Joseph Bonaparte again King of Spain.—His Difficulties with Soult.—Second Siege of Saragossa.—Another English Army, under Sir Arthur Wellesley, lands at Lisbon.—Battle of Talavera.—The English retire into Portugal.—Siege of Gerona.—Principal Events of the Campaign of 1810.—The English Troops make a Stand at Torres Vedras.—Retreat of Massena.—Siege of Cadiz.—Escape of French Prisoners.—Opening of the Campaign of 1811.

Having closed the history of this unfortunate army, let us now return to Spain. Joseph had returned, a nominal king, to Madrid. More than twenty-six thousand heads of families had come forward, of their own accord, and sworn, by the host, that they desired his presence amongst them. The marshals, under his directions, were pursuing the conquest of Spain with vigor. Though Joseph was nominally lieutenant-general, Soult was in reality at the head of operations. A modern writer, speaking of these two commanders, says Soult was crippled in all his movements, his sound policy neglected, and his best combinations thwarted, by Joseph. His operations in Andalusia and Estramadura, and the firmness with which he resisted the avarice of Joseph, all exhibited his well-balanced character. In Andalusia he firmly held his ground, although hedged in with hostile armies, and surrounded by an insurgent population, while a wide territory had to be covered with his troops.

[100]King Joseph could not comprehend the operations of such a mind as Soult’s, and constantly impeded his success. When, without ruin to his army, the stubborn marshal could yield to his commands, he did; but where the king’s projects would plunge him into irredeemable errors, he openly and firmly withstood them. The anger and threats of Joseph were alike in vain. The inflexible old soldier professed his willingness to obey, but declared he would not, with his eyes open, commit a great military blunder. King Joseph would despatch loud and vehement complaints to Napoleon, but the emperor knew too well the ability of Soult to heed them. Had the latter been on the Spanish throne, the country would long before have been subdued, and the French power established.

We shall not enter into detail of all the operations in Spain. A short account of some of the principal battles we will give; and, as we have already detailed the first siege of Saragossa, our readers may perhaps like to know the final fate of this devoted city. We quote from Headley’s description of the second siege.
SECOND SIEGE OF SARAGOSSA.

“The siege at Saragossa had been successively under the command of Moncey and Jun?t. The camp was filled with murmurs and complaints. For nearly a month they had environed the town in vain. Assault after assault had been made; and from the 2d of January, when Jun?t took the command, till the arrival of Lannes in the latter part of the month,[101] every night had been distinguished by bloody fights; and yet the city remained unconquered. Lannes paid no heed to the murmurs and complaints around him, but immediately, by the promptitude and energy of his actions, infused courage into the hearts of the desponding soldiery. The decision he was always wont to carry into battle was soon visible in the siege. The soldiers poured to the assault with firmer purpose, and fought with more resolute courage. The apathy which had settled down on the army was dispelled. New life was given to every movement; and on the 27th, amid the tolling of the tower-bell, warning the people to the defence, a grand assault was made, and, after a most sanguinary conflict, the walls of the town were carried, and the French soldiers fortified themselves in the convent at St. Joseph’s. Unyielding to the last, the brave Saragossans fought on, and, amid the pealing of the tocsin, rushed up to the very mouths of the cannons, and perished by hundreds and by thousands in the streets of the city. Every house was a fortress, and around its walls were separate battle-fields, where deeds of frantic valor were done. Day after day did these single-handed fights continue, while famine and pestilence walked the city at noonday, and slew faster than the swords of the enemy. The dead lay piled up in every street, and on the thick heaps of the slain the living mounted, and fought with the energy of despair for their homes and their liberty. In the midst of this incessant firing by[102] night and by day, and hand to hand fights on the bodies of the slain, ever and anon a mine would explode, blowing the living and dead, friend and foe, together in the air. An awful silence would succeed for a moment, and then, over the groans of the dying, would ring again the rallying cry of the brave inhabitants. The streets ran torrents of blood, and the stench of putrefied bodies loaded the air. Thus, for three weeks, did the fight and butchery go on, within the city walls, till the soldiers grew dispirited and ready to give up the hope of spoils, if they could escape the ruin that encompassed them. Yet theirs was a comfortable lot to that of the besieged. Shut up in the cellars with the dead, pinched with famine, while the pestilence rioted without mercy and without resistance, they heard around them the incessant bursting of bombs, and thunder of artillery, and explosions of mines, and crash of falling houses, till the city shook, night and day, as within the grasp of an earthquake. Thousands fell daily, and the town was a mass of ruins. Yet, unconquered and apparently unconquerable, the inhabitants struggled on. Out of the dens they had made for themselves among the ruins, and from the cellars where there were more dead than living, men would crawl to fight, who looked more like spectres than warriors. Women would work the guns, and, musket in hand, advance fearlessly to the charge; and hundreds thus fell, fighting for their homes and their firesides. Amid this scene of devastation,—[103]against this prolonged and almost hopeless struggle of weeks,—against the pestilence that had appeared in his own army, and was mowing down his own troops,—and, above all, against the increased murmurs and now open clamors of the soldiers, declaring that the siege must be abandoned till reinforcements could come up,—Lannes remained unshaken and untiring. The incessant roar and crash around him, the fetid air, the exhausting toil, the carnage and the pestilence, could not change his iron will. He had decreed that Saragossa—which had heretofore baffled every attempt to take it—should fall. At length, by a vigorous attempt, he took the convent of St. Laran, in the suburbs of the town, and planted his artillery there, which soon levelled the city around it with the ground. To finish this work of destruction by one grand blow, he caused six mines to be run under the main street of the city, each of which was charged with three thousand pounds of powder. But before the time appointed for their explosion arrived, the town capitulated. The historians of this siege describe the appearance of the city and its inhabitants, after the surrender, as inconceivably horrible. With only a single wall between them and the enemy’s trenches, they had endured a siege of nearly two months by forty thousand men, and continued to resist after famine and pestilence began to slay faster than the enemy. Thirty thousand cannon-balls and sixty thousand bombs had fallen in the city, and fifty-four thousand of the inhabitants had perished.[104] Six thousand only had fallen in combat, while forty-eight thousand had been the prey of the pestilence. After the town had capitulated, but twelve thousand were found able to bear arms, and they looked more like spectres issuing from the tomb than like living warriors.

“Saragossa was taken; but what a capture! As Lannes rode through the streets at the head of his victorious army, he looked only on a heap of ruins, while six thousand unburied corpses lay in his path. Sixteen thousand lay sick, while on the living famine had written more dreadful characters than death had traced on the fallen. Infants lay on the breasts of their dead mothers, striving in vain to draw life from bosoms that would never throb again. Attenuated forms, with haggard faces and sunken eyes and cheeks, wandered around among the dead to search for their friends; corpses, bloated with famine, lay stretched across the threshold of their dwellings, and strong-limbed men went staggering over the pavements, weak from want of food, or struck with the pestilence. Woe was in every street, and the silence in the dwellings was more eloquent than the loudest cries and groans. Death and famine and the pestilence had been there, in every variety of form and suffering. But the divine form of Liberty had been there too, walking amid those mountains of corpses and ruins of homes, shedding her light through the subterranean apartments of the wretched, and, with her cheering voice, animating the thrice-conquered,[105] yet still unconquered, to another effort, and blessing the dying as they prayed for their beloved city. But she was at last compelled to take her departure, and the bravest city of modern Europe sunk in bondage. Still her example lives, and shall live to the end of time, nerving the patriot to strike and suffer for his home and freedom, and teaching man everywhere how to die in defending the right. A wreath of glory surrounds the brow of Saragossa, fadeless as the memory of her brave defenders. Before their achievements,—the moral grandeur of their firm struggle, and the depth and intensity of their sufferings,—the bravery and perseverance of the French sink into forgetfulness. Yet theirs was no ordinary task, and it was by no ordinary means that it was executed.”
THE ENGLISH LAND AT LISBON.

The English had by no means relinquished their designs upon the Peninsula. The successes of Napoleon and his victorious army but served to stimulate their hatred of the French, and spur them on to further efforts. Another army was accordingly collected, and placed under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who landed in Lisbon on the 22d of April, 1809. The force under his command was fourteen thousand five hundred infantry, fifteen hundred cavalry, and twenty-four pieces of artillery. The passage of the river Dwero was his first contest with the French. In this he was successful, and his success opened to him the gates of Oporto. Soon after occurred the celebrated battle of Talavera.[106] King Joseph was himself nominally at the head of his troops; but Marshal Victor was, in reality, the leader. Victor and Soult had both laid their plans before the king, and urged them with all the eloquence they were capable of. So sure was Victor of the victory, should his advice be followed, that he said that, if his plans should fail, all military science was useless. The event proved, however, that Soult was correct.
BATTLE OF TALAVERA.

“The morning dawned beautifully clear, but a July sun poured down its burning heat, until the soldiers were glad to seek shelter from its rays in the quiet shade. Between the camps of the two armies flowed a little murmuring rivulet, and, as the French and English met there to slake their thirst, pleasant words passed between them. Familiar conversation, the light laugh and the gay jest, were heard on every side. But, about one o’clock, the deep rolling of drums along the French lines announced to the allies that the hour had come when those who had met to slake their thirst in those quiet waters were soon to mingle to quell in blood their thirst for strife. They, too, prepared for combat; and, when the loud booming of the guns gave the signal that the battle was commenced, eighty cannon opened their destructive fire, and the light troops went sweeping onward with the rapidity of a thunder-cloud over the heavens, while the deep, dark columns marched sternly after, and charged, with terrible strength, the English lines. Then all along their fronts the deep-mouthed guns[107] opened their well-directed fire, and the infantry responded to the furious attack with their rapid volleys, as they closed around the head of the advancing columns, enveloping them in one sheet of flame, that streamed like billows along their sides. It was too much for human courage to endure; and, after bravely breasting the storm, they were obliged to fall back in disorder.

“After various successes and reverses, the French seemed about to gain the day. The English centre was broken, and Victor’s columns marching triumphantly through it. Just at this juncture, when the English were scattering on every side, Colonel Donellan, anxious to save the honor of his army, was seen advancing through the disordered masses, at the head of the 48th regiment. The retiring masses on every side pressed hard against these brave soldiers, and it seemed, at first, as though they must be carried away by them; but, wheeling back by companies, they opened to let the fugitives pass, and then, pursuing their proud and beautiful line, they marched straight upon the pursuing columns on the right side, and poured their rapid fire into the dense ranks. Closing on the foe with steadiness and firmness, these few soldiers arrested the progress of the entire mass. Then their artillery opened its fire upon them, and the cavalry rallied, and rode round to charge their flanks; and, after a short and earnest warfare, the tide of success turned, and victory, which seemed a moment before in the hands of the French, was[108] wrested from their grasp, amid the loud shouts and earnest cheerings of the British. Their troops retired in good order to their former position, and at six o’clock the battle had closed. And now, as both parties were preparing to remove their wounded, and pay the last sad duties to the dead, one of those terrible events occurred which sometimes come to shock the human soul, and overrun a cup of misery already full. Hardly had the last troops withdrawn from the scene of contest, when the long dry grass took fire, and one broad flame swept furiously over the field, wrapping the dead and wounded together in its fiery mantle. The shrieks of the scorched and writhing victims, that struggled up through the thick folds of smoke that rolled darkly over them, were far more appalling than the uproar of battle, and carried consternation to every heart that heard. Two thousand men were killed on both sides, and eight thousand wounded.”[A]
THE ENGLISH RETIRE INTO PORTUGAL.

Soon after, the army effected a junction with Soult, and Sir Arthur Wellesley was obliged to retreat. He obtained, however, a promise from the Spanish general that the English wounded should be removed from the hospitals of Talavera to some other place. But this promise, like too many others, was shamefully violated; and he left the place, abandoning them all to the mercy of the enemy. When Victor entered the town, he found the public square covered with the sick and maimed of both armies, scattered [109]around on the pavement, without any one to care for them. He immediately sent his soldiers into the houses, commanding the inhabitants to receive the wounded sufferers. He ordered that one English and one French soldier should be lodged together,—thus softening the asperities of war, and setting an example to his foes which they would have done well to follow. If the Spanish had refused to care for the sick and wounded of their allies, they showed scarcely more consideration for the men on whose success their own safety depended. They refused to supply them with provisions. The soldiers were weakened by hunger, and the sick dying for want of necessary succor. Half a pound of wheat in the grain, and, twice a week, a few ounces of flour, with a quarter of a pound of goat’s flesh, formed the sole subsistence of men and officers. The goats were caught and killed by the troops; and it was so difficult to procure even these, that the mere offal of a goat would bring three or four dollars. Sir Arthur’s warm remonstrances to the Spanish junta were answered only by promises. The soldiers were murmuring at their bad treatment; and, when pestilence broke out in the army, and five thousand men died in their hospitals, Wellesley, deeming it useless to struggle longer against the force of circumstances, judged it best again to evacuate Spain, and withdraw his troops into Portugal. However lightly the English had, in anticipation, regarded the bravery of the French troops, experience—that stern and truthful monitor[110]—had taught them that they were an enemy not to be despised, and that Soult, their chief commander, was as skilful, and, as a tactician, fully equal to Wellington. Many English writers, in speaking of Wellington, have drawn a parallel between him and Napoleon, because he was commander-in-chief when the battle of Waterloo was won. Yet this long struggle between the English general and Soult, in Spain, in which he was as often defeated as conqueror, shows conclusively that the French and English commanders were well matched,—that there was little to choose between them; and who would think, even for a moment, of instituting a comparison of equality between Napoleon and Soult?

We cannot follow the Spaniards, in all their operations, after the English forces had been withdrawn; marked, as they often were, by want of courage, and oftener by want of skill and foresight in their arrangements. The Partida warfare was now instituted, and many of the French troops were cut off in this way; yet ............