LIV. 90. Extraordi the embarka tion of the troops. Aug. 13. CHAP. fifty miles in twenty-one hours. Nine thousand five hundred were brought away, and after touching at Got1808. tenberg were forwarded in transports by the English government to the coasts of Galicia, where they were disnary scene at embarked amidst shouts of joy before the middle of September, in time to share in the dangers which the efforts of Napoleon were preparing for their country. The remainder, being stationed in the middle of Jutland, could not be rescued, and were made prisoners by the French troops; and as the horses of two of the regiments of cavalry which embarked could not be provided for in the English ships, they were abandoned on the beach by the horsemen whom they had transported so far from their native plains. These noble animals, eleven hundred in number, of the true Andalusian breed, all of which were unmutilated, seemed to share in the passions which agitated their masters. No sooner were they liberated on the sands from control, than, forming into squadrons, they charged violently with loud cries against each other; and 70. South. ii. when the British fleet hove out of sight, they could still be discerned by telescopes, fighting with each other on the beach, surrounded by the dead and the dying, with all the fury of human passions.1* 1 Tor. ii. 68, 336, 351. Nap. i. 337, 338. *This singular anecdote as to the horses, which were all of the highest breed, and in the finest condition, is related by Southey on the authority of Sir Richard Keats himself, as well as in a contemporary journal, Plain Englishman, i. 294, on the same high testimony.-SOUTHEY, ii. 346. CHAPTER LV. IRRUPTION OF NAPOLEON INTO SPAIN. CHAP. LV. 1808. 1. sion which made on the mind of Na THIS long and unprecedented train of disasters made the deepest impression on the far-seeing and prophetic mind of Napoleon. It was not the mere loss of soldiers, fortresses, or territory which affected him; these, to a sovereign possessed of such almost boundless resources, Deep impreswere of little importance, and could easily be supplied. these events It was their moral influence which he dreaded: it was the shake given to the opinions of men which devoured poleon. him with anxiety. No one knew better, or has expressed more clearly and emphatically, that his empire was founded entirely on opinion; that it was the minds of men whom his own victories and those of the Revolution had really subdued; and that, great as their triumphs had really been, it was the imaginative idea of their invincibility which constituted the secret charm that had fascinated and subdued the world. Now, however, the spell appeared to be broken; the veil was drawn aside, the charm dissolved. This had been done, too, by hands whose weakness and inexperience augmented the severity of the blow. Armies had surrendered, kingdoms been evacuated, capitals abandoned; in Andalusia the French legions had undergone a disgraceful capitulation; in Portugal experienced the fate of Closter-seven. These disasters had been inflicted, not by the stern courage of Russia or the discipline of Austria; not by the skill of civilisation or the perfection of art, but by the simple enthusiasm of an insurgent people; by bands at which the French legions had with reason scoffed; by those CHAP. 1808. 1 Thib. vii. 1, * island warriors whose descent on the Continent his tutored journals had hailed as the dawn of yet brighter glories to the French arms. Such misfortunes, coming from such quarters, appeared with reason to be doubly 14. Month. calamitous. His proclamations, instead of the heralds of victory, had become the precursors of defeat; and he anticipated in their ultimate effect, not merely the possible expulsion of his arms from the Peninsula, but the general insurrection of Europe against his authority.1 vi. 350. South. ii. 359, 360. Jom. ii. 79, 81. 2. Already this effect had in some degree appeared.— Austria, by a decree of 9th June, had directed the formaArmaments tion of a landwehr, or local militia, in all the provinces of of Austria, her still vast dominions. The Archduke Charles, at the and negotiations with head of the war department, had infused an unheard-of that power and the activity into all branches of the army; and three hundred Princes of thousand provincial troops, already in the course of forthe Rhenish Confederacy. mation, promised to add an invaluable reserve to the regular forces. Pressed by Napoleon to give some account of such formidable preparations, Count Metternich, the imperial ambassador at Paris, alleged the specious excuse that the cabinet of Vienna was only imitating the conduct of its powerful neighbours; and that, when Bavaria had not merely adopted the system of the French conscription, but organised national guards, which raised its disposable force to a hundred thousand men, it became indispensable to take corresponding measures of security in the Hereditary States. The reason assigned was plausible; but it failed to impose upon the French Emperor, who forthwith directed the princes of the Rhenish confederacy to call out and encamp their respective con2 Jom. ii. 80. tingents, and shortly after adopted the most energetic measures for the augmentation of the military strength of the empire.2 Aug. 14. Pelet, i. 64, 72. By a senatus-consultum of the 10th September, the Senate of France placed at the disposal of the French Emperor eighty thousand conscripts, taken from those coming to the legal age (eighteen to nineteen) in the years *"Nothing," said the President of the Senate, in his public speech," can be more agreeable to the French and to the Continent, than to see the English at length throw off the mask, and descend into the lists to meet our warriors. Would to God that eighty or a hundred thousand English would present themselves before us in an open field! The Continent has in every age been their tomb." Fifteen days afterwards the Convention of Cintra was published!-See Moniteur, 22d Sept. 1808. CHAP. LV. 1808. 3. to meet the men by the 1806-7-8 and 9, and eighty thousand additional from those of 1810, which last were, in an especial manner, destined to the defence of the coasts and frontiers of the empire. So far had the demands of the French Emperor already Napoleon's exceeded the increase of the human race, and the bound- preparations less consumption of mankind in the Revolutionary wars danger and outstripped even the prolific powers of nature! The great levy of adulatory expressions with which this frightful demand French govwas acquiesced in by the Senate, were not less charac- ernment. Sept. 10. teristic of the fawning servility, than its anticipating the resources of future years, of the iron tyranny, which distinguished the government of the Empire. "How," said Lacépède, their president, "would the shades of Louis XIV., of Francis I., of the great Henry, be consoled by the generous resolutions taken by Napoleon! The French hasten to respond to his sacred voice! He requires a new proof of their affection; they hasten with generous ardour to furnish it to him. The wish of the French people, sire! is the same as that of your Majesty : the war of Spain is politic, it is just, it is necessary; it will be victorious. May the English send their whole armies to combat in the Peninsula: they will furnish only feeble glories to our arms, and fresh disgrace to themselves." Such was the roseate hue 'under which the titled and richly endowed senators of France represented the hideous spectacle of a hundred and fifty thousand men being torn from their homes to meet certain destruction, in the prosecution of the most perfidious and unjust Sept. 10. aggression recorded in history; and such the triumphs Montg. vi. which they anticipated for their arms, when Providence 82, 83. was preparing for them, as its deserved punishment, the catastrophes of Salamanca and Vittoria.1 1 Moniteur, 350. Jom. ii. 4. Prussia. At the same time, a subsidiary treaty was concluded with Prussia, calculated to relieve, in some degree, that unhappy power from the chains which had fettered it Subsidiary since the battle of Jena. Napoleon, vanquished by neces- treaty with sity, and standing in need of a hundred thousand soldiers Sept. 8. of the Grand Army for the Peninsular war, was driven to more moderate sentiments. It was stipulated that, for the space of ten years, the Prussian army should not exceed forty thousand men; that Glogau, Stettin, and Custrin should be garrisoned by French troops till the entire pay СНАР. 1808. ment of arrears of contributions of every description; that their garrisons, each four thousand strong, should be maintained and paid solely at the expense of Prussia; that seven military roads, for the use of France and her allies, should traverse the Prussian dominions; and that the arrears of the war contributions should be reduced to one hundred and forty million francs, or £5,600,000 sterling: but that, at the expiration of forty days after these sums were provided for, the French troops should, with the exception of these fortresses, evacuate the Prussian dominions. To Prussia this evacuation was a source of unspeakable relief, and notwithstanding that the restriction on the army was both humiliating and hurtful, yet the cabinet of Frederick William had no alternative but 1 Montg. vi. submission. They contrived, however, by the skilful 350. Martens, change of the soldiers called out into actual service, to elude the most galling part of the obligation, and prepared the means of political resurrection in future times.1 N. R. i. 106, 127. 5. Erfurth with Napoleon, however, was well aware that, even after these treaties and precautions, he was still exposed to Interview at great danger from the renewed hostility of the German states in his rear, while engaged with the armies of England and Spain in front in the Peninsula, if he was not well established in the alliance with Russia. It was in the breast of Alexander that the true security for the peace of the Continent beyond the Rhine was to be found. This was more especially the case, as the losses and serious aspect of the Spanish war had already rendered it necessary to withdraw a large part of the Grand Army from the north of Germany; and before winter, not more than a hundred thousand French soldiers would remain to assert the French supremacy in the centre of Europe. Impressed with these ideas, the French Emperor used his utmost efforts to prevail on the Czar to meet him at a town in the north of Germany, where the destinies of the world might be arranged. Such was the ascendant which he had gained over his mind during the negotiations at Tilsit, and such the attractions of the new objects of ambition in Finland and on the Danube, which he had had the address to present to his ambition, that Alexander completely fell into his views. Erfurth was the town selected for this purpose, and there a conference was held |