LIII. 1808. were already partially concentrated in the Alentejo and CHAP. Oporto, and the only considerable body of the remainder, about ten thousand strong, was in the lines of St Roque, at Gibraltar. The composition of this force was still less formidable than its numerical amount. Enervated by a long continental peace, the soldiers had lost much of the spirit and discipline of war; the men, enrolled for the most part by voluntary enlistment, and only in case of 1 Foy, il necessity, and in some of the provinces by conscription, 216, 219. Nap. i. 46. were sober, active, and brave. But the officers were, in Jom. ii. 51. most instances, extremely deficient, both in the knowledge and proper feelings of their profession.1 33. the officers. They were, indeed, for the most part, men of family-a certain proof of descent being necessary to obtaining commissions in two-thirds of the military Character offices at the disposal of government. But the restriction and habits of afforded no security either for extended information or generous sentiments in a country where four hundred thousand hidalgos, too proud to work, too indolent to learn, loitered away an inglorious life, basking in the sun, or lounging in the billiard-rooms or coffee-houses of the great towns. From this ignorant and conceited class the great bulk of the officers of all ranks were taken; not more than three or four of the high nobility held situa tions in the army when the war broke out. Leading an indolent life in towns, sleeping half the day in uncomfortable barracks, associating indiscriminately with the common soldiers, many of whom were superior in birth and intelligence to themselves, and knowing no enjoyments but idleness, gallantry, and billiards, they were as deficient in the energy and vigour which the Revolution had developed in the French, as in the sentiments of honour and integrity which the habits of a monarchy tempered by freedom had nursed in the English army. It was easy to foresee that no reliance could be placed, in a protracted struggle, on this debilitated force. Yet such is the importance of discipline and military organisation, 2 Foy, ii. even in their most defective form, in warlike operations, 216, 221. Nap. i. 46. that the only great success achieved in the field by the Jom. ii. 52. Spaniards during the whole war was owing to its exertions.2 Though Portugal had a surface of only 5035 square 1808. 34. Military force and physical character of Portugal. CHAP. geographical leagues, or 40,000 square geographical miles, LIII. being not quite half of the British islands, and a population of somewhat above three millions, instead of the twelve millions which were contained in Spain, yet it possessed in itself the elements of a more efficient military force than its powerful neighbour. The invaluable institution of ordenanzas, or local militia, had survived the usurpation of Spain; and during twenty-seven campaigns which followed the restoration of the independence of the country in 1640, it had rendered more important services to the state than the regular army. By the Portuguese law every person is legally obliged to join the battalions arrayed in defence of the country, from the age of eighteen to that of sixty years; these battalions consist of 250 men each, under the command of the chief landed proprietors of the district; and such is the native strength of a country so defended, that, with a very little aid from England, it had enabled the Portuguese for two centuries to maintain their independence. The physical peculiarities of the country rendered it singularly well adapted for the active operations of an irregular force of this description. Intersected in many directions, but especially to the north of the Tagus, by lofty sierras, terminating in sharp inaccessible cliffs, which rise, even in that favoured latitude, almost into the region of eternal snow ; destitute for the most part of roads, and such as do exist perpetually crossing rivers without bridges, or ravines affording the most favourable positions for a defensive army; covered with Moorish towers or castles perched on the summits of rocks, or villages in general surrounded with defensible walls; inhabited by a bold, active, and independent peasantry, long habituated to the use of arms, and backed by impregnable mountain ridges 487.Nap. i washed by the sea, Portugal presented the most advan26, 27. Foy, ii. 1-80. tageous fulcrum which Europe could afford whereon to rest the military efforts of England.1 1 Malte Brun, vii. 35. ruption and But these advantages were all dependent on the physical situation and natural character of the inhabitants, or General cor- the consequences of the former and more glorious epochs abuses in the of their history. At the period when the Peninsular war broke out, no country could be in a more debilitated state, as far as either political vigour or military effi military establish ment. LIII. 1808. ciency is concerned. Corruption pervaded every department CHAP. of the public service, and to such an extent as to be apparently irremediable. The army, ill-fed, worse paid, and overrun by a swarm of titled locusts who devoured the pay of the soldier and did nothing, was both an unpopular and inefficient service. Forty thousand men, including eight thousand cavalry, of whom the troops of the line nominally consisted, might have furnished an excellent base whereon, with the addition of the militia and ordenanzas, to construct a powerful military establishment. But such were the abuses with which the service was infested, and the ignorance of the officers in command, that hardly any reliance could be placed on its operations; and it was not till they were recast in the mould of British integrity, and 1 Foy, ii. 1, 88. Napier, led by the intrepidity of British officers, that the Portu- i. 27. guese arms reappeared with their ancient lustre on the theatre of Europe.1 army at this In the disposition of his forces when the contest commenced, Napoleon had principally in view to overawe 36. and secure the metropolis, conceiving that Madrid was Amount, like Paris or Vienna, and that there was little chance of quality, and disposition of the country holding out for any length of time against the French the power in command of the capital. The Imperial period in Guards, with the corps of Moncey and Dupont, were Spain. assembled in that city or its immediate neighbourhood; and as this concentration of above fifty thousand men in the heart of the kingdom exposed the communication with the Pyrenees to danger, the Emperor was indefatigable in his endeavours to form a powerful corps of reserve at Burgos and Vittoria, under Marshal Bessières. With such success were his efforts attended, that by the beginning of June this able officer had twenty-three thousand men under his standards. At the same period the troops under Duhesme, in the fortresses of Barcelona and Figueras in Catalonia, numbered above fifteen thousand men, sufficient, it was hoped, to overawe the discontented in that province. Thus, after making every allowance for the detachments necessary to maintain the capital and frontier fortresses, and keep up the communications, fifty thousand men, including eighty guns, were ready in the north and centre of Spain to commence offensive operations-a force amply sufficient, if concentrated, to crush wwww CHAP. 1808. any attempt at resistance which could have been made in the Peninsula. But the composition of these troops was very unequal; and though the Imperial Guard and some of the veteran divisions in the capital were in the finest state of discipline and efficiency, yet this was by no means the case with the whole army. All, indeed, partook of the admirable organisation of the French service, yet the ranks were for the most part filled up with raw conscripts, hardly yet instructed in the rudiments of the military art. Had it not been for the excellence of the skeletons on which they were formed, and the officers by 1 Napoleon's whom they were directed, the difference between them and the insurgent peasantry would not have been very i. Thiebault, considerable. They were very different from the soldiers of Austerlitz, Jena, or Friedland: the enormous conDuhesme's sumption of life in those bloody campaigns had almost Catalogne, destroyed the incomparable army which, disciplined on the heights of Boulogne, had so long chained victory to the imperial eagles.1 Notes, Ap. Napier, vol. 64, 72. Napier, i. 47. Guerre en 17, 21. 37. rection. Such was the situation of the French army when the insurrection at once broke out in every part of the PenProgress and insula. It burst forth with such force and unanimity in early forces of the insur- all the provinces, that it could not have been more simultaneous if an electric shock had at once struck the whole population. With the intelligence of the commotion and massacre at Madrid, a convulsive thrill ran through every fibre of Spain. The sense of their wrongs, the humiliation of their situation, the thirst for vengeance, broke at once upon the people, and one universal cry to arms was heard from one end of the kingdom to the other. Every where the peasantry met together in tumultuous crowds. From town to town, from village to village, from hamlet to hamlet, the news flew with incredible rapidity; and as the French troops, though in possession of the capital and frontier fortresses, were by no means scattered over the country, the proceedings of the insurgents hardly any where met with molestation. The fever was universal: the young and the old, the feeble and the strong, the shepherds of the mountains and the cultivators of the plains, the citizens of the towns and the peasantry of the country, all shared in the general transport. Arms were quickly sent for and obtained from the nearest depots in CHAP. 1808. the district; officers and colonels of battalions elected; provisional juntas of government formed in the chief towns to direct the affairs of the provinces; and, in the absence of all central authority, local governments soon sprang up in every part of the kingdom. Spain awoke from the slumber of centuries, and started at once to her feet with the vigour and resolution of an armed man. 1 Tor. i. 173, Passing over in disdain the degradation or insignificance Duhesme, of the Bourbon dynasty, the people came forth fresh for 10-12. Foy, the combat, glowing with the recollections of the Cid and i. 80. Pelajo, and the long struggle with the Moors, and the heroic days of the monarchy.1 178. iv. 52. Lond. 38. efforts at first the contest. Nor was this extraordinary and unanimous burst of feeling lost in mere empty ebullition. Resolving, with a facility peculiar to themselves, into the pristine clements Vigorous of the monarchy, the different provinces, with unparal- made for leled rapidity, formed separate and independent juntas carrying on of government, which early gave a systematic direction to their efforts, and effected the formation of numerous and enthusiastic legions for their defence. It was easy to foresee how prejudicial to any combined or efficient general operations this unavoidable partition of the directing power into so many separate and independent assemblies must in the end necessarily prove. But, in the first instance, it tended strongly to promote the progress of the insurrection, by establishing in every province a centre of insulated, detached, and often ill-advised, but still vigorous operations. Before the middle of June, numerous bodies were raised, armed, and to a certain degree disciplined in all the provinces; and a hundred and fifty thousand men were ready to support the regular army. Even the presence of the French garrisons in the capital and the frontier fortresses, could not repress the general effervescence. Almost all the regular soldiers in Madrid escaped, and joined the insurgent bands of New 2 Tor. i. Castile; under the very guns of their strong castles of South. i. Montjuic and St Juan de Fernando, alarming symptoms Duhesme, of disaffection appeared in Barcelona and Figueras, and 11, 12. Foy, iv. their Spanish garrisons almost all made their escape to 32, 33. the enemy. Spain proved true to her old character; Lond the lapse of eighteen hundred years had made no alter- Napier, i. 52. ation on the disposition of her inhabitants.1 "Hispania 173, 175. 335, 337. i. |