ficult for any energetic man to assemble and keep together large masses of the credulous peasantry. No story could be too gross for their belief, if it agreed with their wishes. "Es verdad, los dicen”— "It is true, they say it"-is the invariable answer of a Spaniard if a doubt be expressed of the truth of an absurd report. Temperate, possessing little furniture, and generally hoarding all the gold he can get, he is less concerned for the loss of his house than the inhabitant of another country would be, and the effort that he makes in relinquishing his abode must not be measured by the scale of an Englishman's exertion in a like case; once engaged in an adventure, the lightness of his spirits and the brilliancy of his sky make it a matter of indifference to the angry peasant whither he wanders.

The evils which had afflicted the country previous to the period of the French interference also tended to prepare the Spaniards for violence, and aided in turning that violence against the intruders. Famine, oppression, poverty, and disease, the loss of commerce, and unequal taxation, had pressed sorely upon them. For such a system the people could not be enthusiastic; but they were taught to believe that Godoy was the sole author of the misery they suffered, that Ferdinand would redress their grievances--and as the French were the protectors of the former and the oppressors of the latter, it was easy to add this bitterness to their natural hatred of the domination of a stranger, and it was so done.*

Such were the principal causes which combined to produce this surprising revolution, from which so many great events flowed, without one man of eminent talent being cast up to control or direct the spirit thus accidentally excited. Nothing more directly shows the heterogeneous nature of the feelings and interests which were brought together than this last fact, which cannot be attributed to a deficiency of natural talent, for the genius of the Spanish people is notoriously ardent, subtle, and vigorous; but there was no common bond of feeling save that of individual hatred to the French, which a great man could lay hold of to influence large masses. Persons of sagacity perceived very early that the Spanish revolution, like a leafy shrub in a violent gale of wind, greatly agitated, but disclosing only slight unconnected stems, afforded no sure hold for the ambition of a master-spirit, if such there were. It was clear that the cause would fail unless supported by England; and then England would direct all, and not suffer her resources to be wielded for the glory of an individual whose views and policy might afterwards thwart her own; nor was it difficult to perceive that the downfall

* Historia de la Guerra contra Napoleon.

of Napoleon, not the regeneration of Spain, was the object of her cabinet.

The explosion of public feeling was fierce in its expression, because political passions will always be vehement at the first moment of their appearance among a people new to civil commotion, and unused to permit their heat to evaporate in public discussions. The result was certainly a wonderful change in the affairs of Europe-it seems yet undecided whether that change has been for the better or for the worse; and in the progress of their struggle the Spaniards certainly developed more cruelty than courage, more violence than intrepidity, more personal hatred of the French than enthusiasm for their own cause. They opened, indeed, a wide field for the exertions of others, they presented a fulcrum upon which a lever was rested that moved the civilized world, but assuredly the presiding genius, the impelling power, came from another quarter; useful accessories they were, but as principals they displayed neither wisdom, spirit, nor skill sufficient to resist the prodigious force by which they were assailed. If they appeared at first heedless of danger, it was not because they were prepared to perish rather than submit, but that they were reckless of provoking a power whose terrors they could not estimate, and in their ignorance despised.

It is, however, not surprising that great expectations were at first formed of the heroism of the Spaniards, and those expectations were greatly augmented by their agreeable qualities. There is not upon the face of the earth a people so attractive in the friendly intercourse of society. Their majestic language, fine persons, and becoming dress, their lively imaginations, the inexpressible beauty of their women, and the air of romance which they throw over every action, and infuse into every feeling, all combine to delude the senses and to impose upon the judgment. As companions, they are incomparably the most agreeable of mankind, but danger and disappointment attend the man who, confiding in their promises and energy, ventures upon a difficult enterprise. "Never do to-day what you can put off until to-morrow," is the favorite proverb in Spain, and rigidly followed.

CHAPTER IV.

New French corps formed in Navarre-Duhesme fixes himself at Barcelona-Importance of that city-Napoleon's military plan and arrangements.

THE Commotion of Aranjuez undeceived the French Emperor; he perceived that he was engaged in a delicate enterprise, and that the people he had to deal with were anything but tame and quies-cent under insult. Determined, however, to persevere, he pursued his political intrigues, and without relinquishing the hope of a successful termination to the affair by such means, he arranged a profound plan of military operations, and so distributed his forces, that at the moment when Spain was pouring forth her swarthy bands, the masses of the French army were concentrated upon the most important points, and combined in such a manner, that, from their central position, they had the power of overwhelming each separate province, no three of which could act in concert without first beating a French corps. And if any of the Spanish armies succeeded in routing a French force, the remaining corps could unite without difficulty, and retreat without danger. It was the skill of this disposition which enabled seventy thousand men, covering a great extent of country, to brave the simultaneous fury of a whole nation; an army less ably distributed would have been trampled under foot, and lost amidst the tumultuous uproar of eleven millions of people.

In a political point of view the inconvenience which would have arisen from suffering a regular army to take the field, was evident. To have been able to characterize the opposition of the Spanish people as a partial insurrection of peasants, instigated by some evildisposed persons to act against the wishes of the respectable part of the nation, would have given some color to the absorbing darkness of the invasion. And to have permitted that which was at first an insurrection of peasants, to take the form and consistence of regular armies and methodical warfare, would have been a military error, dangerous in the extreme. Napoleon, who well knew that scientific war is only a wise application of force, laughed at the delusion of those who regarded the want of a regular army as a favorable circumstance, and who hailed the undisciplined peasant as the more certain defender of the country. He knew that a general insurrection can never last long, that it is a military anarchy, and incapable of real strength; he knew that it was the disciplined battalions of Valley Forge, not the volunteers of Lexington, that established American independence; that it was the veterans of Arcole and

Marengo, not the republicans of Valmy, that fixed the fate of the French Revolution. Hence his efforts were directed to hinder the Spaniards from drawing together any great body of regular soldiers, an event that might easily happen, for the gross amount of the organized Spanish force was, in the month of May, about one hundred and twenty-seven thousand men of all arms. Fifteen thousand of these were in Holstein, under the Marquis of Romana, but twenty thousand were already partially concentrated in Portugal, and the remainder, in which were comprised eleven thousand Swiss and thirty thousand militia, were dispersed in various parts of the kingdom, principally in Andalusia. Besides this force, there was a sort of local reserve called the urban militia, much neglected indeed, and more a name than a reality, yet the advantage of such an institution was considerable; men were to be had in abundance, and as the greatest difficulty in a sudden crisis is to prepare the framework of order, it was no small resource to find a plan of service ready, the principle of which was understood by the people.*

The French army in the Peninsula about the same period, although amounting to eighty thousand men, exclusive of those under Junot in Portugal, had not more than seventy thousand capable of active operations; the remainder were sick or in dépôts. The possession of the fortresses, the central position, and the combination of this comparatively small army, gave it great strength, but it had also many points of weakness; it was made up of the conscripts of different nations, French, Swiss, Italians, Poles, and even Portuguese whom Junot had expatriated; and it is a curious fact, that some of the latter remained in Spain until the end of the war. A few of the imperial guards were also employed, and here and there, an old regiment of the line was mixed with the young troops to give them consistence; yet with these exceptions the French army must be considered as a raw levy, fresh from the plough and unacquainted with discipline;† so late even as the month of August, many of the battalions had not completed the first elements of their drill, and if they had not been formed upon good skeletons, the difference between them and the insurgent peasantry would have been very trifling. This fact explains, in some measure, the otherwise incomprehensible checks and defeats which the French sustained at the commencement of the contest, and it likewise proves how little of vigor there was in Spanish resistance at the moment of the greatest enthusiasm.

In the distribution of these troops Napoleon attended principally to the security of Madrid. As the capital, and the centre of all interests, its importance was manifest, and the great line of communication between it and Bayonne was early and constantly covered with troops. But the imprudence with which the Grand Duke of Berg brought up the corps of Moncey and Dupont to the capital, together with his own haughty, impolitic demeanor, drew on the crisis of affairs before the time was ripe, obliged the French monarch to hasten the advance of other troops, and to make a greater display of his force than was consistent with his policy. For Murat's movement, while it threatened the Spaniards and provoked their hostility, isolated the French army, by stripping the line of communication, and the arrival of fresh battalions to remedy this error generated additional anger and suspicion at a very critical period.

It was, however, absolutely necessary to fill the void left by Moncey's advance, and a fresh corps sent into Navarre, being by successive reinforcements increased to twenty-three thousand men, received in June the name of the "army of the Western Pyrenees." Marshal Bessieres assumed the command, and, on the first appearance of commotion, fixed his headquarters at Burgos, occupied Vittoria, Miranda de Ebro, and other towns, and pushed advanced posts into Leon. This position, while it protected the line from Bayonne to the capital, enabled him to awe the Asturias and Biscay, and also by giving him the command of the valley of the Duero to keep the kingdom of Leon and the province of Segovia in check. The town and castle of Burgos, put into a state of defence, contained his dépôts and became the centre and pivot of his operations, while intermediate posts, and the fortresses, connected him with Bayonne, where a reserve of twenty thousand men was formed under General Drouet, then commanding the eleventh military division of France.

By the convention of Fontainebleau, the Emperor was entitled to send forty thousand men into the northern parts of Spain, and though the right thus acquired was grossly abused, the exercise of it, being expected, created at first but little alarm; it was however different on the eastern frontier. Napoleon had never intimated a wish to pass forces by Catalonia, neither the treaty nor the convention authorized such a measure, nor could the pretence of supporting Junot in Portugal be advanced as a mask;† nevertheless, so early as the 9th of February eleven thousand infantry, sixteen hundred cavalry, and eighteen pieces of artillery, under the command of