OPENING OF HOSTILITIES: THE FRENCH INVASIONS OF ANDALUSIA AND VALENCIA
While the provinces of Spain were bursting out, one after another, into open insurrection, Murat at Madrid and Bonaparte at Bayonne were still enjoying the fools’ paradise in which they had dwelt since the formal abdication of Ferdinand VII. The former was busy in forcing the Junta of Regency to perform the action which he elegantly styled ‘swallowing the pill,’ i.e. in compelling it to do homage to Napoleon and humbly crave for the appointment of Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain. He imagined that his only serious trouble lay in the lamentable emptiness of the treasury at Madrid, and kept announcing smooth things to his master—‘The country was tranquil, the state of public opinion in the capital was far happier than could have been hoped: the native soldiery were showing an excellent disposition, the captains-general kept sending in good reports: the new dynasty was likely to be popular, and the only desire expressed by the people was to see their newly designated king arrive promptly in their midst[99].’ Letters of this kind continued to flow from the pen of the Duke of Berg till almost the end of the month. Even after details of the insurrection of Aragon and the Asturias began to reach him, he could write on May 31 that a strong flying column would suffice to put everything right. About this time he was seized by a violent fever and took to his bed, just as things were commencing to grow serious. On his convalescence he left for France, after putting everything in charge of Savary, the man who of all Frenchmen most deserved the hatred of Spain. About the middle of June he recrossed the French frontier, and after a few weeks went off to[p. 124] Naples to take up his new kingship there. Spain was never to see him again: the catastrophe which he had, by his master’s orders, brought about, was to be conducted to its end by other hands.
While Murat lay sick at the suburban palace of Chamartin, and while Napoleon was drafting acts and constitutions which the assembly of notables at Bayonne were to accept and publish, the first acts of war between the insurgents and the French army of occupation took place.
We have already had occasion to point out that the main military strength of the insurrection lay in Galicia and Andalusia, the two districts in which large bodies of regular troops had placed themselves at the disposition of the newly organized juntas. In Valencia, Catalonia, and Murcia the movement was much weaker: in Old Castile, Aragon, and the Asturias it had hardly any other forces at its disposal than hordes of half-armed peasants. Clearly then Galicia and Andalusia were the dangerous points for the French, and the former more than the latter, since an army descending from its hills, and falling on the long line of communications between France and Madrid, might cause the gravest inconvenience. If there had been any organized Spanish forces in Aragon, there would have been an equal danger of an attack directed from Saragossa against the eastern flank of the French communications. But while Galicia was possessed of a numerous army of regular troops, Aragon had nothing to show but a mass of hastily assembled peasants, who were not yet fully provided with arms and were only just beginning to be told off into battalions.
Napoleon, at the moment when he began to order his troops to move, was under the impression that he had to deal with a number of isolated riots rather than with a general insurrection of the Spanish nation. His first orders show that he imagined that a few flying columns would be able to scour the disaffected districts and scatter the bands of insurgents without much trouble. Instead of a strategical plan for the conquest of Spain, we find in his directions nothing more than provisions for the launching of a small column against each point where he had been informed that a rising had broken out. He presupposes that the kingdom as a whole is quiet, and that bodies of 3,000 or 4,000 men may march anywhere, without having to provide for the maintenance of their communications with Madrid, or with each other. Only in a friendly country would it have been possible to carry out such orders.
[p. 125]
There were at the Emperor’s disposition, at the end of May, some 116,000 men beyond the Pyrenees: but the 26,000 troops under Junot in Portugal were so completely cut off from the rest, by the insurrection in Castile and Estremadura, that they had to be left out of consideration. Of the remainder the corps of Dupont and Moncey, 53,000 strong, lay in and about Madrid: Bessières, to whom the preservation of the main line of communications with France fell, had some 25,000 between Burgos and San Sebastian: Duhesme, isolated at Barcelona, and communicating with France by Perpignan and not by Bayonne, had only some 13,000 at his disposal in Catalonia. Up to the first week in June the Emperor thought that the 91,000 men of these four corps would be enough to pacify Spain.
His first design was somewhat as follows: Bessières was to keep a firm hand on the line of communications, but also to detach a division of 4,000 men under Lefebvre-Desnouettes against Saragossa, and a brigade under Merle to pacify Santander and the northern littoral. The Emperor does not at first seem to have realized that, with the army of Galicia hanging on his western flank, Bessières might not be able to spare men for such distant enterprises. He dealt with the corps as if it had nothing to face save the local insurgents of Aragon and Old Castile. From the large body of troops which lay about Madrid, Toledo, and Aranjuez, two strong columns were to be dispatched to strike at the two main centres of the insurrection in Southern Spain. Dupont was to take the first division of his army corps, with two brigades of cavalry and a few other troops, and march on Cordova and Seville. This gave him no more than about 13,000 men for the subjugation of the large and populous province of Andalusia. The other two infantry divisions of his corps remained for the present near Madrid[100].
On the other side of the capital, Marshal Moncey with a somewhat smaller force—one division of infantry from his own army corps and one brigade of cavalry, 9,000 men in all—was to move on Valencia, and to take possession of that city and of the great naval arsenal of Cartagena. His expedition was to be supported by a diversion from the side of Catalonia, for Duhesme (in spite of the small number of his army) was told to send a column along the sea-coast route, by Tarragona and Tortosa, to threaten Valencia[p. 126] from the north. Moncey’s remaining infantry divisions, which were not detailed for the expedition that he was to lead, remained near Madrid, available (like Dupont’s second and third divisions) for the reinforcement of Bessières or the strengthening of the two expeditionary columns, as circumstances might decide.
Clearly Dupont and Moncey were both sent forth to undertake impossible tasks. Napoleon had not comprehended that it was not provincial émeutes that he had to crush, but the regular resistance of a nation. To send a column of 12,000 men on a march through 300 miles of hostile territory to Cadiz, or a column of 9,000 men on a march of 180 miles to Valencia, presupposes the idea that the expeditions are affairs of police and not strategical operations. Our astonishment grows greater when we consider the character of the troops which Dupont and Moncey commanded. In the army of the former there was one veteran French battalion—that of the Marines of the Guard, six of raw recruits of the Legions of Reserve, two of Paris Municipal Guards (strangely distracted from their usual duties), one of the contingent of the Helvetic Confederation, and four of Swiss mercenaries in the Spanish service, who had just been compelled to transfer their allegiance to Napoleon. The cavalry consisted of four ‘provisional regiments’ of conscripts. It was a military crime of the first order to send 13,000 troops of this quality on an important expedition. Moncey’s force was of exactly the same sort—eight battalions of conscripts formed in ‘provisional regiments’ and two ‘provisional regiments’ of dragoons, plus a Westphalian battalion, and two Spanish corps, who deserted en masse when they were informed that they were to march against Valencia in company with the marshal’s French troops. He had not one single company or squadron of men belonging to the old imperial army.
Bessières was much more fortunate, as, among the 25,000 men of whom he could dispose, there were four veteran battalions of the line and two old regiments of cavalry; moreover there were sent ere long to his aid three of the battalions of the Imperial Guard which lay at Madrid, and four hundred sabres of the dragoons, chasseurs, and gendarmes of the same famous corps.
The march of the two expeditionary columns began on May 24, a date at which Murat and his master had but the faintest notion of the wide-spreading revolt which was on foot. Moncey and Dupont were both officers of distinction: the marshal was one of[p. 127] the oldest and the most respected officers of the imperial army: he had won the grade of general of division in the days of the Republic, and did not owe his first start in life to Napoleon. Of all the marshals he was by several years the senior. He passed as a steady, capable, and prudent officer of vast experience. Dupont on the other hand was a young man, who had first won a name by his brilliant courage at the combat of Dirnstein in the Austrian war of 1805. Since then he had distinguished himself at Friedland: he was on the way to rapid promotion, and, if his expedition to Andalusia had succeeded, might have counted on a duchy and a marshal’s baton as his reward. Napoleon knew him as a brave and loyal subordinate, but had never before given him an independent command. He could hardly guess that, when left to his own inspirations, such a brilliant officer would turn out to be dilatory, wanting in initiative, and wholly destitute of moral courage. It is impossible to judge with infallible accuracy how a good lieutenant will behave, when first the load of responsibility is laid upon his shoulders. On May 24, Dupont quitted Toledo with his 13,000 men: in the broad plains of La Mancha he met with no opposition. Everywhere the people were sullen, but no open hostility was shown. Even in the tremendous defiles of the Sierra Morena he found no enemy, and crossed the great pass of Despe?a Perros without having to fire a shot. Coming out at its southern end he occupied Andujar, the town at the main junction of roads in Eastern Andalusia, on June 5. Here he got clear intelligence that the whole country-side was up in arms: Seville had risen on May 26, and the rest of the province had followed its example. There was a large assembly of armed peasants mustering at Cordova, but the regular troops had not yet been brought up to the front. General Casta?os, whom the Junta had placed in chief command, was still busily engaged in concentrating his scattered battalions, forming them into brigades and divisions, and hastily filling up with recruits the enormous gaps which existed in the greater part of the corps. The regulars were being got together at a camp at Carmona, south of the Guadalquivir, and not far from Seville. The organization of new battalions, from the large number of volunteers who remained when the old regiments were completed, took place elsewhere. It would be weeks, rather than days, before the unorganized mass took shape as an army, and Dupont might count on a considerable respite before being attacked. But it was not only with the forces of[p. 128] Casta?os that he had to reckon: at Cordova, Seville, Granada, and all the other towns of Andalusia, the peasants were flocking in to be armed and told off into new regiments. There was every probability that in a few days the movement would spread northward over the Sierra Morena into La Mancha. An insurrection in this district would sever Dupont’s communications with Madrid, for he had not left behind him any sufficient detachments to guard the defiles which he had just passed, or to keep open the great post-road to the capital across the plains of New Castile. When he started he had been under the impression that it was only local troubles in Andalusia that he had to suppress.
Dupont was already beginning to find that the insurgents were in much greater numbers than he had expected when he crossed the Sierra Morena, but till he had made trial of their strength he considered that it would be wrong to halt. He had close before him the great city of Cordova, a most tempting prize, and he resolved to push on at least so far before taking it upon himself to halt and ask for reinforcements. His continued movement soon brought about the first engagement of the war, as at the bridge of Alcolea he found his advance disputed by a considerable hostile force [June 7].
The military commandant of the district of Cordova was a certain Don Pedro de Echávarri, a retired colonel whom the local Junta had just placed in command of its levies. His force consisted of 10,000 or 12,000 peasants and citizens, who had only received their arms three days before, and had not yet been completely told off into regiments and companies. On the 4th of June he had been sent a small body of old troops—one battalion of light infantry (Campo Mayor), and one of militia (the 3rd Provincial Grenadiers of Andalusia)—1,400 men in all, and with them eight guns. To have abandoned Cordova without a fight would have discouraged the new levies, and probably have led to Echávarri’s own death; for the armed mob which he commanded would have torn him to pieces as a traitor if he had refused to give battle. Accordingly he resolved to defend the passage of the Guadalquivir at the point where the high-road from Andujar crossed it, six miles outside Cordova. He barricaded the bridge and placed his guns and the two old battalions on the hither side of the river, in a position commanding the defile. On each flank of them some thousands of the Cordovan insurgents were drawn up, while the remainder of the levy, including all the[p. 129] mounted men, were sent across the bridge, and hidden in some hills which overhung the road by which the French were coming. They were ordered to show themselves, and to threaten to fall upon the enemy from the flank, when he should have developed his attack upon the bridge. If Echávarri had been guided by military considerations he would not have dared to offer battle with such a raw and motley force to 12,000 French troops—even if the latter were but the conscripts of Dupont. But political necessity compelled him to make the attempt.
When Dupont found the position of Alcolea occupied, he cannonaded the Spaniards for a time, and then launched his vanguard against the bridge. The leading battalion (it was one of those formed of the Paris Municipal Guards) stormed the barricades with some loss, and began to cross the river. After it the rest of Pannetier’s brigade followed, and began to deploy for the attack on the Spanish position. At this moment the Cordovan levies beyond the river showed themselves, and began to threaten a flank attack on Dupont. The latter sent his cavalry against them, and a few charges soon turned back the demonstration, and scattered the raw troops who had made it. Meanwhile Dupont’s infantry advanced and overpowered the two regular battalions opposed to them: seeing the line broken, the masses of insurgents on the flanks left the field without any serious fighting. The whole horde gave way and poured back into Cordova and right through the city, whose ruined walls they made no attempt to defend. They had lost very few men, probably no more than 200 in all, while the French had suffered even less, their only casualties being thirty killed and eighty wounded, wellnigh all in the battalion which had forced the barricades at the bridge.
There would be no reason to linger even for a moment over this insignificant skirmish, if it had not been for the deplorable events which followed—events which did more to give a ferocious character to the war than any others, save perhaps the massacre by Calvo at Valencia, which was taking place (as it chanced) on that very same day, June 7.
Dupont, after giving his army a short rest, led it, still ranged in battle array, across the six miles of plain which separated him from Cordova. He expected to find the defeated army of Echávarri rallying itself within the city. But on arriving in front of its gates, he found the walls unoccupied and the suburbs deserted.[p. 130] The Cordovans had closed their gates, but it was rather for the purpose of gaining time for a formal surrender than with any intention of resisting. Dupont had already opened negotiations for the unbarring of the gates, when a few scattered shots were fired at the French columns from a tower in the wall, or a house abutting on it. Treating this as a good excuse for avoiding the granting of a capitulation, Dupont blew open one of the gates with cannon, and his troops rushed into the empty streets without finding any enemy to defeat. The impudent fiction of Thiers to the effect that the entry of the French was seriously resisted, and that desperate street-fighting took place, is sufficiently disproved by the fact that in the so-called storming of Cordova the French lost altogether two killed and seven wounded.
Nevertheless the city was sacked from cellar to garret. Dupont’s undisciplined conscripts broke their ranks and ran amuck through the streets, firing into windows and battering down doors. Wherever there was the least show of resistance they slew off whole households: but they were rather intent on pillage and rape than on murder. Cordova was a wealthy place, its shops were well worth plundering, its churches and monasteries full of silver plate and jewelled reliquaries, its vaults of the strong wines of Andalusia. All the scenes of horror that afterwards occurred at Badajoz or San Sebastian were rehearsed for the first time at Cordova; and the army of Dupont had far less excuse than the English marauders and murderers of 1812 and 1813. The French had taken the city practically without loss and without opposition, and could not plead that they had been maddened by the fall of thousands of their comrades, or that they were drunk with the fury of battle after many hours of desperate fighting at the breaches. Nevertheless, without any excuse of this sort, Dupont’s army behaved in a way that would have suited better the hordes of Tilly and Wallenstein. Their commanders could not draw them away from their orgies and outrages till the next day: indeed, it seems that many of the French officers disgraced themselves by joining in the plunder. While the men were filling their haversacks with private property, there were found colonels and even generals w............