back as 1805 he had muttered to a confidant, “Un Bourbon sur le trone d'Espagne, c'est un voisin trop dangereux; and with far better justification, after he had received Godoy’s bellicose proclamation on the battlefield of Jena, he had vowed to take his revenge in due season on the presumptuous favourite and his imbecile master. “Je jural des lors qn'lls me le paieraient, queje les mettrals hors d'etat de me mare." No one eould have blamed him if, after signing the Treaty of Tilsit, he had turned sharply on Spain and demanded the dismissal of Godoy, or even declared war on Charles IV. Ten years later, at St Helena, he acknowledged that this would have been the most expedient as well as the most honest course to take. In place of it he adopted the tortuous and Machiavellian policy of which the first step was seen in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Godoy, instead of receiving condign chastisement, was promised a kingdom for himself in southern Portugal, on condition that he should allow a French army a free passage to Lisbon, and lend his aid for the expulsion of the House of Braganza. It is impossible to believe for a moment that the Emperor ever intended to call into real existence Godoy’s “ principality of the Algarves.” When he offered a crown and a realm to one who had deserved so ill at his hands, it was clearly with the object of cajoling him into admitting French troops into the Peninsula, and with no intention of carrying out his promise. After Junot had obtained possession of Portugal, no steps were taken to establish the “ principality of the Algarves.”

Meanwhile, before Junot had reached Lisbon, the domestic troubles of the Court of Spain had at last reached explosion point. On October 27, 1807, Charles IV arrested his son Ferdinand, accusing him of having plotted to dethrone him and to murder his mother and her favourite Godoy. The Prince of the Asturias had undoubtedly been intriguing behind his father’s back; he had written to Napoleon to beg his pro­tection, and to ask for the hand of a princess of the House of Bonaparte. He had been organising a party of malcontents, who hated the “Prince of the Peace”—such was Godoy’s title—as much as he did himself. But his schemes were vague and futile; the most he did was to write obsequious letters to Paris, and to take precautions against Godoy’s hardly-disguised intention to exclude him from the succession. The only compromising documents found in his possession were two drafts of a manifesto denouncing the favourite’s designs, and an undated commission appointing the Duke of Infantado (one of his personal camarilla) military governor of Madrid and New Castile. He declared, probably with truth, that this last paper was intended to be used only in the case of his father’s death or permanent disablement.

But the best proof of Ferdinand’s innocence of the grave accusations brought against him is his character. He was very obstinate and a good hater, but he was also cautious in the extreme, and so destitute of courage and proper pride that, though he could resent, he could never revenge an insult, if the least risk was involved. When arrested at the Escorial, he gave up the names of his confederates in the most craven fashion, and sent to his parents two letters couched in the most disgusting terms of self-abasement. The King had already written to Napoleon stating that his son had been discovered in a plot against his mother’s life; he had also published in the Madrid Gazette a manifesto to the effect that the Prince had been detected in treason­able plots, and that the conspirators were to be tried and punished. But whether it was that the old man shrank from bloodshed, or that Godoy thought that he had done enough in discrediting Ferdinand in the eyes of the nation, matters were pushed no further. The Prince was pardoned by a magniloquent and turgid royal proclamation; and his partisans, Infantado, the Canon Escoiquiz, and certain others, were allowed to be acquitted after a formal trial. Nothing could have suited Napoleon’s plans better than the publication of this scandalous domestic quarrel; it was indifferent to him whether public opinion regarded Charles IV as an unnatural father or Ferdinand as an unnatural son. In either case the prestige of the Spanish royal family was diminished, and interference in its affairs became more easy.

Meanwhile he was proceeding with his plans for introducing more French troops into Spain. The Treaty of Fontainebleau had provided that, if the English sent an army to Portugal, the Emperor might reinforce Junot’s expeditionary corps, after giving due notice to the King of Spain. With this excuse, an army-corps of 25,00C men under General Dupont had been collected at Bayonne. On November 22 Dupont received orders to cross the Bidassoa, though no English force had been heard of. No intimation of this movement was sent to the Spanish Government; and Charles IV and Godoy were as much alarmed as they were surprised by the news that the troops of their ally had cantoned themselves in the valley of the Ebro. On January 8, 1808, they were still further startled by the appearance of a third army-corps under Marshal Moncey, which occupied Biscay and Navarre; whereupon Dupont pushed forward to Burgos and Valladolid. Nor was this all. On February 10 a division of 14,000 men, half French, half Italian, under General Duhesme, began to pour into Catalonia and made its way to Barcelona. As Catalonia is not on the way to Portugal, there was no excuse whatever for the appearance of this fourth army in the north-eastern corner of the Peninsula.

On February 16 the Emperor finally threw off the mask and began a series of frankly hostile acts towards his unfortunate ally. On that day the French troops quartered in Pampeluna occupied the citadel of that fortress by a treacherous coup de main. On the 29th Duhesme seized the citadel and chief forts of Barcelona. On March 5 the weak governor of San Sebastian allowed himself to be scared out of that rocky stronghold by threats of force. Finally, on March 18, Figueras, the border fortress of northern Catalonia, was surprised by a French detachment, supposed to be passing peacefully through the town.

The Spanish Court was plunged into wild alarm by the news of the seizure of Pampeluna and Barcelona. Godoy hesitated for a moment whether he should declare war on his treacherous ally, or follow the example of the Prince Royal of Portugal, and bid the King and Queen fly to Cadiz and embark for America. He seems to have thought that there was little use in attempting resistance: a fifth French army­corps under Bessieres had now commenced to cross the Bidassoa, so that more than 100,000 French soldiers were already south of the Pyrenees. Moreover the headstrong Murat had appeared at Burgos on March 13 with a commission as “lieutenant for the Emperor in Spain.” At last Godoy resolved to advise instant flight, without any attempt to defend Madrid or central Spain.

But the Spanish people now intervened. The King and Queen had left Madrid for Aranjuez; and their departure for Andalusia had been announced for March 18. On the preceding night a fierce riot broke out in the little town, which was crowded with hangers-on of the Court. Every Spaniard now understood that Godoy had ruined the realm by handing it over to Napoleon, and that his cowardly and obsequious policy had led to far deeper humiliation than could have been caused by the most unfortunate of open wars. He had to pay for nearly twenty years of corrupt and selfish rule, which had led Spain to her ruin; and the explosion of wrath against him was all the more fierce for its long suppression. A raging mob of soldiers, peasants, and citizens sacked his palace, but sought for him in vain. The crowd then gathered under the King’s windows, calling aloud for the favourite’s head, and cheering for the Prince of the Asturias. Charles IV was terrified; the Queen besought her son to parley with the mob, and disperse them on any terms. Ferdinand therefore was able to announce that Godoy had been dismissed from office and banished from the Court. But next day the favourite was detected as he was slinking away; the royal guards rescued him from his first captors in a very battered state, and dragged him into the palace. This brought the multitude once more around its gates; and it seemed as if some bloody scene from the French Revolution was about to be reenacted. Then came the hour of Prince Ferdinand’s opportunity. He told his parents that their personal safety and the life of their favourite could only be secured by an abdication. Without delay the old King wrote a brief statement, in which he announced that his age and infirmities compelled him to resign the crown to his very dear son and heir, the Prince of the Asturias. Armed with this, Ferdinand faced the mob, promised them that Godoy should be imprisoned and brought to trial, and begged them to disperse without further violence. He was hailed as King amid universal rejoicings; the troops took the oath to him as sovereign ; and Godoy was sent a prisoner to Villaviciosa (March 19, 1808).

All over Spain, the fall of Godoy was received with feelings of intense relief; and much was hoped from the young King, as if it were likely that the son of Charles IV and Maria Luisa of Parma would prove a hero and a statesman. Ferdinand’s first acts proved his unwisdom and timidity; instead of retiring to Andalusia and concentrating what was left of the Spanish army, he went to Madrid (March 24), though Murat had arrived there on the previous day at the head of Moncey’s army-corps. Having taken possession of the royal palace, he wrote a grovelling letter to Napoleon, assuring him of his adherence to the French alliance, and renewing his request for a bride from the Imperial house. It was evident, from the first, that he had taken a false step. The French ambassador refused to acknowledge him as King; while Murat behaved to him in the most discourteous fashion, and, what was more ominous, sent a French escort to guard the person of the former King and Queen.

Meanwhile Napoleon had been forced to face the new problems created by the revolution of Aranjuez. Down to this moment he had apparently hoped to scare Charles IV, his Queen, and their favourite out of Spain, and then to present himself to the nation as their saviour from the tyranny of Godoy. This was no longer possible when a young and popular King had mounted the throne. It would have been wise to accept the situation, and receive the homage of the new sovereign, whose protestations of obsequious respect to his patron were all that could be desired. But Napoleon resolved to push on his iniquitous plan in spite of the new political situation that had been created by Ferdinand’s accession. The pretext was ready at hand, for Charles IV had no sooner recovered from his first terror, than he drew up a secret protest in which he declared that his abdication had been extorted front him by threats of bloodshed. Long before this document had reached Paris, Napoleon had written to his brother Louis, King of Holland, offering him the Spanish crown; it is therefore clear that he had been intending in any ease to refuse to recognise Ferdinand, and that the protest of Charles IV had nothing to do with his decision. It was, however, welcomed as a useful card in the game; and Murat was directed not only to send the old King to Bayonne, but to forward Godoy in his master’s train.

Meanwhile the Emperor declared his intention of visiting Madrid in person. He sent before him his aide-de-camp, General Savary, who visited the young King, and, as all the Spanish witnesses unite in declaring, informed him that his master intended to take him into favour, and to bestow upon him the hand of the Bonaparte princess whom he had craved as his consort. Unless he had received some such assurance, the cautious Ferdinand would most certainly have refrained from putting himself in the Emperor’s power. But on April 10 he was persuaded into setting out to meet his mighty guest, and was finally induced to cross the Bidassoa into French territory. When he reached Bayonne (April £?0) he was put under guard, and informed that Napoleon had resolved to depose him; but that if he would sign an instant resignation of the Spanish crown, he should receive in com­pensation the kingdom of Etruria.

The King, craven though he was, plucked up courage to refuse this monstrous proposal. Thereupon the Emperor produced Charles IV and his Queen, whose arrival at Bayonne had been timed so as to follow that of their son by a few days. He confronted Ferdinand with his parents; and a lamentable scene followed in his presence. On being told that his father was still the lawful King, and that he himself was a rebel who had been guilty of high treason, Ferdinand preserved a sullen silence. When he refused to sign a document declaring that he withdrew his claim to the crown, his father tried to strike him with his cane, and his mother burst in with a string of abuse worthy of a fishwife. The Emperor put an end to the altercation by thrusting Ferdinand out of the room. He then offered to abdicate if he were allowed to return to Madrid, summon the Cortes of the realm, and execute his renunciation in due form. But this would not have suited Napoleon’s scheme; and the offer was refused. Two days later there arrived at Bayonne the news of the bloody Dos Mayo, the great insurrection at Madrid (May 2). Thereupon the Emperor told Ferdinand that if he did not abdicate within twelve hours he should be tried for high treason. Terrified by this threat, the young King executed, on May 6, an instrument restoring the throne to his father. Then appeared the second half of Napoleon’s scheme; he produced a treaty, signed on the previous day, by which Charles IV “resigned all his rights to the throne of Spain and the Indies to the Emperor of the French, the only person who in the present state of affairs can re-establish order.” The old King and his wife knew that they could never return to Madrid, and out of revengeful spite had lent themselves to a scheme for disinheriting their son. They received in return certain revenues and estates in France, and retired into obscurity in company with Godoy. The miserable trio spent the greater part of their remaining time in Rome, the objects of universal contempt. Ferdinand’s enforced abdication could not buy him similar liberty; he was interned in Talleyrand’s manor of Valençay, and spent six years there under strict military guard. He spoilt his status as martyr by adulatory letters to Napoleon; in one, he even congratulated him on his victories in Spain.

We must turn back eight days from Ferdinand’s final abdication, to explain the outbreak at Madrid which had caused Napoleon to apply the last turn of the screw to his captive. Within a short time of the first arrest of the young King at Bayonne, it had become known in the Spanish capital that treachery was on foot. The effete or cowardly ministers took no action; but the news got abroad in Madrid, and premonitory signs of trouble began to be seen. They were brought to a head by an order from the Emperor to Murat, bidding him arrest and send over the frontier all the remaining members of the royal House.

On May 2, when the French escort was preparing to move from the palace the young prince Francis, the last of the sons of Charles IV, an unarmed or half-armed mob fell upon them, broke up the coach, and attacked the soldiers with stones and stilettos. Murat had been warned by his master to be ready for outbreaks, and to treat the canaille to a whiff of grape-shot if they should rise. He dispersed the rioters by a couple of volleys from his guard. But this was only the beginning of the trouble : the whole populace of Madrid turned out at the sound of the musketry, and flung themselves upon the French with such weapons as they could procure. The battalions in the city were almost swept away by the furious assault, which was far more formidable than Murat had expected: more than thirty French officers and several hundred soldiers were killed or wounded. But within an hour the brigades of Moncey’s corps came marching down from their camps out­side the walls, and cleared the streets with much slaughter. The Spanish garrison of Madrid took no part in the struggle. Only two officers, named Daoiz and Velarde, with a handful of artillerymen, joined the rioters and perished with them.

For a few days after the Dos Mayo, Murat at Madrid, and his master at Bayonne, lived in a sort of fool’s paradise, imagining that they had made an end of all open resistance to their will. Murat assumed the presidency of a “Junta of Regency,” chosen from among the most pliant of the old officials who had been corrupted by twenty years of Godoy’s rule. On May 13 he announced to this body that the Emperor desired them to ask for a new King, and suggested that the person designated should be Joseph Bonaparte, who for the last two years had been the ruler of Naples. The contemptible Junta did as they were 'ordered, and duly petitioned the Emperor that his brother might be granted them as a King. In order that some semblance of national consent might be displayed, Napoleon drew up a list of some 150 magnates, who were directed to present themselves at Bayonne and sue in person for Joseph’s acceptance of the throne. Of this body no less than 91 were base and weak enough to obey the mandate. On June 15 the deputation met the Emperor at Bayonne and accepted Joseph as their ruler, receiving many promises of liberal reforms and wise governance from that well-intentioned prince, who little understood the unenviable task that his brother had imposed upon him.

But, long ere Joseph Napoleon I had been proclaimed King of Spain and the Indies, the whole country had flared up into insurrection. It took some time for the news of the treachery at Bayonne, followed by that of the Dos Mayo, to penetrate to the remoter corners of the Peninsula. But, when the nation began to comprehend the situation, a wild outbreak of patriotic rage followed. It was not led by the lawful and constituted authorities, who for the most part disgraced themselves by a cowardly torpidity. The effervescence came from below; and the leaders were non-official persons, local magnates, street-demagogues, and sometimes clerics. The movement was spontaneous, unselfish, and reckless; in its wounded pride, the nation challenged Napoleon to combat, without any thought of the consequences, without counting up its own resources or those of its enemy. Every province, in many cases every town, acted for itself. But, though there was no union or organisation, the same spirit animated every region; and all, without exception, rose in arms between May 24 and June 10. It was an unhappy feature of the insurrection that in many places it was stained with massacre. The populace was incensed against its late rulers almost as much as against the French. Old protégés of Godoy, colonels who refused to lead their regiments against Napoleon, officials who had shown zeal in carrying out Murat’s orders, were assassinated on all sides. In Valencia a priest led out a band of ruffians who murdered the whole of the French merchants resident in that great seaport.

It took some weeks for even the rudiments of a Government to be formed out of the turbulent and patriotic chaos which prevailed. In every province local “Juntas” then emerged, and began to call out the strength of the region for the holy war against the treacherous Emperor, the enemy of Church and King. It was unfortunate, but inevitable, that the Juntas were largely composed of furious but incapable zealots, ambitious demagogues, and self-seeking intriguers. There was an absolute want of statesmanship and organising ability; and fierce parochial patriotism could not supply their place. No central Government what­ever was established for some months; and each province fought for itself without much regard for the fate of its neighbours.

The military position at the end of May stood somewhat as follows. The French troops whom Napoleon had pushed down into the Peninsula during the last six months held a narrow triangular wedge of territory, piercing into the heart of New Castile. Toledo and Madrid formed its apex, a line drawn from San Sebastian to Pampeluna was its base. In addition to this there were two outlying French forces, that of Junot, mainly concentrated at Lisbon, and that of Duhesme, which lay at Barcelona. The central army, formed of the troops of Moncey, Dupont and Bessieres, was about 75,000 strong: Junot had about 28,000 in Portugal, Duhesme some 14,000 in Catalonia. But the latter two generals were completely cut off from communication with Madrid.

On the Spanish side, the Juntas found about 100,000 regulars and militia at their disposal; but these were scattered about in provincial garrisons, badly provided, and wholly unfit to take the field immediately. The main force lay in Galicia and Andalusia, where large detachments had always been kept for the purpose of protecting the seaports from English descents. In each of these provinces there were about 30,000 men available. Of the rest, there were a few battalions in Estremadura, Valencia, and Catalonia, but in mid-Spain hardly a man. Thus the forces of the insurgents formed a sort of semicircle, extending around the French wedge which ran into the heart of the land. New levies were being hastily prepared on every side, but arms and equipment were hard to find, owing to the depleted state in which Godoy had left the arsenals; while the stores of Madrid, Barcelona, Pampeluna, Figueras, and San Sebastian were in the hands of the enemy. When the fighting began, the remains of the old standing army were the only serious belligerent force on which Spain could count; the rest of the Spanish force consisted of undrilled and ununiformed peasants, officered by untrained and often incompetent civilians.

It was fortunate for the Spaniards that Napoleon at first misconceived the problem that lay before him. He had always nourished the greatest contempt for the fighting power of Spain, and was under the impression that the armies which he had already pushed south of the Pyrenees were amply sufficient to hold down the country. But these armies were, as a matter of fact, very imperfect instruments of conquest. When the Emperor organised the forces which worked their way to Madrid, Lisbon, and Barcelona during the winter of 1807-8, he had not drawn upon the veteran corps which lay in Germany. Junot’s corps, indeed, was of good material, being composed of old battalions picked from the garrisons of western France. But the corps of Moncey, Dupont, and Bessieres were a hap-hazard assembly of second-rate troops and newly-organised provisional units. They included only about 5000 men of old French regiments; but round this nucleus were gathered some 15,000 Swiss, German, and other auxiliaries, and no less than 60,000 conscripts of 1807, hastily organised in “provisional regiments,” “legions of reserve,” and bataillons de marche.

The Emperor had collected a very raw and ill-compacted army; he next proceeded to dispose of it on mistaken lines. He had made up his mind that the Spanish insurrection was a mere flash in the pan, the work of monks and banditti. The suppression of it would be a mere matter of police; he imagined that a few flying columns would be able to scour the insurgent districts and take possession of the chief strategical points without much difficulty. His orders read as if some isolated emeutes, rather than a national rising, had to be suppressed. While Bessieres and his corps were to keep open the road from Burgos to Madrid, and to detach a force to subdue the province of Aragon, two expeditions were to be sent out from the capital, the one to reduce Seville and Cadiz, the other to conquer Valencia. The first of these columns, 13,000 strong, was to be led by Dupont; the second, 7000 strong, was given to Moncey. Both were composed entirely of conscript battalions and Swiss auxiliaries, without any stiffening of veteran troops.

The despatch of the two expeditions from Madrid took place on May 24 and June 4 respectively, and was the last executive order carried out by Murat at his master’s behest. He fell ill of a fever a few days later, and returned to France; his place was taken by Savary, the betrayer of King Ferdinand, an officer wholly incompetent to face the threatening situation that was gradually developing itself.

Moncey passed the mountains of Cuenca without opposition, and met with no resistance till he had reached the borders of the kingdom of Valencia. There he was twice opposed, in the defiles that led down to the shore-plain, by an irregular mass of new levies, which he thrust aside with ease. When he reached the city of Valencia, he found it packed with many thousands of combatants, including some regular troops, and roughly fortified with many batteries and earthworks. He risked two attempts to storm the place (June 28), lost 1000 men, and saw that it could not be taken without a battering train and a regular siege. By a rapid retreat he eluded his adversaries, and drew back to the vicinity of Madrid (July 15).

Very different was the fate of Dupont. He too, like Moncey, met with little opposition during the first days of his march. The defiles of the Sierra Morena were not defended against him; and his troops did not fire a shot till they reached the bridge of Alcolea, in front of Cordova, where they dispersed a horde of 10,000 or 12,000 peasants who tried to cover that ancient city. Cordova made no resistance; nevertheless it was sacked the same evening (June 7). Here Dupont’s advance came to an end; he found that between him and Seville lay the Spanish army of Andalusia, nearly 30,000 regular troops commanded by General Castanos. The peasantry of the mountains had risen behind him and cut his communication with Madrid; his conscripts were suffering dreadfully from the summer heat and malaria. He wisely refused to advance further, and, when Castanos began to move slowly towards him, evacuated Cordova and fell back to Andujar, the point of junction where the routes from the Sierra Morena come down into the valley of the Guadalquivir. He wrote to Madrid for reinforcements, which Savary did not refuse; two fresh divisions of conscripts were sent him, which brought up his force to some 22,000 men. Thus strengthened, he might have defended the passes of the Sierra Morena, though he could not have conquered Andalusia. But instead of retiring to the passes and assuming the defensive, he lingered in the plain at Andujar. He lacked the moral courage to confess to his master that the offensive campaign he had undertaken was hopeless.

At last, a false rumour that the Spaniards were detaching troops to close the passes behind his back led him to commit the fatal blunder of dividing his small army into two nearly equal halves, and sending off his lieutenant, Vedel, with 10,000 men to secure the Despeñaperros. Castanos then thrust two divisions under General Reding into the gap, and seized the town of Baylen, halfway between Vedel and Dupont. This was a risky move, as the intervening force might have been crushed if the two French generals had acted in unison. Dupont at once evacuated Andujar, and marched with 11,000 men to clear the road, while Castanos’ main body followed him at a leisurely pace. At Baylen Dupont found the road blocked by Reding with 17,000 men. He fought till noon, with much courage but little skill, endeavouring to pierce the Spanish line. But Reding held firm, and beat off five partial and successive attacks. When the French were thoroughly exhausted and demoralised, Castanos appeared in their rear and enclosed them. Dupont then offered to capitulate, if his army were granted a free return to France. Terms were being discussed when, late in the afternoon, General Vedel, with the other half of the French army, came up in Reding’s rear and began to develop an attack upon it. Vedel had shown criminal negligence and torpidity in delaying his appearance; he had refused to hurry, though he knew that Dupont was engaged, and though a distant cannonade had been audible all the morning. When informed that his chief was proposing to surrender, Vedel wheeled off and retired towards the passes. But Dupont nevertheless made a convention with Castanos, whereby he stipulated that not only his division, but that of his lieutenant, should capitulate and be sent back to France. This was unjustifiable conduct; but still more unjustifiable was that of Vedel, who tamely came back and laid down his arms, when he might easily have marched off to Madrid (June 23). In all, 18,000 unwounded men surrendered; more than 3000 had been lost in the fighting. When the French were secured, the Junta of Seville detained them all, and never allowed them to return to France.

This disaster, the worst check that the French arms had suffered since Menou capitulated in Egypt nine years before, had immense effect not only in Spain, but all over Europe. The responsibility for it must be divided between the Emperor himself, Dupont, and Vedel. Napoleon, under a false idea of the Spanish strength, had sent out an army too small and too raw to accomplish such a task as the conquest of Andalusia; Dupont had shown both incapacity and want of moral courage; Vedel’s torpidity and lack of initiative had doubled the disaster. The Emperor accused them both of cowardice and treason, and had them tried before a military commission, which found them guilty of criminal negligence and of “ signing a capitulation containing shameful conditions,” but of nothing more. Dupont was imprisoned till 1814; Vedel was pardoned after a few years and again employed.

The first result of Baylen was that King Joseph and Savary, considering their forces insufficient to maintain such an advanced position as the capital, hastily evacuated Madrid (August 1), and did not halt till they had recrossed the Ebro. Meanwhile four other series of operations had been in progress. The Spanish army of Galicia under General Blake had descended from its mountains into the plains of Old Castile, with the intention of cutting the communications between Madrid and Burgos. Marshal Bessieres, whose corps had been told off by Napoleon to protect that line, met him at Medina de Rio Seco on July 14, and inflicted a complete defeat upon the Galicians, though they mustered 22,000 men to his 13,000. This victory, however, had no further effect than to secure for King Joseph a safe retreat from Madrid; Dupont’s disaster deprived Bessieres of the power of following up his success.

The second independent campaign raging at this moment was that which centred at Saragossa: it was the most creditable to the Spaniards of all the operations of the summer of 1808. The kingdom of Aragon was almost destitute of regular troops; only about 1000 trained men were available when the revolution broke out. But Joseph Palafox, a young and ambitious adventurer, who had led the rising and been saluted as captain-general, collected a considerable body of half-armed peasants and townsfolk at Saragossa, and with them made head against the 15,000 men under Generals Verdier and Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who were detached to subdue Aragon. His defence of Saragossa (June 15— August 13) was an extraordinary feat. The French having broken through the flimsy medieval walls of the city, Palafox, instead of capitulating, threw up barricades across the streets, defended house after house, beat back many assaults, and was still fighting fiercely inside the town, when the news of the fate of Dupont and the evacuation of Madrid compelled Verdier to retire. The story of Palafox’ answer to the French summons, when the enceinte had been pierced, “ No surrender, and war to the last party-wall ” (hast a la ultima tapia), seems well authenticated; and the obstinate courage displayed by his Aragonese in the street fighting contrasted strongly with the help­lessness of similar levies when forced to give battle in the open.

While Verdier was being held at bay in Saragossa, Duhesme, commanding the French army in Catalonia, was also brought to a standstill. His troops, concentrated at Barcelona, found their communications with France cut off by the general rising of the province. To open them again, Duhesme delivered two attacks on the fortress of Gerona, which blocked the road to Perpignan. Both were beaten off* (June 20-21, and July 22—August 16); and the French general was compelled to shut himself up in Barcelona, where he was blockaded for nearly four months by the insurgents, and reduced to great straits.

The fourth local campaign in which Napoleon’s expeditionary forces were involved during the summer of 1808 was that of Junot in Portugal. The Spanish rising had isolated the 28,000 French who lay in and about Lisbon; but Junot resolved to defend his conquest without taking any heed of what was going on elsewhere. Fortunately for him, Portugal was completely disarmed; the old army had been disbanded or sent across the Pyrenees; and all the arsenals were in the hands of the French. The efforts of the people, who rose on all sides between June 6 and June 16, were of necessity weak, for there was no nucleus of trained men, and arms were hard to get. Junot’s flying columns scoured the whole country and held down central Portugal with success. He was still in good hopes of maintaining his position, when, on August 3, he received the news that on the preceding day a British expeditionary force had landed in Mondego Bay.

Tire arrival of this army marks a new stage in the history not only of the Peninsular War but of Europe at large. The British Government was about to turn aside from that system of sending out small forces to inflict pin-pricks on non-vital spots in Napoleon’s empire, which Sheridan wittily called “ its policy of filching sugar-islands.” Urged on by Castlereagh, who already had in the winter of 1805-6 advocated an interference on the Continent on a large scale, and had hoped much from the expedition to Hanover, and by Canning, who, following Pitt’s forecast, was fascinated with the idea of a really national and popular rising against Napoleon, the Portland Cabinet had resolved to strike hard. Even the Whig Opposition could not cavil at the proposal to aid a people so basely betrayed as the Spaniards, or make any attempt to defend the morality of Napoleon’s late doings. On the arrival in London, on June 4, of deputies from the Asturias asking for help, followed soon after by similar missions from the other Juntas, the Government promised speedy and ample assistance. In all some 30,000 men were directed to move, and more were to follow.

Lord Castlereagh had intended to place at the head of the whole the young lieutenant-general who commanded the force which sailed from Cork, Sir Arthur Wellesley, the brother of the great Viceroy of India, already known for his victories of Assaye and Argaum. But the Duke of York and the War Office were against the scheme; and there were members of the Cabinet who disliked the Wellesleys. After the first troops had actually set sail, the Government resolved to place over Sir Arthur’s head two senior officers of no special distinction or ability, Sir Hew Dalrymple, governor of Gibraltar, and Sir Harry Burrard. Sir John Moore also, who was ordered up from the Baltic, would out­rank Wellesley, who was thus placed fourth instead of first in command.

Before he was aware that he was superseded, Wellesley had sailed; he landed his C000 men in Mondego Bay on August 1-2, 1808. The Portuguese welcomed him; but he found that their levies were little more than a useless mob, and that he must depend on his own resources. Four days later he was joined by another British division, and set out to march on Lisbon with some 13,000 men. On August 17 he met a small force which Junot had despatched to delay his advance, and drove it out of a strong position by a vigorous attack. This roused the viceroy of Portugal, who sallied out of Lisbon with his field-army. Having garrisoned Elvas and Almeida, and left a whole division to overawe the discontented populace of the capital, Junot only brought 13,000 men to the front. Wellesley, having been joined by two more brigades from England, had over 16,000 British troops in hand, besides some 2000 Portuguese insurgents.

The invading army was encamped at Vimiero, with its back to the sea, when on August 21 it was fiercely attacked by the French. Wellesley had chosen an admirable position on a line of rolling hills, and showed in this, his first European victory, that masterly power of handling troops on the defensive which was to make his reputation. Junot’s vigorous but ill-combined assaults were driven back with awful slaughter; and the victor was about to let loose his reserves upon the broken masses of the enemy when his hand was suddenly paralysed. Sir Harry Burrard had landed at this untoward moment, asserted his authority, and forbade a pursuit. Thus Junot was able to gather his routed battalion together and to cover the road to Lisbon. Next morning (August 22) Burrard was superseded by Dalrymple, who was much surprised to receive on that same day proposals from Junot that he should be allowed to evacuate Portugal under a convention. The French general was expecting every moment to hear of a revolt in Lisbon; his troops were not inclined to face another general action; and he saw no better way “pour nous tirer de la souridere."

Dalrymple, overjoyed at finding himself dictating terms ere he had been two days ashore, eagerly accepted the idea of a convention. He was justified in accepting Junot’s offer; time was of importance; and the French might, if driven to despair, have ruined Lisbon and made a long and desperate defence. But Sir Hew weakly conceded every demand that was made by the French negotiators, including several that were most offensive to the Portuguese; e.g. he allowed the French to depart laden in the most shameless fashion with the plunder of palaces, museums, and churches, and guaranteed immunity to native traitors. On August 30 this famous Convention of Cintra—falsely so called, for it was neither discussed nor signed in that pleasant spot—was executed. Before the next month was out, 25,000 French troops had been shipped out of Portugal; and the whole kingdom was delivered. It was now possible to think of bringing aid to Spain.

But neither Dalrymple nor Burrard was destined to lead the victors of Vimiero into the uplands of Castile. When the news of the Convention was received in England, universal indignation was expressed. It was thought that Dalrymple had let off the French too easily, and that he might have forced them to unconditional surrender. Letters from officers who complained of the way in which the pursuit at Vimiero had been checked, and complaints from the Portuguese provisional government, added fuel to the flames. All three British generals were recalled, and sent before a Court of enquiry. This body reported that, in its opinion, they had all acted according to the best of their judgment and shown proper zeal, and that no further proceedings should be taken. But, while the two senior generals were never despatched on active service again, Wellesley, whose conduct had contrasted so splendidly with that of his superiors, was sent back to Portugal as commander-in-chief in the ensuing spring.

Much had happened before Sir Arthur resumed his place at the head of a British army. King Joseph and Savary had evacuated Madrid, recrossed the Ebro, and fallen back to the foot of the Pyrenees. This long retreat caused almost as much indignation in Napoleon’s breast as Dupont’s surrender. He had at first directed Joseph to hold on to Madrid at all costs, then to stay his retreat at Aranda and Valladolid. But both his despatches arrived too late; and, by August 15, the remains of the army of Spain, still nearly 70,000 strong, were con­centrated between Miranda and Milagro on the Ebro. The Emperor, on hearing the news of Baylen, had ordered three veteran corps of the army of Germany, those of Victor, Mortier, and Ney, to march for Spain, and had drawn together other reinforcements from various comers of the Empire. He had hoped that Joseph and Savary would hold out in some advanced position till those succours arrived. But all such hopes were

Its mistaken strategy, now at an end; and the conquest of the Peninsula had to be begun de novo. It was not till the end of October that the heads of the columns from Germany began to cross the passes. While they were marching across France, the Emperor went off to Erfurt.

Thus, from the day of Baylen to the opening of the new campaign, the Spanish insurgents had three full months in which to organise their forces. Unfortunately, they did not turn the time to good account. The provincial Juntas showed no desire to relinquish their local sovereignty in favour of a new national executive. When they were at last induced to create a supreme authority, it was not a compact regency of a few members but a Central Juntaof no less than thirty-five delegates. This body was only got together on September 25; and, when it met, it proceeded, like a debating society, to discuss constitutional reforms, instead of turning all its energies to making ready for Napoleon’s advance. The most fatal fault was that it refused to appoint a single commander-in-chief for its armies, and tried to direct independently the movements of half-a-dozen captains-general of the provincial armies. These officers became personal rivals, intrigued with the Junta, and refused to cooperate with each other. Hence came military chaos and lamentable waste of time. By the end of October, only about 110,000 men had been pushed up to the line of the Ebro to face the French, though about 60,000 more were being drilled and equipped far to the rear. Indeed, the only important addition made to the army at the front after Baylen was that of 9000 of La Romaiia’s troops from Denmark, who landed at Santander.

The Spanish strategy at this moment was hopelessly bad. The Junta had allowed their two main armies to drift apart; Blake, with 40,000 men of the Galician army, had advanced into Biscay, with the intention of turning the French right; while Castanos and Palafox, with the armies of Andalusia and Aragon, some 60,000 strong, were executing a similar movement far to the east on the side of Pampeluna. To connect these two armies there was nothing but the army of Estremadura, 12,000 strong, which was concentrating at Burgos. Thus the Spanish array had two powerful wings but practically no centre.

To aid the Estremadurans at Burgos, it was intended that the British army from Portugal should be brought up. After the departure of Dalrymple, the command of this force had devolved on Sir John Moore (October 6). He had received orders to march into Spain and join our allies; but he found much difficulty in starting his troops, owing to his want of transport and his absolute ignorance of the relative practicability of the various inland roads of Portugal. Receiving false intelligence from the native engineers that it was impossible to move guns over the Serra da Estrella, by the straight road from Lisbon to Almeida and Salamanca, he took the unfortunate step of sending nearly the whole of his cavalry and artillery on a vast detour, by Elvas, Talavera, and the Escorial, while he marched with his infantry columns direct over mountain roads by way of Coimbra and Guarda. The consequence was that, while 16,000 infantry reached Salamanca in detachments between November 13 and November 23, they could not move till, on December 3, the guns came in from their long turn to the south. Moore’s little array at Salamanca was not the only British force which had been sent to aid Spain; a separate division under Baird, 13,000 strong, had been landed at Corunna in the middle of October, and directed to push inland and join Moore in Old Castile. But, much hampered by want of transport, Baird only reached Astorga on November 22. He was still far from his junction with Moore when news arrived that the Spanish armies on the Ebro had received a series of appalling defeats, and were retiring in disorder before the French.

Napoleon held back his army in Navarre till the great reinforcements from Germany had arrived, and 200,000 men were under his hand. He then struck with the swiftness and shattering power of a thunderbolt at the weak centre of the Spanish line, and opened for himself the road to Madrid. The first battle was fought at Zornosa, in Biscay, on October 29, when Blake’s army of Galicia, still bent on its turning movement, was thrust back by Marshal Lefebvre, and had to retire westward. The Galicians were making off, pursued by two French corps, when Napoleon led his main body over the Ebro, and on November 10 dashed to pieces the little army of Estremadura at the combat of Gamonal in front of Burgos. Next day (November 11) Blake’s retreating army, overtaken by Victor at Espinosa in the Cantabrian mountains, received an equally disastrous beating, and was foreed to disperse into the hills with the loss of the whole of its artillery. A full month passed before its wrecks, 20,000 strong, were rallied at Leon by the Marquis of La Romana. There remained intact, of all the Spanish armies, only the combined host of Andalusia and Aragon under Castanos and Palafox. On November 23 this force shared the fate of its fellows; its main body, 45,000 strong, was defeated at Tudela by Lannes. Quarrels between Castanos and Palafox were largely responsible for this disaster; their plans were so badly arranged that one-third of the Spanish army did not fire a shot, while the other two-thirds were being routed and dispersed. Palafox’ divisions now drew back to defend Saragossa, while Castanos and the Andalusians made off for Madrid by way of Calatayud. They narrowly escaped falling into the hands of Ney, who had been sent to intercept them, and escaped in wretched plight over the mountains.

Such was the depressing news which Moore and Baird, still far from effecting a junction with each other, received in the last days of November. It seemed that there was no Spanish army left with which the British could cooperate; and Moore despaired of being even able to meet Baird in safety. Judging himself far too weak to confront Napoleon’s main body, he issued orders for a retreat on Lisbon, and directed Baird to fall back on Corunna (November 28). He believed that Spain was ruined and that Portugal was indefensible, and he was prepared to evacuate even Lisbon if the French should push their invasion home.

Meanwhile the Emperor, as soon as the news of Tudela reached him, struck straight at Madrid. He was only vaguely aware of Moore’s position on his flank, and paid no attention to him. The Junta had made a hasty attempt to cover the two defiles which lead to Madrid, having drawn to Segovia and the Guadarrama pass the wrecks of the Estremaduran army, and thrown into the Somosierra pass a force composed of new levies and a few belated, battalions of the army of Andalusia. The Emperor, leaving Segovia alone, advanced in a single column against the Somosierra, and forced it after a short combat on November 30. On December 2 he appeared in force in front of Madrid. The Spanish capital was an open town devoid of any regular defences, and had no garrison save some of the fugitives from the Somosierra. But the populace were in a paroxysm of patriotic frenzy, and had sworn to make a second Saragossa of their home. They held out for one day behind extemporised batteries and earthworks; but, when the French stormed the Buen Retiro heights, which command the whole place, and forced their way into the Prado, the enthusiasm died down and the town surrendered (December 3).

From Dec. 4 to Dec. 22 Napoleon remained in the neighbourhood of Madrid, laying down laws and drafting projects for the reorganisation of Spain, and giving his troops a short rest before they should be called upon to march on Lisbon and Cadiz. His reserves and outlying columns were beginning to come in; and he had, in and about Madrid, some 75,000 men. Meanwhile Lannes, with the army which had won the fight of Tudela, was directed to besiege Saragossa and make an end of Palafox; while Marshal Soult, whose corps lay in Old Castile, covering the Emperor’s flank and rear, was directed to invade Leon and disperse the wrecks of Blake’s old army. The Emperor’s next move would have been to march on Lisbon, whither he assumed that Sir John Moore would have withdrawn when he heard of the fall of Madrid.

But matters had gone otherwise in the north-west of the Peninsula. Moore had ordered a retreat on Lisbon on November 28; but on December 5 he changed his mind, mainly because he had heard exaggerated reports of the desperation with which Madrid was defending itself, but partly also because he had been at last (December 3) rejoined by his long-lost artillery and cavalry, and had discovered that there was nothing to prevent Baird from joining him. In these circumstances, honour required that he should not retire without striking a blow in behalf of Spain. Accordingly he resolved to execute a diversion in Old Castile, and to make a raid on Valladolid or even on Burgos, with the object of disturbing the Emperor’s line of communication. In this plan he persisted, even when, on December 9, he received news of the surrender of Madrid, He knew that his move was a dangerous one, and wrote to Baird that “ both you and me, though we may look big, and determine to get everything forward, yet we must never lose sight of this, that at any moment affairs may take the turn that renders it necessary to retreat.” They must advance “bridle in hand” and ever . ready to swerve off to the rear. Moore marched from Salamanca on December 11; two days later, he learnt from a captured despatch that the Emperor was unaware of his presence, and that Soult was lying in an isolated position on the Carrion river, with less than 20,000 men. He thereupon resolved to change his direction, and to endeavour to surprise and defeat Soult before he could be reinforced. Turning north, he was joined by Baird on December 20, which raised his force to about 27,000 men. He drove in the French cavalry in several successful combats, and on December 23 lay at Sahagun close in front of Soult. The Marquis of La Romana, Blake’s successor, was slowly bringing up the disorganised wrecks of the army of Galicia to his aid.

A battle would have followed next day, had not Moore received from a Spanish source, on the afternoon of the 23rd, the news that Napoleon had at last heard of his whereabouts, and had started from Madrid in pursuit of him with the main body of his army. Without a moment’s hesitation, the British general faced his columns to the rear, and slipped off westward on the road to Benavente and Astorga. He had thrown up his base in Portugal, and was intending to retreat to Vigo and Corunna. He did not start a minute too soon. Napoleon, on receiving tardy but certain news of the advance of the English army against Soult, had at once given orders (December 19-20) that the greater part of the troops at Madrid, not less than 42,000 sabres and bayonets, should hasten by forced marches to throw themselves upon Moore’s rear, and cut him off from his retreat on Portugal or Galicia. The sight of the red-coats in the distance had at once drawn him off from all his other plans; and the idea of capturing a whole British army excited him to almost frenzied exertions. He drove his troops across the snow of the Guadarrama pass in the midst of a blizzard which smote down horse and man, and urged them across the plains of Old Castile at a breakneck pace. But Moore was too quick for him. When the cavalry of the Emperor’s van-guard reached the line of the Esla on December 28, the British were safely across the river and out of danger. As the French pressed on, Lord Paget turned back with his hussars, and cut to pieces the chasseurs a cheval of the Imperial Guard at Benavente (December 29), capturing Lefebvre-Desnouettes, their commander, and many of his men.

The Emperor urged on the pursuit for two days more, but threw it up in disgust at Astorga on January 1, 1809. It is usually said that he turned back because of news received concerning the threatening attitude of Austria. This was the official view; but it seems probable that reports of intrigues at Paris, in which Fouche, Talleyrand, and Murat were all concerned, had more to do with the .Emperor's return. The pursuit was handed over to the corps of Ney and Soult. About 45,000 men were ordered to follow Moore and La Romana, whose famishing army had fallen back on Astorga just as the British arrived. The rest of the force that had taken part in the Emperor’s movement was sent back to Madrid or cantoned in the kingdom of Leon.

The retreat of the British from Astorga to Corunna occupied only twelve days; but an immense amount of misery was compressed into that short space of time. Moore believed that his best policy was to withdraw with such rapidity as to leave the enemy far behind. He had calculated that the pursuers would probably follow him no further than Villafranca, so that he would have a quiet and undisturbed embarcation at the end of his retreat. Accordingly he made very long marches, not unfrequently by night; the army covered on the average seventeen miles a day, in a rugged mountain country covered with snow and cut up by torrents and defiles. The troops, profoundly disgusted at not being allowed to fight, and wearied out by perpetual marching, got out of hand. Many regiments left multitudes of stragglers behind, and plundered the villages by the road. Drunken marauders and footsore stragglers fell by hundreds into the hands of the pursuing French cavalry. But the rear-guard under Paget held together staunchly, and roughly repulsed the enemy when any attempt was made to drive them in. Yet the French stuck to the heels of the retreating army, and could not, as Moore had hoped, be shaken off". On January 11 the British reached Corunna, in a very dilapidated condition, only to find that the transport-fleet had not arrived. It came up two days later, and the embarkation began. But Soult had also appeared; and, to secure a quiet departure, Moore had to fight the battle of Corunna (January 16). Four days’ rest and the advent of the long-denied opportunity for fighting had pulled the army together; and, when Soult assailed the British infantry—the cavalry and guns were already on board—he suffered a bloody repulse. Moore was mortally wounded by a cannon-ball in the thick of the battle, or he would probably have attacked in his turn and driven the French into the river Mero, which lay at their backs. But his successor, General Hope, was content with having repulsed Soult, and embarked his troops at leisure next day.

Thus ended Sir John Moore’s celebrated campaign, which undoubtedly saved Spain and Portugal for the moment, by distracting the Emperor from his southward advance, and by drawing his field army, which might have marched on Lisbon and Cadiz, into a remote and rugged corner of the Peninsula. “As a diversion it has succeeded; I brought the whole of the disposable force of the French against this army,” wrote Moore in his last despatch; and this was absolutely true. The con­ception was so fine, and the result so satisfactory, that it seems ungracious to criticise the details of the operations. But we may agree with Wellington that “Sir John Moore’s error was that he did not know what his men could do”, and allow that he drove them too fast in the march from Astorga to Corunna, with great resulting loss. Of 6000 men lost by the way, some no doubt perished owing to their own indiscipline, but more because they were wearied beyond the limits of human endurance. But this was a cheap price to pay for wrecking Napoleon’s original plan for the conquest of the Peninsula, just when he himself was on the spot and able to combine the movements of all the French corps in a way that was never again possible.

After abandoning the pursuit of Moore to Soult and Ney, the Emperor returned to France. His great coup de theatre, the capture of the British army, had failed, and the projected invasion of Portugal and Andalusia had been postponed; but, in the main, he was not discontented with the results of his campaign. The spirit of the Spaniards—so he fancied—was completely broken. “Les affaires d’Espagne sont a peu pres terminées” he wrote to one of his ministers; and he returned to suppress intrigues in Paris and to watch Austria. Moore’s diversion had, however, allowed time for the Spaniards to rally, and had stopped the French advance for two months. By that time the shattered Spanish armies were once more reorganised, and able to resume their stubborn if too often unsuccessful resistance. The Spanish affair was far from being “nearly at an end,” as Napoleon supposed. He had yet to discover that to defeat a Spanish army was easy, but to destroy it difficult. The routed force dispersed, took to the hills, and reassembled again to give further trouble. Spain was not the country to be subdued by a single Jena or Austerlitz. The loss of Madrid counted for little or nothing; every province continued to fight for its own hand; and no region could be considered conquered that was not held down by a French garrison planted at every cross-road.

During the midwinter of 1808-9, Moore’s diversion had caused the suspension of the French operations in all quarters save two, Aragon and Catalonia, the two regions from which no troops had been withdrawn for the race to Corunna. Lannes had been sent with two corps to take Saragossa, into which Palafox had withdrawn his part of the army that had been routed at Tudela. The siege began on December 20, 1808, and lasted for exactly two months. Palafox was no strategist and made numerous blunders of detail, but he was obstinate and enthusiastic; and his position was far stronger than it had been in the preceding July and August. He had nearly 40,000 more or less organised fighting men ; and the flimsy walls of his city had been strengthened by earthworks and batteries since the first siege. The Aragonese fought with their usual obstinacy; and it was not till January 27, 1809, that the French succeeded in breaking through the outer enceinte of Saragossa. Three weeks of deadly street-fighting still remained before them. Lannes only won his way by blowing up house after house, and storming street after street. When the place surrendered, it was because fire and sword, pestilence and famine, had destroyed the garrison. Over 20,000 fighting men, with some 30,000 of the populace, had perished. Desperate but ill-organised patriotism had failed when pitted against military science. But it was deal' that the people who could make such a stand were not likely to become the passive subjects of the French Emperor.

In Catalonia matters went no less badly for the Spaniards. Gouvion Saint-Cyr, whom the Emperor had sent to relieve Duhesme and his beleaguered army, commenced his operative action by taking Rosas (December 5), and then pushed through the mountains to succour Barcelona. He routed Reding, the victor of Baylen, at Cardadeu on December 16, and cut his way through to join Duhesme. Their united forces then sallied out and beat the army of Catalonia at Molins de Rey (December 21) just outside Barcelona. Even then Reding’s spirit was not broken. Rallying his troops, he took the offensive, but he was defeated by Saint-Cyr for a third time at Valls (February 25, 1809). In this last fight Reding was mortally wounded; his broken host shut itself up in Tarragona or took to the hills, leaving Saint-Cyr free to commence the siege of Gerona, the great fortress commanding the road from the French frontier to Barcelona.

Meanwhile the Spanish line of defence was being reconstructed. The wrecks of Castanos’ old army had gathered in I.a Mancha, and took their post at the foot of the passes of the Sierra Morena, under General Cartaojal. The still more dilapidated divisions vanquished at Gamonal and the Somosierra rallied behind the Tagus. They were in a fearful state of indiscipline, and had murdered their general San Juan on a wild charge of treason; but their new commander, Cuesta, a morose and incapable but courageous veteran, reduced them to order by a series of military executions. Blake’s old army of Galicia, now under La Romana, after parting from Moore’s retreating force at Astorga, had retired into the mountains and was reorganising at Orense. Blake himself had been sent to Valencia, and was busy in getting together a fresh army in that fertile and well-peopled province. Including other levies in the Asturias and Andalusia, the Supreme Junta, which had now established its seat at Seville, could place some 100,000 men in the field in March, 1809.

But more important, in the end, than the survival of any Spanish army was the fact that 9000 British troops still remained in Portugal. These were the battalions that had been left in Lisbon when Moore marched to Salamanca in the preceding autumn. Their very cautious general, Sir John Cradock, kept them close to the Portuguese capital, ready to embark if the French should advance in force. Fortunately for Portugal, for Great Britain, and for Europe, the British Government had resolved to continue the struggle in the Peninsula at all costs. In February General Beresford was sent out to reorganise the Portuguese army, with some scores of British officers to help him, and a great store of new arms and equipment. On April 2 a far more important announcement was made. Sir Arthur Wellesley, the victor of Vimiero, was named commander of the British forces in Portugal, and ordered to sail for Lisbon at short notice. This appointment was due to Lord Castlereagh, who showed a steady confidence in Wellesley, and always employed him as his chief military adviser. The general had stated that, if granted a British army of 20,000 oi' 30,000 men and the control of the native forces, he would undertake to hold Portugal against any French army not exceeding 100,000 men. This was con­trary to Sir John Moore’s dictum that Portugal was untenable; but the Government, urged on by Castlereagh, resolved to take the risk. Reinforcements began to be sent out; Wellesley himself reached Lisbon and superseded Cradock on April 22, 1809.

Ere he landed, the campaign of 1809 had begun. Before quitting Spain, Napoleon had laid down the general lines that were to be followed by his marshals. Soult, leaving Ney behind him to hold down Galicia, was to march with his own corps from Corunna on Portugal, and to take first Oporto, and then Lisbon. So sanguine was Napoleon that he hoped that the Portuguese capital might fall before February 15. On the other side, Victor, with his corps and certain reinforcements, was to cross the Tagus, crush Cuesta’s army of Estremadura, take Badajoz, and then march on Seville. Sebastiani’s corps was to deal with the other Spanish army in the south—that of La Mancha under Cartaojal; but Victor’s was to be the decisive blow. Catalonia and Aragon were side­issues of comparatively little importance.

The French columns duly advanced, in obedience to the Emperor’s orders ; but inevitable hindrances—bad roads, bad weather, and difficulty of supplies—caused them to start far later than he had intended. Soult left Corunna with 23,000 men, after turning over the charge of Galicia to Ney. On March 9 he crossed the Portuguese border near Chaves; La Romana, with the wrecks of the Spanish army of Galicia, had retired northward, wisely refusing battle. Soult’s invasion of Portugal was an unbroken series of combats with a half-armed peasantry, backed by a few battalions of disorganised line-troops. They did their best, but were utterly unable to stand before the French veterans. At last, on March 27, the Marshal forced his way to Oporto, and found in front of the city a line of hastily constructed earthworks manned by 30,000 insurgents, headed by their bishop and uncontrolled by any proper military organisation. He stormed the lines two days later, and made a horrible slaughter of the Portuguese, several thousands of whom were driven into the river.

But here Soult’s initiative came to an end; he was unable to carry out the Emperor’s instructions by advancing against Lisbon. He was cut off from all communication with other French armies by insurgents in his rear. The remains of the Portuguese forces that he had beaten were hanging in a great mass on his left flank ; if he left a competent garrison in Oporto, he would not have enough troops for the final advance; and he now knew that there was a British force awaiting him somewhere near Lisbon. Accordingly he halted, sent out flying columns to open his communication with Galicia, and wrote to the Emperor for more troops. Meanwhile he amused himself by assuming quasi-regal state at Oporto, and seems to have dreamed of becoming “ King of northern Lusitania.”

The other French advance had come to a similar standstill at about the same moment. Two Spanish armies, it will be remembered, had been collected for the defence of Andalusia—that of Cartaojal covering the eastern passes, that of Cuesta behind the line of the Tagus. On March 27 Sebastiani beat Cartaojal at Ciudad Real, and forced him to take shelter in the Sierra Morena. But the Freneh general had received orders not to press his victory; it was Victor who was to deliver the great blow. On March 15, that marshal crossed the Tagus high up, thus turning the position which Cuesta had taken behind the central course of the river at Almaraz. He had about 22,000 men, a force slightly exceeding that of the Spaniards, who drew back when their flank was turned, and retired across the mountains into the valley of the Guadiana. Here Cuesta was reinforced by a division drawn from Cartaojal’s army and offered battle, for he was as rash as he was un­skilful in the field. He took in hand no less a scheme than to surround the French in the open plain near Medellin, and advanced in a line four miles long and only four men deep. The natural result followed; the French cavalry broke his left-centre by a furious charge, and then rolled up his isolated wings in detail. The slaughter was awful, for there was no friendly mountain or ravine to shelter the routed troops; more than 7000 were cut down, and nearly 2000 made prisoners (March 28). Nevertheless Victor’s offensive was exhausted at Medellin, just as that of Soult had been at Oporto. Insurrection had burst out in his rear; his army was enfeebled by detachments, and suffering from want of food. He could hear nothing of Soult, whose advance on Lisbon was to synchronise with his own on Seville. He declared that he was not strong enough to besiege Badajoz, much less to invade Andalusia, and halted in the valley of the Guadiana, clamouring for reinforcements, which King Joseph at Madrid was too weak to send him.

Such was the condition of affairs when Wellesley landed at Lisbon. The French invasion had come to a standstill. Soult would not move without reinforcements from Ney, nor Victor without reinforcements from Madrid. Wellesley at once grasped the situation; he had at his disposal, counting the newly-arrived regiments from England, some 25,000 British and 16,000 Portuguese troops. This was enough to enable him to deal a crushing blow at either Soult or Victor, while leaving a detached force to “ contain ” the other. Without a moment’s hesitation, he resolved to deal with Soult first, and, leaving 12,000 men at Abrantes to watch Victor, marched with the rest on Oporto. If successful in the north, he intended to rush back to Estremadura and deal with the second French army.

Everything favoured Wellesley’s enterprise. Soult had dispersed his army to hunt down the Portuguese insurgents, and was attacked before he could concentrate. At the moment when the blow fell, he was more intent on suppressing a republican conspiracy among his own officers than on watching for any advance on the part of the British. On May 12 Wellesley was in front of Oporto, while Soult was hurriedly assembling his troops and preparing to retreat. Noting the confusion in the French ranks, Wellesley carried out at midday his astounding passage of the Douro, throwing his advanced guard across a broad river edged with precipitous cliffs, when he noted that the enemy had neglected to guard all the passages. The move was completely successful, and Soult was hunted out of Oporto and driven eastward, in search of the divisions of his army which had not yet been able to join him. But Wellesley had thrown a Portuguese force under Beresford across the line of retreat by which the enemy could retire up the Douro into Spain. Thus intercepted, Soult rallied his missing columns, but found that he was shut in between Wellesley, Beresford, and the inhospitable and roadless mountains of the Serra de Santa Catalina. Burning his baggage and destroying all his artillery, he escaped by goat-tracks over the hills towards Galicia. Hotly pursued by Wellesley, and harassed by the peasantry, he finally got off with the loss of 5000 men, and led his corps in a disorganised mass to Orense. He found that Galicia was no safe harbourage for him; the whole province was up in arms, and the detach­ments of Ney’s corps were fighting for existence against La Romana’s army and the local guerillas. With some difficulty Soult and Ney ultimately concentrated at Lugo, and resolved to devote themselves to crushing the Galician insurrection.

As they were thus engaged, Wellesley had ample time for a blow at Victor in Estremadura. But, while he was hurrying his victorious troops from Oporto to Abrantes for a rapid stroke at the 1st corps, the French army of the south was enduring such dire starvation that Victor at last resolved to retire towards Madrid, before the whole force should become ineffective from sheer exhaustion. He evacuated Estremadura about the middle of June, and retired to the valley of the Tagus, fixing his head-quarters at Talavera. Thus he abandoned all that he had won at Medellin. This rearward movement of the 1st corps compelled Wellesley to revise his plans, since Victor was no longer isolated, but had fallen back to a position where he was in close touch both with Madrid and with Sebastiani in La Mancha. After taking counsel with Cuesta and the Junta at Seville, Wellesley consented to embark in the first and only campaign which he ever undertook in company with a Spanish colleague and without supreme control over the whole conduct of affairs. The scheme was ambitious, yet not unpromising if the details had been properly carried out. The Junta undertook that Venegas, now in command of its army of La Mancha, should distract the attention of Sebastiani and King Joseph by a cautious demonstration against Madrid. Meanwhile Wellesley was to march up the Tagus, unite his forces with those of Cuesta, and en­deavour to catch and crush Victor’s corps while still isolated. He did not fear interruption from the other French armies, believing Ney and Soult to be occupied with the Galician insurrection.

On July 18 the British troops, just 20,000 strong, joined Cuesta’s Estremaduran army, which had been raised to a strength of 35,000 men, near Almaraz; and the two bodies marched in company against Victor. The Marshal drew back before them, evacuated Talavera, and retired towards Madrid. Matters looked fairly well, though Cuesta had proved a very perplexing colleague. It was, however, not he, but Venegas, who ruined the campaign. That officer, instead of detaining Sebastiani in his front, remained inactive, and allowed the enemy to march away unperceived. Thus Victor, Sebastiani, and King Joseph, who had brought up the last reserves from Madrid, were able on July 26 to mass nearly 50,000 men in front of Wellesley and Cuesta, ignoring completely the army of La Mancha.

There followed the bloody battle of Talavera, extending over the two days (July 27-28). Wellesley and Cuesta had taken up a position extending from the Tagus to a bare hill three miles north of it. The Spaniards held the right in the town of Talavera and its suburbs and olive-groves, the British the left, partly in the plain, partly on the isolated hill which marked the end of the line. Victor, overruling King Joseph and Jourdan, who were theoretically in chief command, delivered three desperate attacks on the British position, leaving only a few thousand cavalry to contain the Spaniards. He had never before met the British, and, looking on the thin line opposed to him, exclaimed, “ si on rienfonce pas fa, ilfaudrait renoncer a Jaire la guerre? Practically the whole of the French infantry threw themselves upon Wellesley’s half of the line, with a superiority in numbers of nearly two to one. The fighting was desperate, and at one moment the British left-centre was broken. But Wellesley saved the day with his single reserve brigade; and the French drew back, leaving 17 guns and 7200 killed and wounded upon the field. The British had suffered even more heavily in proportion, losing 5300 men out of 20,000 present. The Spaniards were but slightly engaged, and their casualties were trifling.

Both armies were exhausted; and when, during the night, the French retired from the field, Wellesley was unable to pursue them. King Joseph’s position was now a dangerous one, for Venegas and the army of La Mancha had at last come up, and were beginning to threaten Madrid in his rear. But an interruption from a new quarter suddenly changed the whole face of the campaign. On July 30 the news came in that Soult with a considerable force—how great no one yet knew— was marching from Salamanca on Plasencia and the middle Tagus, so as to cut the British communications with Portugal.

A few words are necessary to explain the appearance of this army upon the scene. When Soult had been driven back into Galicia in May, and had there met Ney, the two Marshals had agreed to cooperate ; Ney was to clear the coast-land, Soult to sweep the interior. But they were jealous and suspicious of each other’s loyalty; and the joint move­ment was a failure. Ney was checked by the insurgents at the estuary of the Oitaben; Soult, disregarding his colleague’s difficulties, made off to the south-east, and ultimately descended into the plains of Leon. Therefore Ney, declaring that he had been betrayed and abandoned, suddenly evacuated Galicia, withdrew all his garrisons, and returned into the plains by another route. Thus, by June 30, Galicia was delivered from the French; but, on the other hand, two corps, 35,000 strong, which had been locked up in this remote corner of Spain, had returned to the valley of the Douro, and were now available for the main central operations of the summer campaign of 1809.

It was this fact that ruined Wellesley’s plans for the recovery of Madrid. On hearing of the advance of the British and Estremaduran armies along the Tagus, Soult had written to King Joseph (July 19), asking for leave to fall upon the rear of the Allies, while the troops of Victor and Scbastiani were detaining them in the front. He had been given permission so to do, and had received, in addition to the two corps lately arrived from Galicia, a third, that of Mortier, which had recently been drawn back from Aragon into Old Castile. With this large body of troops, about 50,000 strong, he marched from Salamanca on July 27, the first day of the battle of Talavera.

On July 30 Wellesley was warned that French troops were descending upon Plasencia and threatening his communications with Portugal. On August 2 lie started off to fight them, believing that Soult was raiding in his rear with no more than a few divisions. But, on the following day, an intercepted despatch revealed to Wellesley and Cuesta the real strength of the approaching enemy. They at once saw the danger of their position, and retreated behind the Tagus by the bridge of Arzo- bispo, abandoning at Talavera 4000 wounded, for whom no transport could be procured. There was still some danger that Soult might anticipate them at Almaraz, the main passage of the Tagus; but Wellesley seized this important strategical point by a forced march (August 7), and the situation became comparatively safe. The Anglo- Spanish armies had now a broad river in front of them, and a fair line of retreat behind; and the French could no longer hope to surround them. On August 8 Soult forced the passage of the Tagus at Arzobispo, driving off the Spanish division which tried to defend the bridge; but this was his last forward move. The only remaining incident of the campaign was that on August 11 Venegas gave battle to the King and Sebastiani at Almonacid near Toledo. He was beaten and forced back into La Mancha, with a loss of 5000 men. It is difficult to say whether he was more to blame for his culpable slowness at the commencement of the campaign, when he failed to detain the 4th corps in his front, or for his culpable rashness at the end of it, when he courted and suffered a wholly unnecessary defeat. No further active operations occurred in central Spain till the autumn. The French army dispersed in order to get food; and Wellesley, in equal danger of starvation at Almaraz, retired on August 20 to the valley of the Guadiana, where he remained quiescent for several months recruiting his army. Thoroughly disgusted by his experience of cooperation with Cuesta, he refused to lend himself to any of the plans for offensive action in company with the Spanish armies which the Junta proposed.

While the Talavera campaign was in progress, there had been sharp fighting in Aragon and Catalonia, regions in which the war always took a course wholly unaffected by the main struggle in Castile and Portugal. General Blake, having raised a new army in Valencia, had advanced in May with the object of recovering Saragossa. He was attacked (May 23) by Suchet, the new commander of the French army of Aragon, but repulsed him in a sharp fight at Alcañiz. Continuing his advance, Blake pursued Suchet and brought him to action again at Maria just outside the gates of Saragossa. But on this occasion the Spanish army was beaten (June 15); and, after suffering a second and more decisive defeat at Belchite (June 18), the Valencians dispersed in disorder, leaving Suchet master of the plains of Aragon.

Meanwhile, in Catalonia, Saint-Cyr had been occupied during the whole summer and autumn in the siege of the fortress of Gerona, a place of very moderate strength, but held by a gallant and resourceful governor, General Mariano Alvarez, and a garrison whose courage and endurance surpassed even the level that had been attained by the defenders of Saragossa. From May 6 to December 10, 1809, the French lay before its ramparts, keeping up an incessant bombardment and making assault after assault upon the breaches. They won the outworks, but could not penetrate into the town, till sheer starvation and incessant fighting had practically annihilated the garrison. Blake came up from Valencia with the wreck of his army to disturb the siege, but was too weak to drive oft' Saint-Cyr, and only succeeded in prolonging the agony of Gerona by throwing in a few convoys and some trifling reinforcements. On December 10 the place surrendered, the governor and nearly the whole of the surviving defenders being prostrate in the hospitals. From first to last the siege had cost the French 20,000 men. This was undoubtedly the most brilliant piece of service performed by the Spaniards during the whole Peninsular War.

Long before Gerona fell, the lull in the main operations in Castile, whieh followed upon the battle of Talavera, had come to an end. Seeing the French passive, the Spanish Junta resolved to take the offensive again in October. They asked, but asked in vain, for the cooperation of Wellesley (now Viscount Wellington), who warned them that if their armies tried to fight general actions they would be beaten, and besought them to confine their efforts to the defence of Andalusia. Nevertheless the Junta ordered a new advance on Madrid. Two forces were to take part in this scheme, starting from two remote bases. The larger consisted of the old army of La Mancha, formerly commanded by Venegas, to which had been added the greater part of the army of Estremadura. Cuesta had been invalided in August; Venegas had been disgraced after his defeat at Almonacid ; and the united force was entrusted to General Areizaga, an officer more rash and decidedly more incapable than eithei' of his predecessors. He was ordered to march on Madrid with some 50,000 men and to bear down all opposition. At the same time, del Parque, with La Romana’s old army of Galicia, now counting over 20,000 bayonets, was ordered to advance into Leon, and to move on Salamanca and ultimately on Madrid.

Del Parque started first, pushed boldly forward, and met the French 6th corps, commanded by General Marchand in the absence of Ney, at Tamames near Salamanca. Taking a strong position, he awaited the attack of the enemy, and beat them off, the assailants losing an eagle and 1500 men (October 18). Marchand was forced to evacuate Salamanca, which the Spaniards occupied. After a pause, del Parque advanced again, but found that the enemy had received reinforcements, which made him too strong to be faced. The Spanish general began to fall back, but was surprised and beaten at Alba de Tormes (November 28). His army fell back, with a loss of 3000 men, partly on Galicia, partly on Ciudad Rodrigo.

The fate of Areizaga in the south was far worse. Starting from the passes of the Sierra Morcna on November 3, he made a sudden dash for Madrid, driving before him at first the small French detachments which occupied La Mancha. But, having reached Ocana near Aranjuez, only three marches from the capital, he found heavy forces gathering in his front, was stricken with sudden irresolution and indecision, and waited to be attacked by the enemy. King Joseph, having collected the corps of Mortier and Scbastiani and the Madrid reserves, fell upon him with 30,000 men on November 19, and inflicted on him a defeat less bloody, indeed, than that of Medellin, but even more disastrous. The French made no less than 18,000 prisoners; some 4000 Spaniards were killed or wounded. It took five weeks to collect the wrecks of the army in the Sierra Morena; and, even then, only 25,000 out of the 50,000 men with whom Areizaga had started could be rallied.

The rout of Ocaña sealed the fate of southern Spain. Napoleon was now free from the Austrian troubles which had absorbed his attention during the summer of 1809, and was at liberty to turn his whole attention to the Peninsula. He sent up huge reinforcements, and ordered a general advance, before the enemy should have recovered from the effects of Alba de Tormes and Ocaña. It was in his power to throw the great mass of his troops either on Seville or on Lisbon; in other words, to break the centre of the Spanish line of defence and occupy the fertile Andalusia, or to overwhelm Wellesley and drive the British out of Portugal. Fortunately for Great Britain and for Europe, the Emperor chose the easier enterprise, and ordered Soult, with the corps of Victor, Sebastiani, and Mortier, to force the Sierra Morena, occupy Andalusia, and drive the Spanish army of the south into the sea. The conquest of Portugal was to be postponed till the next year. Accordingly Soult led out some 70,000 men at midwinter, threw himself upon Andalusia, and in less than a fortnight overran the whole kingdom. On January 20, 1810, the passes of the Sierra Morena were forced at three points; Seville fell on January 31; and by February 4 the French advance-guard was in front of Cadiz, the only town that had not been submerged by the flood of invasion. The demoralised troops of Areizaga had dispersed or fled into Murcia; and Cadiz itself was only saved by the Duke of Albuquerque, who threw himself into the town with 10,000 men from Estremadura just before Victor arrived.

The loss of Andalusia appeared the crowning disaster of the whole war; and many observers, both French and English, thought that the end was at hand. But it was really a blessing in disguise; the whole Imperial field-army available for offensive operations was absorbed by the tasks of garrisoning the newly conquered kingdom and of besieging Cadiz. No surplus troops remained for an attack on Portugal; and meanwhile Wellington was preparing the defence of that realm with a thoroughness which no one suspected. He had completed its regular army, drilled and armed some scores of thousands of militia, and got well to work on the famous lines of Torres Vedras, against which the advancing wave of French invasion was to surge in vain during the ensuing year. In short, the seven additional months of preparation which were granted for the organisation of the defence of Portugal were all-important.

There was a long gap in the offensive operations of the French between the conquest of Andalusia and the commencement of the invasion of Portugal. The former enterprise had been completed in February, 1810; the latter did not begin till August. The reason of this delay was that the Emperor waited till the spring before sending across the Pyrenees the reinforcements from Germany, which were to form the bulk of the army destined for the march on Lisbon. Nearly 100,000 troops were ultimately poured into the Peninsula for this purpose, including two new corps, the 8th and 9th, under Junot and Drouet, 20,000 men of the Imperial Guard, and many other smaller units. For the command of the whole, Marshal Massena, lately created Prince of Essling for his services on the Danube, had been selected. The Emperor’s choice was good, for despite his personal faults—he was selfish, greedy, and quarrelsome—Massena was more capable of conducting a great campaign at the head of 100,000 men than any other of the marshals. He took up his command at Valladolid on May 15, 1810.

Meanwhile Soult, in the far south, was busy with the siege of Cadiz. It was an unpromising enterprise; for the town, situated at the point of a peninsula projecting far into the sea, and separated from the mainland by a broad creek, is almost impregnable without the assistance of a fleet. It was to little purpose that the French bombarded the outlying defences at long range. Cadiz was “observed” rather than besieged; and Victor’s corps had always to be left in front of it. That of Sebastiani lay at Granada and Malaga, charged with the duty of keeping down the insurgents of the Sierras and watching the Spanish army of Murcia. For further offensive operations Soult could only count on Mortier’s corps; the Emperor had directed that he was to use it, when Massena was ready to start the main attack on Portugal, for the reduction of Badajoz and Elvas, and finally for an invasion of the Alemtejo which would take Lisbon in the rear. But Massena was long in moving; and Soult waited for the signal without impatience, being well content to devote himself to organising the civil government of Andalusia—a profit­able viceroyalty for one who loved money and was an indefatigable and unscrupulous collector of works of art.

In the eastern parts of the Peninsula the war during the spring of 1810 did not stand still, as in the south; but it was inconclusive in its results. Suchet, having reduced the plains of Aragon to obedience, risked an advance against Valencia with a column of 12,000 men, a force too small for the enterprise. He was repulsed (March 5-10) and forced by the news of fresh revolts in Aragon to retire to Saragossa. Warned by this check that he must not go too far afield till he had made all safe in his rear, Suchet now turned his attention to the reduction of the fortresses on the borders of Aragon and Catalonia, and speedily captured Lerida (May 14) and Mequinenza (June 8). He had now won his way far down the Ebro valley; and one further push would take him to the sea, and enable him to cut the communications between Valencia and Catalonia. Meanwhile Augereau, who had replaced Saint-Cyr in Catalonia in time to receive the surrender of Gerona in December, 1809, fared far worse in the new year. His only success was the capture of the petty mountain fortress of Hostalrich (May, 1810), while his failures were many; for the Catalans were obstinate and enterprising, and their general, O’Donnell, was a man of resource. So many of Augereau’s outlying detachments were cut off, and so many of his enterprises proved fruitless, that early in the summer the Emperor recalled him to France in disgrace, sending Macdonald, Due de Taranto, to supersede him.

But events in Aragon and Catalonia were unimportant compared with the great invasion of Portugal, which was just about to commence. At no period of the struggle did matters look so hopeful for the French as at this moment. Massena had under him 130,000 men, of whom three corps (the 2nd, 6th, and 8th), over 70,000 strong, were to form the actual field-army; while the 9th corps and other troops guarded the plains of Leon in his rear, and the Imperial Guard came up to occupy Navarre and Old Castile. This seemed an overwhelming force to turn against Wellington, who had less than 30,000 British bayonets and sabres, about the same force of Portuguese regulars, and a mass of native militia useless in the field and only fit for raids and bickerings in the mountains. Moreover, the British general had always to guard against the chance of a separate invasion of the Alemtejo by Soult, far in his rear. To aid him there were two weak Spanish armies, the remnants of del Parque’s old force—one in Galicia, the other in Estremadura near Badajoz; together these forces did not muster 25,000 men, and they were much demoralised by their late defeats. Neither gave any profitable assistance during the campaign in Portugal.

When Massena began his advance, the two Castiles, with Aragon and Andalusia, were quiet. The guerilla bands which afterwards troubled them had not yet developed their strength; and the French garrisons were so strong that no corner of central Spain was left unguarded. In this summer there were no less than 370,000 French troops in the Peninsula—a larger number than was ever seen before or after. Everywhere, save in Catalonia, the Spaniards seemed discouraged; and it appeared probable that one further effort would drive them to despair and surrender. The Supreme Junta, which had hitherto conducted the war, had become so unpopular that it resigned its powers to a Regency of five members on February 2. But the new Government, if not so arrogant and unteachable as the old, inspired little confidence. Had the invasion of Portugal proved successful, there would have been no power of resistance left in Galicia, in Cadiz, in Valencia, or even in Catalonia; and the war would have ere long flickered out.

Massena had resolved not to start on his great enterprise till all the troops from Germany were nearing the front; and some of them, especially the 9th corps, were still far in the rear. He had also resolved to secure his base of operations in Leon, by capturing the fortresses of north-western Spain, before he crossed the frontier of Portugal. Astorga, the outer bulwark of Galicia, had fallen on April 22, after an honourable defence. The greater stronghold of Ciudad Rodrigo made an even more creditable resistance, its governor, Herrasti, holding out from April 25 till July 10 against all the efforts of Ney. His laudable tenacity caused the invasion of Portugal to be postponed till August, to the satisfaction of Wellington, who needed every moment that he could gain for the organisation of his defence. He had refused to risk a battle for the relief of Ciudad Rodrigo, though pressed to do so both by the Spaniards and by some of his own officers; his forces were not yet strong enough to face the French in the plains, and lay distributed along the hills of the Portuguese frontier, observing the enemy from a distance.

It was not till August 24 that Massena crossed the Coa at the head of the main body of his army. He then laid siege to Almeida, the fortress which protects north-eastern Portugal against attacks from the side of Spain. It was defended by a good native garrison under an English governor, Colonel Cox; and Wellington had expected it to delay the enemy as long as Ciudad Rodrigo. But on the third day of the siege a shell exploded the main powder-magazine; nearly the whole town was destroyed; and Cox was forced to surrender next day (August 27). Having mastered Almeida with such unexpected ease, Massena called up all his columns, 63,000 strong, collected his stores and provisions, and advanced into Portugal on September 15.

On plunging into the interior of Portugal, Massena was surprised to find the whole countryside, and even the larger towns, completely deserted by their inhabitants. This was the first intimation that he received of Wellesley’s new and original scheme of defence. He had obtained from the Portuguese Regency permission to order all the people of the invaded districts to retire from their homes after destroying all their food-stuffs. The wealthier classes were to make their way to Lisbon or Oporto; the rest to take refuge in the mountains, or in regions to which the French columns could not easily penetrate. Knowing that Napoleon’s armies relied chiefly on local requisitions, he rightly supposed that such a device would soon reduce the invader to great distress. Meanwhile he had prepared a secure refuge for his own army, by constructing across the neck of the peninsula on which Lisbon stands the celebrated lines of Torres Vedras. These were not mere field entrenchments, but solid closed works connected by ditches and palisades, and furnished with ample provision of heavy guns from the Lisbon arsenal. Skilled engineers, aided by the whole of the able­bodied peasantry of Estremadura, had been at work on them for more than half a year; and they were now perfectly complete. The first line was 29, the second 22 miles long from sea to sea; they included 126 closed redoubts, defended by 427 pieces of artillery. The ground in front of them had been cleared of all cover, and on the more exposed points the slopes had been scarped away. Finally, to provide against the possible but unlikely contingency of the lines being pierced, a third series of fortifications had been built at the mouth of the Tagus, to allow the army to embark in safety in the event of disaster. A very large force would be required to man so long a front. Wellington had arranged that the whole British army, nearly 30,000 strong, five-sixths of the Portuguese regulars (a force of about the same strength), and some 20,000 Lisbon and Estremaduran militia should hold the lines.

He even borrowed during the autumn 7000 Spanish troops from the army of La Romana, which lay at Badajoz, so that, in the end, he could count on nearly 100,000 men for the defence, though a large proportion of them were of inferior material. But this was not the whole of Wellington’s plan. The militia of northern and central Portugal were not taken inside the lines, but were ordered to wait till the French army should have passed on into the interior, and then to cut its communications, harass its rear, and enclose it in a net of mobile columns. They were directed to avoid all serious fighting with large forces, but to destroy stragglers and detachments, cut off convoys, and prevent the enemy from foraging far afield. If Massena dropped small garrisons to guard the more important points on his line of advance, they would be cut off and destroyed. If he kept his whole army in a mass, he would move on in a sort of perpetual blockade, with an active but intangible enemy hemming him in on all sides. When he reached the lines of Torres Vedras and was forced to stop, he would find himself the besieged rather than the besieger. The main difficulty in Wellington’s plan was the dreadful sacrifice imposed on the peasantry of central Portugal, who were asked to quit their houses and destroy their provisions in the face of approaching winter. But a combination of patriotism and wholesome fear of the marauding propensities of the French sufficed to cause the orders of the Regency and the commander-in-chief to be carried out.

Massena was entirely unprepared for the tactics used against him. He imagined that he had but to win a battle somewhere in front of Lisbon, and so to compel the British to embark ; the capital and the whole kingdom of Portugal would then be his own. He advanced through northern Beira for ten days, while the army of Wellington retired before him, refusing to commit itself to a fight. The route which he had taken, to the north of the Mondego, by way of Vizeu, at last brought him in front of the position of Busaco, where the main road to Coimbra and Lisbon crosses a range of precipitous heights. On this commanding ridge, which overlooks all the upland of central Portugal on one side, and the plain of Coimbra on the other, Wellington stood at bay; he did not intend to make a permanent defence of the position, well knowing that it could be turned on the left, but merely to check the French if they should venture on a direct attack. His troops were eager for a fight, and he was anxious to indulge them if it could be done without risk. It would be useful too, from the political point of view, to retire to the lines of Torres Vedras only after having won a victory which should impress public opinion.

Massena acted much as Wellington had hoped. He had never before seen a British army in battle, and thought that this might be driven, by a vigorous attack in column, even from such ground as that which lay in front of the convent of Busaco. He had a distinct superiority in numbers—about 59,000 men to 50,000—and knew that half his o­ponent’s army was composed of Portuguese, for whom he had a supreme contempt. Accordingly, on September 27, he launched Ney’s corps against Wellington’s left-centre, and Reynier’s against his right-centre, keeping Junot’s in reserve to clench the victory. The two great columns of assault were directed against the least precipitous parts of the English position; but even here the slope was steep; and, when the French had toiled to the summit under heavy musketry fire, their order was broken and their impetus spent. Charged vigorously by Craufurd’s light division on the left, and by Picton’s 3rd division on the right, they were rolled down the hill in fearful disorder and with great loss. The actual clash of battle hardly lasted an hour, but the French lost five generals and 4400 men killed and wounded. Wellington's casualties were less than 1300; and only a third part of his army had been engaged. It was a matter of immense relief and encouragement that the Portuguese line regiments had stood perfectly steady and had contributed their fair share to the victory. After this Wellington knew that he could safely trust them in line of battle—a piece of knowledge which well-nigh doubled his fighting power.

Having suffered this well-earned punishment for trying to “rush” a British army securely posted in a good position, Massena took the obvious step of turning Wellington’s left wing by the circuitous road through Boialva. His opponent had expected this move, and promptly resumed his retreat, evacuated Coimbra, and fell back towards the lines. The Marshal occupied the deserted town, where he found food-stuffs, that had not been properly destroyed, in quantity sufficient to enable him to resume his advance (October 1). Now that he had reached this point, prudence seemed to demand that he should establish a new base at Coimbra, and leave a division to guard it and to care for the 5000 sick and wounded who now encumbered his march. But Massena felt that he would require every available man for the battle in front of Lisbon which he believed to be impending. Accordingly he took the rash step of leaving all his sick and wounded at Coimbra under the guard of half a battalion, and with the remainder of his army hurried on in pursuit of the British (October 4). The nemesis for this blunder was not long in coming. On October 7 Colonel Trant, the commander of the nearest militia brigade, learning of the smallness of the force at Coimbra, surprised the place at dawn, and captured both the garrison and the men in hospital, 5000 in all.

Wellington’s army passed within the lines on October 11, escorting the whole population of northern Estremadura, which moved down to take refuge in and about Lisbon. On the following moiming Massena’s columns came up; the Marshal had only heard of the existence of the lines five days before, and was even now unaware of their strength. But when he had surveyed them with his own eyes, and had made one or two tentative attacks on some of the outlying positions, he recognised the hopelessness of his situation. He had now not much over 50,000 men left, and saw that it would be insane to risk an attack with such a force. His provisions were running out, and the Beira militia had closed in upon his rear, so that he commanded no more ground than that on which his three army-corps were encamped. His communications with Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo had long been cut; and he had not the least idea what was going on in Leon, or whether his reserves were on their way to join him. Nevertheless he remained for a month in front of the lines, hoping against hope for some chance to make a successful assault, and then retired to Santarem, thirty miles up the Tagus. He despatched, meanwhile, letters to the Emperor begging for instant aid, lest all the results of his campaign should be lost.

In and about Santarem the French army abode from November 15, 1810, to March 5, 1811, obstinately refusing to retire, though by the end of that time it was suffering from sheer starvation. When the resources of the region had been eaten up, the army had to live by pushing marauding columns into the surrounding districts—columns which were always opposed and often destroyed by the Portuguese militia. Wellington refrained from attack; for hunger was doing the work of the sword, and the invading army dwindled day by day.

Massena had hoped for more effective assistance from Soult, who, according to the Emperor’s orders, was to cooperate in the attack on Lisbon by advancing into the Alemtejo, and threatening the Portuguese capital from the south. But Soult’s movements were begun too late; he had no love for Massena, and refused to hurry. He came up with a single corps, the 5th under Mortier, into Estremadura, and prepared to capture Badajoz as a preliminary to the advance into Portugal. On February 19 he destroyed the Spanish army of Estremadura at the battle of the Gebora, and then began to press the siege of Badajoz. The place made a "weak defence, and was surrendered by its cowardly or treacherous governor Imas on March 10.

Five days earlier Massena had in despair abandoned Santarem and started on his weary retreat to Ciudad Rodrigo across the mountains of central Beira. The army of Portugal would have perished if it had remained a fortnight longer in its advanced position. It was now in a desperate plight; nearly all the horses were dead; the men, demoralised by long privations, left the colours in thousands and hunted the Portuguese peasantry in the mountains in the search for food. The atrocities which they committed on these marauding tours surpass description, and brought about horrible retaliation on all French parties surprised by the natives. Prisoners on either side who were merely shot were thought to have got off lightly.

On hearing of Massena’s departure, Wellington started off in pursuit with five divisions, giving two others to Beresford, with orders to march through the Alemtejo into Spanish Estremadura, and, if possible, to relieve Badajoz. Beresford’s march, however, was made fruitless by the surrender of Badajoz two days before the army of succour could reach its vicinity. Massena’s retreat from Santarem to Ciudad Rodrigo occupied just a month (March 5—April 4), and was conducted with great skill. Ney, who took charge of the rear-guard, fought a long series of partial actions to detain the British van, but nearly always drew off just in time to escape serious loss. The only occasion on which the French were severely punished was at Sabugal (April 3), where the British light division surprised the 2nd corps in a fog, and killed or wounded more than 1000 men.

The French army had entered Portugal on September 15, 1810, with some 63,000 sabres and bayonets, and had received some 6000 or 7000 men in reinforcements while at Santarem. When it recrossed the frontier on April 5, it mustered only 45,000 men. Massena therefore had lost some 25,000 men during the seven months of his campaign—far more by sickness and starvation than by the sword, for he had fought only one general action, that of Busaco, and a dozen combats, in none of which (save Sabugal) the casualty list was heavy. He had been dislodged from Portugal, not by force but by Wellesley’s use of the terrible weapon of hunger. The price that the Allies had paid for their success was no insignificant one; a broad strip of central Portugal had been reduced to a desert, and many thousands of its inhabitants had perished. But thereby the rest of the realm had been saved; and the end was well worth the sacrifice. For the moral effect of Massena’s defeat was enormous; the Emperor had sent forth his lieutenant, with much pomp and circumstance of war, to “drive the leopards into the sea.” The whole of Europe had been summoned, as it were, to look upon the spectacle of the punishment of the English for their rash attempt to defend a section of the Continent against the invincible French arms. For many months the fall of Lisbon had been prophesied; and Massena’s checks and miseries had been carefully concealed. When the weeks of the army of Portugal fell back on Ciudad Rodrigo, the facts could no longer be kept secret. The offensive power of the French hosts in Spain was spent; and it may be said that the retreat which began at Santarem only ceased at Toulouse.

During the six months which Massena spent in Portugal, the course of the war in the other regions of the Peninsula was on the whole favourable to the French. The successful operations of Soult, described above, were carried out in spite of a strong diversion which the Allies conducted on the side of Cadiz. That place was full of troops, including an Anglo-Portuguese division of nearly 5000 men under General Graham. The Spanish Government was anxious to make what use it could of this accumulation of forces. Power at Cadiz was no longer in the hands of the Regency which had been appointed in February, 1810: a Cortes, or national parliament, had been summoned to meet on September 24. It was not a very representative body, since many provinces were in the hands of the French, and the delegates who sat for these regions had not really been chosen by the people. But it was energetic and vigorous, if too much given to ill-timed discussions. The Spanish Liberals had a predominance in it; and the serviles or partisans of absolute monarchy were in a decided minority.

When the news of the departure of Soult and the 5th corps for the siege of Badajoz became known at Cadiz, the Spaniards were eager that something should be done to disturb the small army under Victor which was blockading the city. Accordingly, in February, 1811, a Spanish force of 9000 men under General La Peña, accompanied by 4000 British under Graham, was sent down the coast to Tarifa on shipboard, and put ashore with the object of attacking the French lines from the flank and rear. The expedition was not quite large enough for the end in view; for Victor had nearly 20,000 men dispersed along his front, and, without entirely evacuating his redoubts and batteries, could gather a force sufficient to turn back La Peña and Graham. The Anglo-Spanish army marched for three days along the coast, and on March 5 reached the heights of Barrosa, overhanging the southern extremity of the French lines. Here Victor, aware of their approach, had gathered all the available troops of the 1st corps. He sent one of his three incomplete divisions to demonstrate against the Spaniards, who formed the head of the Allies’ long column of march, and fell with the other two upon the British, who formed its rear. La Pena allowed himself to be overawed by the few thousand men on his flank, and sent no aid to Graham, who had to fight a battle of his own, with about 4500 men opposed to 7000. Nothing daunted, the British general turned about, and fell upon the advancing columns with desperate resolution, though he had to attack uphill. Once more the line proved too strong for the column; and Graham’s musketry shattered and drove off the French with a loss of 2000 men, six guns, and an eagle, his own casualties amounting to 1100 killed and wounded. La Pena, in spite of his colleague’s urgent entreaties, refused to send him cavalry or reinforcements, or even to take up the pursuit of the routed force. Indignant at this desertion, Graham led his troops back to Cadiz. La Pena followed two days later. The two generals entered on a campaign of wrangling; and the expedition, which might have wrecked half the French lines, came to an ignominious end. No more was attempted on the side of Cadiz for some months.

Meanwhile, in eastern Spain, Suchet was cooperating with Macdonald, who had superseded Augereau in command of the army of Catalonia. Their main object was to capture Tortosa, and so to block the communications between Catalonia and Valencia, and cut the Spanish defence in two. In December, 1810, Macdonald, though much harassed by the indomitable Catalans, succeeded in pushing southward, and placed himself in a position from which he could cover the siege of loitosa, while the actual attack was confided to Suchet and the army of Aragon. The operations were conducted with Suchet s usual decision and activity , the defence was so feeble as to cause not unnatural suspicions of treachery ; and Tortosa fell on January 1,1811, after holding out for less than three weeks. This was a serious blow to the patriotic cause; Catalonia was henceforward isolated, and only kept in touch with the other unsubdued Spanish provinces by means of the British ships ever hovering about its coast. Yet it showed no signs of weakening in its defence; indeed, the most daring exploit of the Catalans during the whole war was carried out in the spring following the fall of Tortosa.

On April 9 the bands of its northern border took by surprise the great fortress of Figueras, which commands the road from France to Gerona and Barcelona. Macdonald had at once to depart with the larger half of his army to attempt the recovery of this important place. Meanwhile the Emperor ordered Suchet to take charge of the conquest of southern Catalonia, and assigned to him the remainder of Macdonald’s troops. Thus strengthened, he was ordered to lay siege to Tarragona, the one great seaport of that region still in Spanish hands, and the rallying-point and arsenal of the Catalan army. Suchet, leaving Macdonald to shift for himself in front of Figueras, concentrated every man for this enterprise, and sat down before Tarragona on May 4. Contreras, the governor, made an honourable defence; but the place was stormed on June 28, and sacked from cellar to garret, with much unnecessary bloodshed among the civil population. The loss to Spain was great; and the surviving Catalan divisions had to take to the hills since the last of their seaports was gone. Yet still they held out, and the province remained unsubdued.

We must now return to the operations of Massena and Wellington. When the Prince of Essling recoiled across the Spanish frontier on April 5, the only fruits remaining to him from his nine months’ campaign were the two fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. While the French army was refitting in the neighbourhood of Salamanca, Wellington laid siege to Almeida. The Marshal had to make his choice between allowing it to fall unsuccoured, or leading forward his exhausted army once more in the hope of raising the siege. As might have been ex­pected from his indomitable temper, he chose the latter alternative. But, seeing that his cavalry was almost destroyed, and that he could not horse half his guns, he made a desperate appeal to his colleague Bessières, the commander of the army of the north, to aid him with all his artillery, and as many squadrons as he could concentrate. The younger marshal showed no great zeal for the enterprise, but brought 1500 horse and a single battery to Ciudad Rodrigo on May 1. With this small auxiliary force, and the whole surviving strength of the army of Portugal, some 39,000 sabres and bayonets, Massena marched on Almeida.

On May 3 he found Wellington’s army, about 34,000 strong, arrayed across his path on the heights of Fuentes d’Onoro. On the first day of battle Massena endeavoured to force back the British line by a frontal attack; he failed, and after waiting a day despatched half of his troops to turn Wellington’s right flank by a detour to the south. On May 5 the struggle was resumed; again the assault on the British front was repelled, but the turning column forced back the extreme southern wing of the allied army, and compelled its general to throw back part of his line on to new ground. Here he stood to receive a third attack; but Massena dared not deliver it. His ammunition had run short; his troops were exhausted; and his colleague Bessières and his corps-commanders were unwilling to persevere with the attempt to relieve Almeida. He was forced to abandon the place to its own resources, and drew off on May 8. In the two fights he had lost nearly 3000 men, Wellington not more than 1800. Brennier, the commandant of Almeida, on hearing of the result of the battle, blew up the walls of his fortress and sallied out at midnight (May 11) with his garrison, to cut his way through the lines of the besiegers. His courage was rewarded by success, and he escaped with two-thirds of his force to Massena’s outposts. But Almeida, the last hold of the French in Portugal, was lost; and Massena had fought to save the place, not the garrison.

The Marshal’s career had now come to an end. Napoleon, dis­satisfied with his conduct of the campaign of Portugal, observed that “Massena had grown old,” and superseded him by the young and ambitious Mannont, who had still his spurs to win as the commander of a large army. The new chief arrived at the front on May 6, and took over the charge of the army of Portugal on the 12th. His first action was to disperse his exhausted divisions into cantonments in the province of Salamanca, where they began to repair the losses they had suffered during the late campaign.

The state of the French army was not concealed from Wellington, who resolved to utilise the enemy’s enforced leisure for a raid into Estremadura, and an attempt to capture Badajoz. Leaving four divisions on the Portuguese frontier opposite Marmont’s army (May 15), he marched with two to join Marshal Beresford and the force which had been detached against Soult at the moment of Massena’s retreat from Santarem. But, before he could arrive, matters had come to a head in this quarter, and a battle had been fought. Beresford had marched from Lisbon into Estremadura at the end of March. His operations were dilatory; and it was not till May 5 that he succeeded in driving off the 5th corps, which Soult had left on the Guadiana, and in investing Badajoz. The remains of the Spanish army which had been crushed at the Gebora, and other troops sent from Cadiz, now came to his aid, under Castanos and Blake.

On May 10, after receiving news of the investment of Badajoz, Soult marched from Seville with the reserves of the army of Andalusia, and on May 15 presented himself with 23,000 men in front of the position of Albuera, where the allied army stood prepared to dispute his passage. Beresford had drawn off his army from the trenches three days before, and had concentrated nearly 32,000 men; but of these less than 8000 were British. Nor was his fighting-ground well-chosen; his front was covered only by a brook everywhere fordable; and dense woods on the further bank prevented him from discerning the enemy’s movements.

At dawn on May 16 Soult delivered his attack against the flank and not the front of the Allies. Crossing the stream high up, under the cover of the woods, he fell unexpectedly upon Beresford’s right wing, which was composed entirely of Spanish troops. While endeavouring to change their front, Blake’s regiments gave way; but Beresford came up with the British 2nd division, and attacked the head of the French column. At the moment when the troops were closing, a furious rain­storm swept over the hill-side; and, under cover of it, a brigade of French light cavalry charged in upon the flank and rear of the British and absolutely annihilated the three leading battalions. The surviving seven battalions of the 2nd division maintained for a long time a desperate musketry-battle with the 5th corps, in which neither side gained an inch. Soult’s rear brigades were coming up, and Beresford flinched and thought of retreat; but he was persuaded by Colonel Hardinge to throw into the fight his last troops, three British and three Portuguese regiments of the 4th division. Myers’ fusiliers thrust aside Soult’s reserve, and falling upon the flank of the 5th corps drove it off* the field. This struggle was the most bloody incident of the whole Peninsular War; on both sides the infantry had maintained the battle at close quarters, and had fallen by companies and battalions as they stood. Over 6000 French were killed or wounded ; but their proportion of casualties was as nothing to that of the British, who lost 4100 men out of less than 8000 present. The Portuguese had about 400 killed and wounded, the Spaniards 1000, so that the total casualties among the Allies were not much less than those of the enemy. They had also lost a gun, five standards, and 500 prisoners. But the object of the battle had been achieved, in spite of Beresford’s unskilful management; after lingering for another day in front of his adversary’s position, Soult retreated towards Andalusia, leaving 1000 of his severely wounded to the mercy of the Allies. The victors therefore were able to resume the siege of Badajoz on May 20.

When Wellington arrived from the north and assumed command in Estremadura, he resolved to press the siege with vigour. But his engineers were unskilful; his Portuguese battering train was both small and weak; and two assaults were beaten off with loss. On June 12 he was obliged to retire from before the well-defended fortress, for Marmont had united his whole army and marched southward to join Soult. The British divisions left near Almeida had executed a march parallel to that of the French army of Portugal; but, even when they had been united to the force in Estremadura, Wellington had not the numbers to face the two Marshals combined in the open field. He therefore retired to the Portuguese frontier, and took up a position behind the Caya river, which he strengthened with fieldworks; here he waited with 50,000 men in line, inviting an attack. Soult and Marmont had brought 62.000 men to relieve Badajoz, but only by stripping Leon and Andalusia of their garrisons, and leaving their rear exposed to the incursions of the Spaniards. From June 22 till July 4 the two Marshals lay in front of the Caya, threatening an attack. These twelve days were the most critical period of the campaign, for hardly ever again were the French in a position to assail Wellington with superior numbers and force him to fight for the safety of Portugal. But they held back, and on July 4 Soult marched away to save Seville from an attack by Blake. Marmont, too weak to fight without his colleague’s assistance, drew off to the valley of the Tagus; and the crisis in Estremadura came to an end.

Seeing no immediate hope of resuming the siege of Badajoz, for a movement against it would have brought back both Soult and Marmont to the Guadiana, Wellington resolved to transfer his main force back to the north, and to threaten Ciudad Rodrigo. On Aug. 1 he set out for Almeida and Sabugal with six divisions, leaving two in Estremadura. Beresford was not again trusted with the command of this independent corps; and the detachment placed to observe Soult was committed for the future to the charge of a cautious and steady general, Sir Rowland Hill. On arriving near Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington began preparations for the siege; but the battering train, which was to come from Oporto, was still far off, and for some weeks he could do no more than blockade the fortress from a distance. This demonstration, however, was enough to call Marmont out of his cantonments; assembling his whole army, he left the valley of the Tagus and called to his aid Dorsenne, who had lately succeeded Bessieres in the command of the army of the north. More zealous than his predecessor had been at the time of Fuentes d’Onoro, Dorsenne came up with four strong divisions; and, when the two armies joined near Salamanca on Sept. 21, they mustered 60,000 sabres and bayonets. Against such a force Wellington could do nothing, as he was inferior in numbers by nearly a third. Without firing a shot, he allowed Ciudad Rodrigo to be relieved (Sept. 25), and retired into the Portuguese mountains.

The enemy followed hard upon his steps; and he was forced to cover his retreat by two rearguard actions, at El Bodon (Sept. 25) and Aldea de Ponte (Sept. 27). On the 28th Wellington had concentrated his army in a strong position in front of Sabugal, where the ground was so much in his favour that he dared to offer battle. Marmont and Dorsenne, being without the provisions and transport which would have justified them in commencing a serious invasion of Portugal, refused to attack. They retired after revictualling Ciudad Rodrigo, and dispersed their armies into winter quarters. Wellington at once came down again from the heights and resumed the blockade of the fortress. But he was not in a position to press it closely so long as the roads and the weather were favourable to the reconcentration of the enemy; he lay for two months awaiting the moment when a coup de main would be practicable.

Thus the main series of operations in Spain came to an end in October. The French offensive was spent; neither north nor south of the Tagus had their commanders dared to resume the invasion of Portugal, even when they had collected an imposing force and greatly outnumbered Wellington’s field-army. To concentrate such masses for a serious campaign, they were forced to strip the provinces in their rear; and, when those regions were left ungarrisoned, they lapsed at once into insurrection. Soult could not quit Andalusia, nor Marmont Leon and the Tagus valley, for more than a few weeks, under pain of seeing the country behind them aflame. Enormous as was the force— over 300,000 men—which the Emperor had thrown into Spain, it was still not strong enough to hold down the conquered provinces and at the same time to attack Portugal. For this fact the Spaniards must receive due credit; it was their indomitable spirit of resistance which enabled Wellington, with his small Anglo-Portuguese army, to keep the field against such largely superior numbers. No sooner had the French concentrated, and abandoned a district, than there sprang up in it a local Junta and a ragged apology for an army. Even where the invaders lay thickest, along the route from Bayonne to Madrid, guerilla bands maintained themselves in the mountains, cut off' couriers and escorts, and often isolated one French army from another for weeks at a time. The greater partisan chiefs, such as Mina in Navarre, Julian Sanchez in Leon, and Porlier in the Cantabrian hills, kept whole brigades of the French in constant employment. Often beaten, they were never destroyed, and always reappeared to strike some daring blow at the point where they were least expected. Half the French army was always employed in the fruitless task of guerilla-hunting. This was the secret which explains the fact that, with 300,000 men under arms, the invaders could never concentrate more than 70,000 to deal with Wellington.

There is little that needs description in the operations in eastern and southern Spain during the latter months of 1811. On August 9 Soult defeated an attempt of the army of Murcia to invade the kingdom of Granada, but was unable to push his advantage, having to keep a watchful eye on Cadiz and Badajoz. His only offensive movement in the winter was an attempt to take the small fortress of Tarifa, near the Straits of Gibraltar, which was handsomely repulsed by the British garrison of the place (Dec. 1811). Macdonald in Catalonia was occupied by the long siege of Figueras till September had almost arrived; and even when it had fallen, he accomplished little against the indomitable Somatenes of the mountains.

Further south, however, matters went differently. After capturing Tarragona, Suchet had resolved to leave Catalonian affairs to his colleague Macdonald, and to strike at Valencia, the largest and wealthiest city in the whole realm which still remained in the hands of the patriots. In September he led the greater part of the army of Aragon down into the Valencian coastland, and laid siege to the rock-fortress of Sagunto, which forms the chief bulwark of the fertile Huerta. It was well defended by General Andriani; and, when it had beaten off two assaults, Blake came to raise the siege with the whole of the armies of Murcia and Valencia. Suchet turned to meet him, and on the plain south of Sagunto was fought (October 25) the last pitched battle of the war in which a Spanish army, unaided by British troops, attempted to face the French. Blake, though he attacked vigorously, was defeated with a loss of 5000 men. But his disasters did not end here. Sagunto surrendered next day; and Suchet then pushed on against Valencia itself. He had obtained leave from the Emperor to draw on the army of the north for reinforcements; and, when he had been joined by Reille and two divisions from Navarre, he advanced on a broad front, sweeping Blake’s army before him. On December 26 he fought a long, running fight with the Spaniards, and drove two-thirds of them, with their commander-in-chief, into the city of Valencia; the remainder escaped towards Murcia. Blake had not intended to be shut up in this fashion; the place had no regular modern fortifications, nor had it been properly provisioned. lie made two futile attempts to break out, and was forced on Jan. 9, 1812, to surrender at discretion. This was the last and not the least of the disasters of the Spanish armies; 16,000 men laid down their arms, and only a remnant was left in the field to maintain the struggle in Murcia. Suehet was now at the height of his fortunes; he had been made a marshal for capturing Tarragona, and was now created Duke of Albufera and given viceregal power over all eastern Spain. But the capture of Blake’s force was to be the last, as well as the most striking, of his exploits.

Even before Valencia fell, the fortune of war was beginning to turn on the more important theatre of 'war, along the Portuguese frontier. Wellington had been watching his opportunity for a renewed attack on Ciudad Rodrigo, and found it at midwinter, when the armies of Portugal and the north were dispersed in distant cantonments. He calculated that he might count on three weeks before they could concentrate in sue force as to drive him off. Hence he was forced to work in haste, under pain of seeing his scheme fail if the place had not fallen within that time. But all went well; on January 8 he invested Ciudad Rodrigo and brought up his battering train. On the 13th he had begun to breach the walls; on the 19th the 3rd and light divisions 471 stormed the place. This was sharp work, for, by the strict rules of siege-craft, the attack should have been held back some days longer, till the fire of the defence had been subdued and the breach had been made more practicable. But speed was necessary, and Wellington’s happy audacity was justified by the result. The splendour of the success was somewhat tarnished by the misconduct of the victorious troops, who sacked the town in the most scandalous fashion.

Marmont had called out his army from its cantonments on receiving the news that Wellington had invested Ciudad Rodrigo ; but bad roads and worse weather prevented him from concentrating at Salamanca before January 25; and by that time he had received news that the place had fallen. Seeing no profit in a winter campaign, he sent back his divisions to their old quarters. Wellington, thus left undisturbed, proceeded at once to carry out the second half of his great plan. As soon as he was certain that Marmont’s army had dispersed, he marched with six divisions on Estremadura, there to join the detached corps of Hill. Starting on March 6, he reached the gates of Badajoz on the 16th. The moment was even more favourable than he could have expected for a great offensive movement; Napoleon had now the Russian war looming clearly before him, and had begun, for the first time since the war began, to draw troops from Spain. In February he had recalled 13,000 men of the Imperial Guard from the army of the north, and had directed Soult and Suchet to send him their two Polish divisions; he had also ordered off some German troops; so that, as a net result, the army of Spain was 30,000 men weaker than it had been in the autumn of 1811. This diminution was most important, as it was now far more difficult for the enemy to concentrate superior numbers against the Anglo-Portuguese, either in the valley of the Guadiana or in that of the Douro.

Badajoz, like Ciudad Rodrigo, had to be besieged “ against time ”; for it was clear that Soult and Marmont might unite to relieve it, as in June, 1811, if the siege were long protracted. Accordingly, Wellington pushed matters as fast as he could. On the twentieth day after the investment had begun, he ordered the place to be stormed, though his preparations were still incomplete and the defence was still strong. Badajoz was taken, though at the cost of dreadful bloodshed : nearly 5000 men were killed or wounded, and the main assault on the breaches failed. But Picton and Leith, with the 3rd and 5th divisions, penetrated into the town by escalade; and the French were forced to surrender. Excesses far worse than those committed at Ciudad Rodrigo disgraced the storm ; the troops got entirely out of hand, and fell to plunder, rape, and arson, in the most desperate fashion. It was three days before they could be restored to discipline.

Soult arrived in Estremadura with the bulk of his army a few days after Badajoz fell; he refused to fight when he heard that the place was lost, and retired to Seville. Marmont, instead of marching straight to Wellington advances against Marmont. the Guadiana, had taken the unwise step of trying to draw off Weilington by a foray into central Portugal. But the British general disregarded this diversion, believing himself quite capable of dealing with the Marshal when Badajoz should have fallen. He was justified in his belief; for, on hearing of the disaster, Marmont hastily withdrew from Portugal and fell back to the middle Douro.

On learning that Marmont had retreated, the British general deter­mined to pursue him, and to push matters to a decisive issue in Leon. But, before marching on Salamanca, he resolved to strike a blow which should make the united action of the armies of Portugal and Andalusia even more difficult than it had recently been. Their sole line of communication was by the boat-bridge of Almaraz on the central Tagus: if this were destroyed, they had no way of keeping touch with each other save the circuitous route through Madrid. Accordingly Hill was directed to send a lightly-equipped expedition through the mountains and to break the bridge. This feat he accomplished on May 19, surprising and storming the two forts which guarded the structure, and burning its pontoons. Having thus secured himself from the danger that Soult might come up in time to succour the army of Portugal, Wellington challenged Marmont to battle by marching straight on his head-quarters at Salamanca, and laying siege to the forts which dominated the town (June 17). The Marshal, having concentrated the greater part of his divisions, appeared three days later in front of the British army; but he found that he was somewhat outnumbered by the allied forces, and instead of attacking, retired behind the Douro (July 2). The Salamanca forts fell ere he had completed his retreat.

The campaign then stood still for a fortnight, while Marmont was waiting for reinforcements. He called in the French garrison of the Asturias, and besought aid from the army of the north, in command of which Caffarelli had now superseded Dorsenne, and from King Joseph at Madrid. Both promised him help, but both were tardy in carrying out their promise; and Marmont was impatient. When he had been joined by the Asturian division alone, he recrossed the Douro and assumed the offensive. Wellington fell back before him, till he had reached the immediate vicinity of Salamanca, and then drew up his army on the heights to the south of the town (July S3). The contending forces were very nearly equal in numbers, each having about 42,000 men in line; but Wellington was handicapped by the fact that more than a third of his army was composed of Spanish and Portuguese troops. Over-eager to press his adversary, and to cut him off from the direct road to Portugal, Marmont took the dangerous step of pushing his left wing forward to turn Wellington’s right, and extended his forces on a much longer front than was safe. While he was executing his flank­march across the front of the British position, Wellington came down upon him with the speed and fury of a thunderbolt. The isolated French left wing was suddenly assailed in front by Wellington’s right, which descended from the heights, while the 3rd division under Pakenham, which had been concealed in woods and had escaped Marmont’s notice, fell upon its flank and rear. Three French divisions were routed and dispersed in half-an-hour, and Marmont himself was grievously wounded by a round-shot as he was hastening to repair his fault. The remainder of the army of Portugal, the centre and right of its line, massed themselves in a defensive position, and fought hard to save the day; but they were gradually pushed off the field by a concentric attack from front and flank. They lost 8000 killed and wounded, 7000 prisoners, two eagles and 12 guns; and Clausel, who had succeeded to the command, was unable to rally the wrecks of the army for many days. The disaster would have been still greater, if a Spanish force which Wellington had placed to block the ford of Alba de Tonnes, over which the routed host retreated, had not left its post without orders before the battle.

The victory of Salamanca shook the French domination in Spain to its very foundations ; and its results were felt to the remotest corners of the Peninsula. King Joseph and his army of the centre had started from Madrid on the day before the battle, and would have joined Marmont, had he only waited three more days before fighting. As it was, the King and his 15,000 men had to retreat in haste, as soon as it was known that Wellington was moving on Madrid. The victor had sent one division and his Spanish auxiliaries to pursue Clausel, while with the rest he marched upon the capital. Joseph was forced to fly, with his Court, his officials, and the Spaniards who had sold themselves to his cause, a mixed multitude of 10,000 souls. Fearing that, if he retired towards France, he would be taken in flank by the British, the King ordered a retreat on Valencia, where he could take refuge with the victorious army of Suchet. On August 12 Wellington entered Madrid in triumph, and next day compelled a garrison of 1200 men, which Joseph had left in the Buen Retiro forts above the city, to lay down their arms. Leon and both the Castiles were thus delivered from the power of the enemy. Nor was this all; Soult in Andalusia now found himself cut off from all the other French armies, and saw that he could no longer maintain his position in the far south. Evacuating with bitter regret the splendid provinces where he had reigned as Viceroy for three years, he concentrated his whole army, some 55,000 sabres and bayonets, and marched to join Suchet at Valencia. The Spanish troops thereupon emerged from the long-blockaded Cadiz and reoccupied Andalusia; while Hill, left with no enemy before him in Estremadura, moved up the Tagus to Madrid.

The very completeness of Wellington’s success had led to a dangerous concentration of the French armies, which, giving up the attempt to hold down the provinces of the south and centre, had gathered in two threatening masses. Soult, Suchet, and the King had nearly 90,000 men at Valencia; the army of Portugal had fallen back to join the army of the north; and 40,000 men were assembled about Burgos and on the upper Ebro. It was clear that Wellington, with some 60,000 men concentrated at Madrid, could not face these overwhelming numbers if they acted in unison. But he hoped to keep them apart, and he had just received from the Cortes the chief command of all the native forces of Spain, which gave him the power of ordering diversions from many quarters against the enemy. Unfortunately, the Spanish generals were dilatory and even disobedient; and comparatively little profit accrued to Wellington during the autumn of 1812 from this quarter. Only the Galician army, some 11,000 men, was at this moment actively engaged in his support. The forces which had come out of Cadiz made little attempt to distract Soult; and the Murcians and Valencians were completely cowed by Suchet. A British force of 6000 men from Sicily landed at Alicante on August 7, but was far too weak to have any effect on the general course of operations on the eastern coast.

Trusting, however, that the great accumulation of French troops at Valencia might not be immediately dangerous, Wellington left Madrid on September 1 with four divisions, and joined the troops whom he had left in the Douro valley, with the intention of pushing back the French force in the north. Hill, with three divisions, remained at Madrid to guard against any movement on the part of Soult and the King. On September 19 the British main army appeared in front of Burgos; and Clausel retired before it to the Ebro, after having thrown a garrison into the forts above the city. Wellington was of opinion that Burgos must be reduced before he could venture to pursue the French into Alava or Navarre; he therefore invested its citadel. The siege lasted just a month (September 19—October 19). It was the most unfortunate operation which he ever conducted. The place, though small, was strong; and the material provided for the attack was lamentably insufficient, only eight heavy guns being available. For want of transport, a sufficient train was never brought to the front; and Wellington was foiled. Though the outer works were captured, four successive attempts to storm the castle failed; and a whole month was wasted.

This respite enabled the French to combine and arrange for a general forward movement against the allied armies. Souham, who had succeeded Clausel in command, led the armies of Portugal and the north to relieve Burgos; while Soult and the King, leaving Suchet to hold down Valencia, marched upon Madrid with 60,000 men. Wellington would probably have fought Souham if he had not been aware that even a victory in this part of the field could not save Hill from being crushed by the superior numbers that were moving up against Madrid. He was compelled to fall back in order to unite the two halves of his army, and, while retiring slowly from Burgos along the valley of the Douro, sent Hill orders to abandon New Castile and join him at Salamanca. The two retreats were carried out with complete success; and the whole allied army was concentrated on the Tormes by November 3. But the two armies of Soult and Souham had also combined; and nearly 100,000 men were facing Wellington on his old battlefield south of Salamanca; during the whole war the French had never before gathered so large a force upon a single line. The British general had hoped that the dearth of provisions and the miserable autumn weather would arrest the further progress of the enemy. But Soult pressed on, always turning the right of the allied army; and Wellington was forced to fall back for three marches more till he had reached Ciudad Rodrigo (November 18). This last stage of the retreat was made in drenching rain over roads that had become almost impassable, and cost the retreating host several thousand men in sick and stragglers, who were left behind to perish or fall into the hands of the enemy. But the French also were in a desperate state of exhaustion, and at last desisted from the pursuit.

In spite of the failure at Burgos and the losses in the subsequent retreat, the net results of the campaign of 1812 had been most satisfactory. Though the French had reoccupied Madrid and Toledo, they had been compelled to evaluate all southern Spain. Estremadura, Andalusia, and I .a Maneha had been completely freed from the invaders; and the casualties of the Imperial armies had exceeded 40,000 men. They were now thrown upon the defensive, and had lost confidence in their ultimate success. But this was not the worst of their misfortunes. At midwinter arrived the news of the Emperor’s awful disasters in the retreat from Moscow; and shortly afterwards he began to requisition troops from Spain to reconstitute the Grand Army. Soult was summoned off to Germany, and with him many other generals, a number of complete regiments, and a still greater proportion of cadres composed of picked officers and non-commissioned officers, who were to train the mass of conscripts which was being levied for the next campaign. Yet so enormous were Napoleon’s resources that, after deducting men in hospital or detached, there were still nearly 200,000 French troops left in the Peninsula in the spring of 1813.

Of these, 63,000 men were under Suchet in Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia; the remainder—the armies of Portugal, the south, the centre, and the north—were still facing Wellington. Yet the British general was able to commence the operations of the new year with a greater prospect of success than he had ever before enjoyed. He had about 75,000 fighting men of the best sort in his own Anglo-Portuguese army; and with these the main blow would have to be delivered. But he was also in a position to utilise all the scattered Spanish forces as he had never done before. Ballesteros and some other generals who had disobeyed orders in 1812 had been removed in disgrace; and in 1813 Wellington could rely upon obedience. There were about 60,000 Spanish regular troops available in Galicia, Estremadura, and La Mancha; but quite as important were the guerileros who had been stimulated to redoubled activity by the successes of the previous year. Indeed, it may be said that these bands were of greater profit to the cause of Spain in 1813 than were her armies; for their daring and ceaseless raids during the spring diverted the attention of the French from the early operations of Wellington, and caused them to spread their divisions far and wide in regions remote from the real point of danger. So harassed were the French that Marshal Jourdan, who directed King Joseph’s armies since the departure of Soult, determined to make a desperate attempt to hunt down the main bands before concentrating in face of Wellington. This fatal error was committed in March, when the whole army of the north and four divisions of the army of Portugal were drawn up into the northern mountains, and devoted to the sole task of exterminating the guerilleros. Dispersed in numerous columns, and cut off from each other by the active insurgents, these 40,000 men were no longer available for the main operations upon the Douro.

While Clause and Foy were hunting Mina and his compeers to little effect, the line of battle from Salamanca to Toledo was too thin for safety. The French armies were dispersed over an immense front; and, to draw together in any strength, they would be forced to fall back far to the rear and to abandon vast tracts of territory. Meanwhile the campaigning season had arrived; and Wellington saw his advantage. It was clear that the French would expect his main attack to be delivered from the direction of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, as in previous years. Their defensive position had been taken up to guard against this eventuality. But, instead of repeating his old move, Wellington secretly passed up five British divisions to the north of the Douro into the Portuguese province of the Tras-os-Montes. Braganza, not Ciudad Rodrigo, was to be his real base; and the larger half of his forces was thus placed in a position from which it overlapped the extreme French right wing, and could turn its flank whenever it attempted to make a stand. Jourdan had forgotten to guard against this possibility, since this north-eastern extremity of Portugal was so rugged and so badly furnished with roads that it had never before been used as the starting;- point of a large army. Graham, the victor of Barrosa, was placed in command of this corps; while Wellington remained in person at Ciudad Rodrigo, with three divisions, lest the news that he had gone northward should arouse the suspicions of the enemy.

It was not till May 16 that Graham had struggled through the defiles of the Tras-os-Montes, and commenced his descent into the plains of Leon behind the French flank. Wellington himself therefore only set out on the 22nd; but, when once the advance was begun, the result were startling. The enemy’s vanguard retired from Salamanca without offering resistance, for Jourdan proposed to concentrate and fight in

Old Castile. But, every time that he thought that he might stand to resist Wellington, he discovered that Graham had marched onward and was behind his right wing. The British attack had been directed so far to the north that the French could not concentrate within any reasonable space of time. Orders had to be sent to evacuate Madrid and Toledo in hot haste, and to direct every available man on Burgos. The isolated divisions engaged in guerilla-bunting in Navarre and Biscay were also called in to join the main army. But Wellington gave the retreating army no leisure; and, when he had reached the ground in front of Burgos, the enemy had only 50,000 men collected. Joseph and Jourdan saw that to oiler battle with such inferior numbers would be ruinous, and reluctantly fell back beyond the Ebro, after blowing up the citadel of Burgos (June 12-13). The King had vainly hoped to defend the line of the Ebro; but, instead of attacking him in front, Wellington once again pushed forward Graham and his left wing, which crossed the river far to the west of the French headquarters. Once more Joseph had to draw back, till he reached a strong position in front of Vittoria, where he was covered both in front and in flank by the stream of the Zadorra. Here at last he stood to fight, having collected some 65,000 men. But Wellington had nearly 80,000 men in line; with such a numerical superiority, he naturally attacked at once.

The essential part of Wellington’s tactics in the battle of June 21 was to push forward, once more, his left wing under Graham, so as to turn the French right, and cut them off from their line of retreat, the great high road to San Sebastian and Bayonne. This was accomplished early in the day; but the enemy, drawing back his exposed wing behind the Zadorra, kept Graham for many hours from advancing further. Yet the loss of the power to retreat on Bayonne was fa tal. For Wellington, attacking vigorously with his centre and right, crossed the lower course of the Zadorra at several points, and drove in the main body of the French towards the town of Vittoria. If the road behind them had been open, Joseph and Jourdan might have retired without any ruinous losses. But Graham was blocking the way; and the defeated host had to retreat by the only route left to them, a rough mountain track to Salvatierra and Pampeluna, unsuited for the passage of an army encumbered with heavy impedimenta. The King had with him not only a vast train of artillery, but a great convoy of Spanish refugees—his partisans from Madrid—and countless carriages and waggons laden with treasure, pictures, state archives, and valuable property of all sorts, the accumulated spoil of six years of conquest. The whole of this heterogeneous mass of vehicles was thrown upon the narrow Pampeluna road, and hopelessly jammed within a few miles of its starting-point. The defeated army abandoned everything, and fled over the hill-sides. In actual casualties it had not lost heavily—some 6000 killed and wounded, and 1000 prisoners; while the Allies had 5000 men hors de combat. But the French had saved nothing but their persons; the whole equipment of the army of Spain was captured by the victors, 143 guns, 500 caissons, nearly £1,000,000 sterling in the military chest, besides several thousand carriages laden with valuables. Seldom has an army shared such plunder as fell to the Allies that night.

The vanquished host reached Pampeluna in complete disorder; and Jourdan, after strengthening the garrison of that place, ordered the retreat to be continued beyond the Pyrenees. On June 26 the whole force re-entered France, and only halted at Bayonne, where desperate measures were taken to rally the regiments, and to refit the army with artillery drawn from the arsenal of that fortress and from the depots at Toulouse and Bordeaux. The pursuit had not been vigorous, for Wellington had turned aside the greater part of his army to hunt the columns of Foy and Clausel, which had not succeeded in joining Joseph in time for the battle. Both were hard pressed, but ultimately escaped to France by devious roads. When he found that they had eluded him, the British general told off his Spanish auxiliaries to invest Pampeluna, and two of his own divisions to besiege San Sebastian. With the rest of his army he advanced to the frontier, but refused to cross the Bidassoa till the two great fortresses had fallen. Their leaguers began simultaneously on July 1, 1813. Thus ended this brilliant and skilful campaign, which had lasted only forty days (May 22—July 1), and had cleared all northern Spain of the enemy. If the four French armies of Portugal, the centre, the south, and the north, could have been concentrated on a single position, they would have outnumbered the allied forces. But Wellington never allowed them to gather, hurried matters to a crisis with unswerving determination, and finally drove the enemy over the Pyrenees, at a cost to himself of not more than 6000 men in the whole series of operations.

The campaign of Vittoria is separated by a gap of some three weeks from the second campaign of 1813, that of the Pyrenees. During this space, Napoleon had time to send Soult from Dresden, to reorganise the army of Spain. Joseph and Jourdan were recalled to the interior of France in disgrace; and the Emperor expressed his opinion that, with a change in leadership, his hosts would be able to resume the offensive and deliver Pampeluna and San Sebastian. Though four divisions of cavalry left for Germany, the French still counted more than 100,000 men. Some 3000 were in Pampeluna, about the same number in San Sebastian, 1500 in Santona. After deducting a garrison for Bayonne, Soult had some 85,000 with which to take the field.

Before proceeding to relate the campaign of the Pyrenees, it is neeessary to east a glance at eastern Spain. So long as King Joseph held Madrid and Toledo, Suchet had been able to retain Valencia He even assumed the offensive, and on April 11 beat Elio’s Murcians at Yecla and Villena. Two days later he attacked the Anglo-Sicilians on the heights of Castalia, and was beaten off with loss. But Sir John Murray, the officer who commanded this force, made no attempt to profit by his victory, and remained passive throughout May. On the last day of that month, acting under orders from Wellington, Murray put his troops and a Spanish division on board ship at Alicante, and sailed for Catalonia. He was directed to join the Spanish army in that province and to lay siege to Tarragona. The purpose of this move was to give Suchet full occupation during the campaign in Old Castile. When the news of the landing arrived, the Marshal hurried north with part of his troops, and, joining Decaen, the officer left in command at Barcelona, marched against Murray. That general fled with unseemly haste on hearing of the approach of the French, abandoning his siege artillery while he hurriedly embarked his troops (June 12). He was superseded five days later by Lord William Bentinck, and afterwards tried for cowardice and disobedience to instructions. The court-martial ended in an acquittal, though he was censured for gross errors of judgment.

On July 5 Suchet received the news of Vittoria, which compelled him to evacuate Valencia, since the garrison of that province would have been in a perilous position when New Castile and Aragon had fallen into the hands of Wellington. He retired beyond the Ebro, and a little later abandoned Tarragona, after blowing up its fortifications (August 17). The Anglo-Sicilian army, with the Spaniards of the Murcian force, advanced along the coast and took up positions whence they could observe Barcelona from a distance. On September 12, Suchet, thinking that they were pressing him too close, advanced against them, and routed Bentinck’s van-guard at the combat of Ordal. But, as he did not use his advantage, the Allies continued to hold Tarragona, and to push the siege of the garrisons which Suchet had left behind him at Tortosa, Lerida, Monzon, and other places. The Marshal would have done far better to have evacuated them ; for he lost the services of 10,000 good troops, whom he was never in a position to succour. The Emperor began to withdraw troops from his army for use in Germany during the autumn; and, as Suchet’s main body grew feebler, it became increasingly clear that he would never be able to relieve his outlying garrisons. In the winter of 1813-4, the struggle in Catalonia dwindled down into a mere war of demonstrations and affairs of outposts.

Far otherwise had matters gone on the shores of the Bay of Biscay. On July 23, Soult, in accordance with his master’s orders, resumed the offensive. The allied army was now ranged on a long line upon the Franco-Spanish frontier, so as to cover the sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna. Soult’s opportunity lay in the fact that the hills impeded the lateral communications between the British divisions. He secretly moved 60,000 men far inland to his extreme left, and fell upon the troops under Picton and Hill who were guarding the passes of Roncesvalles and Mava. He hoped to overwhelm them, by a twofold superiority of numbers, before Wellington could bring to their aid the corps cantoned nearer to the sea. He would then push on, relieve Pampeluna, and force the allied army to quit the frontier by a general attack on their flank and rear. This ingenious plan miscarried, partly owing to fog and rain, which delayed the French advance, but more because of the long and vigorous resistance of the British outlying brigades. Maya and Roncesvalles were both forced in the end (July 25-26); but their defence gave Wellington time to concentrate in front of Pampeluna a force which, though much smaller than that of Soult, was yet strong enough to hold him at bay. At the battle of Sauroren (July 27-28) the Marshal strove in vain to storm the heights held by the allied troops. Reinforcements were hurrying up from the west to join Wellington; and the Marshal had no alternative save to fall back on France. This series of fights, generally called the battles of the Pyrenees, had cost him 10,000 men.

Wellington now pressed the sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, hoping to secure both places in time to allow him to advance into France before the winter came. But his efforts were not at first successful. British siege-craft was seldom efficient in these years; and San Sebastian beat off two assaults. The town was finally stormed on August 31, and the castle surrendered nine days later: but the success cost 2500 men. Soult, on the very day of the storm, made a last attempt to raise the siege, but was heavily repulsed at the combat of San Marcial by the covering force, consisting mainly of Freyre’s and Longa’s Spaniards. Pampeluna fell on October 31, by starvation, not by assault. Thus Wellington’s entry into France was delayed for four months.

But, on October 7, the British general had already begun his preparations for advance by forcing the lines of the Bidassoa, which Soult had strengthened by a long chain of redoubts. Fording the broad river at low tide, the British divisions swept all before them and captured all the enemy’s works. The French then fell back on a second and stronger line behind the river Nivelle. This series of positions was carried on November 10, after a series of desperate assaults on almost inaccessible peaks and defiles, where the storming columns had to crawl and climb up the cliffs of the Rhune and other lofty mountains. A third line of positions now faced the British, formed by the river Nive and the fortress of Bayonne behind it. A month of heavy rain and cold delayed the attack on this new line of defence; but, with the return of fine weather, Wellington forced the passage of the Nive (December 9) and advanced close to the outworks of Bayonne. His army was now divided into two halves by the Nive, a fact of which the indomitable Soult tried to take advantage. He first massed his whole field-force against Wellington s left, and strove to crush it before it could be succoured by his right, which had to cross the river by a single distant bridge. Alter severe fighting, this attack failed (December 10); whereupon the Marshal shifted his main army to the east bank of the Nive, and repeated his experiment against the British right. At the battle of Saint-Pierre (December 13), the entire French army was repelled by one British and one Portuguese division under Sir Rowland Hill; and Soult was already foiled, when the appearance of the reserves from beyond the river forced him to beat a precipitate retreat. The battles of the Nive had cost the Marshal some 6000 or 7000 men, and would have sufficed by themselves to discourage him from making any further attempts to assume the offensive. But his position was rendered utterly hopeless when, shortly after, he received orders from the Emperor directing him to send two divisions (10,000 men) to aid in the defence of the eastern frontier. His army was now reduced to less than 50,000 men, little more than half the strength which Wellington could put into the field. If he lingered much longer at Bayonne, he ran a chance of being shut up.

When, therefore, Wellington manifested an intention of surrounding Bayonne, by casting a great bridge of boats across the Adour below the city, and transporting several divisions to its northern bank, Soult was driven to retire into the interior and to leave the stronghold to its fate (Feb. 26, 1814). He retreated, not directly northward along the road to Bordeaux, as might perhaps have been expected, but eastward in the direction of Toulouse, so as to place himself upon the flank of the allied army. This move made matters more difficult for Wellington, who could not push forward and leave Soult in his rear, but was constrained to turn aside and pursue him along the roots of the Pyrenees, moving every day further from the sea, from which alone he could receive supplies and reinforcements. He was forced also to leave 30,000 men to besiege Bayonne.

The first stage of Soult’s retreat was marked by the battle of Orthez: (February 27). Knowing that the British army had been enfeebled by the large force left before Bayonne, the Marshal offered a defensive battle on the heights above the town, but was driven out of his position after a hard day’s fighting, and forced to resume his retrograde movement to the east. After the battle, Wellington detached two divisions under Beresford to march on Bordeaux, where the partisans of the Bourbons had promised to hoist the white flag as soon as British aid came in sight. Beresford’s detachment reached Bordeaux on March 12 ; and the royalists were as good as their word, opening the gates to him and proclaiming the Due d’Angoulême, who had come out in the wake of the British army, as Prince Regent. This movement was not without its inconveniences, for, if the allied sovereigns had made peace at Chatillon, as was quite possible, the Bordelais would have been left exposed to terrible punish­ment at the hands of the Emperor. Wellington had given them fair warning of this, but they nevertheless carried out their agreement. All the neighbouring departments were practically on the same side; and the invading army was readily supplied with information and provisions by the peasantry. Soult’s attempts to raise a partisan warfare in the rear of the Allies met with no success. Still less fruitful was Napoleon’s last desperate device. On March 13 he released Ferdinand VII from Valençay, having made him sign a treaty of peace, which the Spanish Cortes very properly ignored.

Soult’s retreat did not end till he had fallen back under the walls of Toulouse (March 24), where he once more stood at bay in lines which he had caused to be thrown up outside the city. He had some 39,000 men left. Wellington, owing to the detachments at Bayonne and Bordeaux, was not greatly superior in force, having only six Anglo-Portuguese divisions and a Spanish corps, less than 50,000 sabres and bayonets. In spite of the strength of Soult’s entrenchments, he resolved to attack (April 10). The business turned out more formidable than had been expected. The assault of Freyre’s Spaniards upon the French centre failed; and it was only after desperate efforts that the 4th and 6tli divisions succeeded in storming the lines upon Soult’s left, and driving the enemy back into the town, which was commanded by the captured heights. The victors lost 4600 men, far more than the vanquished, who, protected by their entrenchments, suffered only 3200 casualties. But the result of the battle was sufficiently clear, when Soult on April 12 evacuated the town, and retired still further east, to join Suchet, who was coming up to his aid with the small remnant of the army of Catalonia. Toulouse, if the combatants had but known it, was an unnecessary battle; for Paris had capitulated to the Allies on March 30, and Napoleon had abdicated on April 6. Unnecessary also was the bloodshed before Bayonne on April 14, when the French garrison made a sortie, which cost each side 800 casualties.

So ended the great struggle which sapped Napoleon’s strength, though it was not the direct cause of his fall. He called it himself “the running sore”; and such indeed it was, considered from his point of view. For it was the constant drain of men and money to the Peninsula which rendered him too weak to fight the Powers of central Europe. What might not have happened in Saxony in 1813, if the Emperor had been able to dispose of the 200,000 veterans locked up behind the Pyrenees? If, with the raw army that he actually commanded, he almost achieved success, the experienced troops of Soult and Suchet must certainly have turned the balance in his favour, and have enabled him to impose on the Allies a peace that would have left his Empire intact, even if his prestige had lost some of its ancient splendour. He paid in 1813 the price for his iniquitous doings at Bayonne in 1808. The never-failing, if often ill-directed, patriotism of the Spaniards, and the skill and firmness of the much-enduring Wellington, had detained for six years in the Peninsula the army with which he might have dictated peace to Europe.