THE ‘JUNTA GENERAL’ IN SESSION

The provincial Juntas, when once they had consented to sacrifice their local sovereignty, made no great delay in forwarding their representatives to the chosen meeting-place at Aranjuez. The number of deputies whom they sent to the Supreme Central Junta was thirty-five, seventeen provincial Juntas each contributing two, and the Canary Islands one. The Biscayan provinces, still wholly in the possession of the French, had no local body to speak for them, and could not therefore choose deputies. The number thus arrived at was not a very convenient one: thirty-five is too few for a parliament, and too many for an executive government. Moreover proportional representation was not secured; Navarre and the Balearic Islands were given too much weight by having two members each. Andalusia, having eight deputies for its four Juntas of Seville, Jaen, Granada, and Cordova, was over-represented when compared with Galicia, Aragon, and Catalonia, which had each no more than two. The quality of the delegates was very various: among the most notable were the ex-ministers Florida Blanca and Jovellanos, who represented respectively the better sides of the Conservative and the Liberal parties of Spain—if we may use such terms. The former, trained in the school of ‘benevolent despotism’ under Charles III, was a good specimen of the eighteenth-century statesman of the old sort—polite, experienced, energetic, a ripe scholar, and an able diplomat. But he was eighty years old and failing in health, and his return to active politics killed him in a few months. Jovellanos, a somewhat younger man[360], belonged in spirit to the end rather than the middle of the eighteenth century, and was imbued with the ideas of liberty and constitutional government which were afloat all over Europe in the early days of the French Revolution. He represented modern liberalism in the shape which it took in Spain. For this reason he had suffered[p. 355] many things at the hands of Godoy, and emerged from a long period of imprisonment and obscurity to take his place in the councils of the nation. Unhappily he was to find that his ideas were still those of a minority, and that bureaucracy and obscurantism were deeply rooted in Spain.

Of the other members[361] of the Supreme Junta, the Bailiff Valdez and Francisco Palafox, fresh from his brother’s triumphs at Saragossa, were perhaps the best known. Among the rest we note a considerable number of clergy—two archbishops, a prior, and three canons—but not more than might have been expected in a country where the Church was so powerful. Military men were not so strongly represented, being only five in number, and three of these were militia colonels. The rest were mainly local notables—grandees, marquises, and counts predominated over mere commoners. Some of them were blind particularists, and a few—like the disreputable Conde de Tilly—were intriguers with doubtful antecedents. The whole body represented Spain well enough, but Spain with her weaknesses as well as her strong points. It was not a very promising instrument with which to achieve the liberation of the Peninsula, or to resist the greatest general in Europe. Considered as a government of national defence, it had far too little military knowledge: a haphazard assembly of priests, politicians, and grandees is not adapted for the conduct of a war of independence. Hence came the incredible blindness which led it to refuse to appoint a single commander-in-chief, and the obstinacy with which it buried itself in constitutional debates of the most futile sort when Napoleon was thundering at the gates of Spain.

The meeting of the Supreme Junta was fixed for September 25, but long ere that date came round the military situation was assuming new developments. The first modification in the state of affairs was caused by the abortive attempt of the Basque provinces to free themselves. The news of Baylen had caused as great a stir in the northern mountains as in the south or the east of Spain. But Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and Alava had considerable French garrisons, and the retreat of Joseph Bonaparte to the Ebro only increased the number of enemies in their immediate neighbourhood. It would have been no less patriotic than prudent for these provinces to delay their insurrection till it had some chance of proving useful[p. 356] to the general scheme of operations for the expulsion of the French from Spain. If they could have waited till Blake and Casta?os had reached the Ebro, and then have taken arms, they might have raised a most dangerous distraction in the rear of the French, and have prevented them from turning all their forces against the regular armies. But it was mad to rise when Blake was still at Astorga, and Casta?os had not yet reached Madrid. It could not have been expected that the local patriots should understand this: but grave blame falls on those who ought to have known better. The Duke of Infantado, who was acting under Blake, and Colonel Doyle, the English representative at that general’s head quarters, did their best to precipitate the outbreak in Biscay. They promised the Biscayan leaders that a division from Asturias should come to their aid, and that English arms and ammunition should be poured into their harbours[362]. At the first word of encouragement all Biscay took arms [August 6]: a great mass of insurgents collected at Bilbao, and smaller bands appeared along the line of the mountains, even as far as Valcarlos on the very frontier of France. But no external aid came to them: the Asturians—averse to every proposal that came from Galicia—did not move outside their own provincial boundary, and no other Spanish army was within striking distance. Bessières was able, at his leisure, to detach General Merlin with 3,000 men to fall on Bilbao. This brigade proved enough to deal with the main body of the Biscayan insurgents, who after a creditable fight were dispersed with heavy loss—1,200 killed, according to the French commander’s dispatch [August 16]. Bilbao was taken and sacked, and English vessels bringing—now that it was too late—5,000 stand of arms for the insurgents, narrowly escaped capture in its harbour. All along the line of the Basque hills there was hanging and shooting of the leaders of the abortive rising[363]. The only result of this ill-advised move was that Bessières was warned of the danger in his rear, and kept a vigilant eye for the future on the coastland. The Biscayans, as was natural, were much discouraged at the way in which they had been left in the lurch by their fellow countrymen, and at the inefficacy of their own unaided efforts. They were loth to rise a second time.

It was not till twenty days had passed since the fall of Bilbao[p. 357] that the first attempts at combined action were made by the Spanish generals. On September 5 there met at Madrid a council of war, composed of Casta?os, Cuesta, the Valencian General Llamas, and the representatives of Blake and Palafox—the Duke of Infantado and Calvo de Rozas, intendant-general of the army of Aragon. These officers met with much suppressed jealousy and suspicion of each other. The Duke had his eye on Cuesta, in accordance with the instructions of Blake. Casta?os and Cuesta were at daggers drawn, for the old Captain-General had just proposed a coup d’état against the Junta to the Andalusian, and had been repulsed with scorn[364]. The representative of the army of Aragon had been charged to see that no one was put above the head of Palafox. When the meeting opened, Cuesta proposed that it should appoint a single general to direct all the forces of Spain. The others demurred: Cuesta was much their senior in the army-list, and they imagined—probably with truth—that he would claim the post of commander-in-chief for himself, in spite of the memories of Cabezon and Rio Seco. They refused to listen to his arguments, though it was certain that unity of command was in every way desirable. Nor was any disposition shown to raise Casta?os to supreme authority, though this was the obvious step to take, as he was the only general of Spain who had won a great battle in the open field. But personal and provincial jealousy stood in the way, and Casta?os himself, though not without ambition, was destitute of the arts of cajolery, and made no attempt to push his own candidature for the post of commander-in-chief. Perhaps he hoped that the Supreme Junta would do him justice ere long, and refrained for that reason from self-assertion before his colleagues. Nothing, therefore, was settled on September 5, save a plan for common operations against the French[p. 358] on the Ebro. Like all schemes that are formed from a compromise between the views of several men, this was not a very brilliant strategical effort: instead of providing for a bold stroke with the whole Spanish army, at some point on the long line between Burgos and Milagro, it merely brought the insurgent forces in half-a-dozen separate columns face to face with the enemy. Blake, with his own army and the Asturians, was to be asked to concentrate near Reynosa, at the sources of the Ebro, and to endeavour to turn Bessières’ flank and penetrate into Biscay[365]. He would have 30,000 men, or more, but not a single complete regiment of cavalry. Next to him Cuesta was to operate against the front of Bessières’ corps, with his ‘Army of Castile,’ eight or nine thousand raw levies backed by about 1,000 horse. He undertook to make Burgo de Osma his point of starting. More to the east, Casta?os was to gather at Soria the four divisions of the army of Andalusia, but at present he had only that of La Pe?a in hand: the Junta of Seville was detaining the rest. Still more to the right, Llamas with his 8,000 Valencians and Murcians was to march on Tudela. Lastly Palafox, with the army of Aragon and the Valencian division of Saint March, was to keep north of the Ebro, and turn the left flank of Moncey’s corps by way of Sanguesa: he could bring about 25,000 men into line, but there were not more than five or six regular battalions among them; the rest were recent levies. When the army of Estremadura should come up (it was still about Elvas and Badajoz), it was to join Casta?os; and it was hoped that the English forces from Portugal might also be directed on the same point.

But meanwhile only 75,000 men were available in the first line; and this force, spread along the whole front from Reynosa to Sanguesa, and acting on wide external lines, was not likely to make much impression on the French. The numbers of the invaders were considerably greater than those of the patriot-armies. Jourdan had 70,000 men by September 1, and was being reinforced every day by fresh battalions, though the three corps from Germany were still far off. Before the Spaniards could move he appreciably outnumbered them, and he had the inestimable advantage of holding a comparatively short front, and of being able to concentrate on any point with far greater rapidity than was possible to his adversaries. Even had they thrown all their forces on one single point, the French, always using the ‘interior lines,’ could have[p. 359] got together in a very short time. The only weak point, indeed, in the French position was that Bessières’ vanguard at Burgos was too far forward, and in some peril of being enveloped between Blake and Cuesta. But this detachment, as we shall see, was ere long drawn back to the Ebro.

Before the campaign began the Spaniards obtained one notable advantage—the removal of Cuesta from command, owing to his own incredible arrogance and folly. It will be remembered that he regarded the Juntas of Leon and Castile as recalcitrant subordinates of his own, and had declared all their acts null and void. When they proceeded, like the other Juntas, to elect representatives for the meeting at Aranjuez, he waited till the deputies of Leon were passing near his camp, and then suddenly descended upon them. Don Antonio Valdez, the Bailiff of the Maltese Knights, and the Vizconde de Quintanilla, were arrested by his troopers and shut up in the castle of Segovia. He announced that they should be tried by court-martial, for failing in obedience to their Captain-General. This astonishing act of presumption drew down on him the wrath of the Supreme Junta, which was naturally eager to protect its members from the interference of the military arm. Almost its first act on assembling was to order him to appear at Aranjuez and to suspend him from command. Cuesta would have liked to resist, but knowing that his own army was weak and that Blake and Casta?os were his bitter enemies, he had to yield. He came to Aranjuez, and was superseded by General Eguia. Valdez and Quintanilla were immediately released, and took their seats in the Supreme Junta.

The sessions of that body had begun on September 25. Twenty-four members out of the designated thirty-five had assembled on that day, and after a solemn religious ceremony had re-proclaimed Ferdinand VII, and elected Florida Blanca as their President. They then proceeded to nominate a Cabinet, chosen entirely from outside their own body. Don Pedro Cevallos was to be Minister of Foreign Affairs: he had served Ferdinand VII in that capacity, but had smirched his reputation by his submission to Bonaparte after the treachery at Bayonne. However, his ingenious justification[366][p. 360] of his conduct, and his early desertion of King Joseph, were allowed to serve as an adequate defence. Don Antonio Esca?o was Minister of Marine, Don Benito Hermida Minister of Justice, Don Francisco de Saavedra Minister of the Interior. The most important place of all, that of Minister of War, was given to an utterly unknown person, General Antonio Corne............