THE SECOND OF MAY: OUTBREAK OF THE SPANISH INSURRECTION

When King Ferdinand had taken his departure to Bayonne, the position of Murat in Madrid became very delicate. He might expect to hear at any moment, since the Emperor’s plans were more or less known to him, either that the Spanish king had been made a prisoner, or that he had taken the alarm, escaped from his escort, and fled into the mountains. In either case trouble at Madrid was very probable, though there was no serious military danger to be feared, for of Spanish troops there were only 3,000 in the city, while some 35,000 French were encamped in or about it. But there might be a moment of confusion if the Junta of Regency should take violent measures on hearing of the King’s fate, or the populace of Madrid (and this was much more likely) burst into rioting.

From the tenth of April, the day of the King’s departure for the north, down to the twenty-ninth there was no serious cause for apprehension. The people were no doubt restless: they could not understand why the French lingered in Madrid instead of marching on Portugal or Gibraltar, according to their expressed intention. Rumours of all kinds, some of which hit off fairly well the true projects of Bonaparte, were current. Murat’s conduct was not calculated to reassure observers; he gave himself the airs of a military governor, rather than those of an officer engaged in conducting an allied army through friendly territory. Some of his acts gave terrible offence, such as that of insisting that the sword of Francis I, taken at Pavia in 1525, the pride for three centuries of the royal armoury, should be given up to him[60]. His[p. 58] call on the Junta for the surrender of the Prince of the Peace, whom he forwarded under French escort to Bayonne, could not fail to be unpopular. But the first real signs of danger were not seen till the twenty-second of April, when Murat, in obedience to his master, intended to publish the protest of Charles IV against his abdication. It was to be presented to the Junta in the form of a letter to its president, Don Antonio. Meanwhile French agents were set to print it: their Spanish underlings stole and circulated some of the proofs. Their appearance raised a mob, for the name of Charles IV could only suggest the reappearance of Godoy. An angry crowd broke into the printing office, destroyed the presses, and hunted away the Frenchmen. Murat at once made a great matter of the affair, and began to threaten the Junta. ‘The army which he commanded could not without dishonouring itself allow disorders to arise: there must be no more anarchy in Spain. He was not going to allow the corrupt tools of the English government to stir up troubles.’ The Junta replied with rather more spirit than might have been expected, asked why an army of 35,000 French troops had now lingered more than a month around the capital, and expressed an opinion that the riot was but an explosion of loyalty to Ferdinand. But they undertook to deal severely with factious persons, and to discourage even harmless assemblies like that of the twenty-second.

Meanwhile Murat wrote to the Emperor that it was absurd that he could not yet establish a police of his own in Madrid, that he could not print what he pleased, and that he had to negotiate with the Junta when he wished his orders published, instead of being able to issue them on his own authority[61]. He was answered in a style which must have surprised him. Napoleon was ashamed, he said, of a general who, with 50,000 men at his back, asked for things instead of taking them. His letters to the Junta were servile; he should simply assume possession of the reins of power, and act for himself. If the canaille stirred, let it be shot down[62]. Murat could only reply that ‘if he had not yet scattered rioters by a blast of grape, it was only because there were no mobs to shoot: his imperial majesty’s rebuke had stunned him “like a tile falling on his head” by its unmerited severity[63].’

Within three days of this letter there was to be plenty of[p. 59] grape-shot, enough to satisfy both Emperor and Grand-Duke. They probably had the revolt of Cairo and the 13th Vendémiaire in their mind, and were both under the impression that a good émeute pitilessly crushed by artillery was the best basis of a new régime.

On the night of April 29 the first clear and accurate account of what was happening at Bayonne arrived at Madrid. Napoleon had intercepted all the letters which Don Ferdinand had tried to smuggle out of his prison. He read them with grave disapproval, for his guest had not scrupled to use the expression ‘the cursed French,’ and had hinted at the propriety of resistance. He had not yet been cowed by the threat of a rebel’s death. But on the twenty-third one of the Spaniards at Bayonne succeeded in escaping in disguise, crossed the mountains by a lonely track, and reached Pampeluna, whence he posted to Madrid. This was a certain Navarrese magistrate named Ibarnavarro, to whom Ferdinand had given a verbal message to explain Napoleon’s plans and conduct to the Junta, and to inform them that he would never give in to this vile mixture of force and fraud. He could not send them any definite instructions, not knowing the exact state of affairs at Madrid, and a premature stroke might imperil the life of himself, his brother, and his companions: let them beware therefore of showing their warlike intentions till preparations had been fully made to shake off the yoke of the oppressor.

This message Ibarnavarro delivered on the night of April 29-30 to the Junta[64], who had summoned in to hear it a number of judges and other magnates of the city. Next morning, of course, the information, in a more or less garbled shape, spread all round Madrid: there were foolish rumours that the Biscayans had already taken arms, and that 30,000 of them were marching on Bayonne to save the King, as also that certain of the coast towns had invited the English to land. On the thirtieth leaflets, both written and printed, were being secretly circulated round the city, setting forth the unhappy condition of the King, and bidding his subjects not to forget Numancia[65]. It is astonishing that riots did[p. 60] not break out at once, considering the growing excitement of the people, and the habitual insolence of the French soldiery. But leaders were wanting, and in especial the Junta of Regency and its imbecile old president made no move whatever, on the pretext, apparently, that any commotion might imperil the lives of Napoleon’s prisoners.

It was Murat himself who brought matters to a head next day, by ordering the Junta to put into his hands the remaining members of the royal family, Ferdinand’s youngest brother Don Francisco, a boy of sixteen, and his sister the widowed and exiled Queen of Etruria, with her children. Only Don Antonio, the incapable president of the Junta, and the Archbishop of Toledo, the King’s second-cousin, were to be left behind: the rest were to be sent to Bayonne. Knowing what had happened to Don Ferdinand and Don Carlos, the people were horrified at the news; but they trusted that the Regency would refuse its leave. To its eternal disgrace that body did nothing: it did not even try to smuggle away the young Don Francisco before Murat should arrest him.
Map of Madrid

Enlarge  Madrid in 1808.

On the morning, therefore, of May 2 the streets were filled with people, and the palace gates in especial were beset by an excited mob. It was soon seen that the news was true, for the Queen of Etruria appeared and started for the north with all her numerous family. She was unpopular for having sided with her mother and Godoy against Don Ferdinand, and was allowed to depart undisturbed. But when the carriage that was to bear off Don Francisco was brought up, and one of Murat’s aides-de-camp appeared at the door to take charge of the young prince, the rage of the crowd burst all bounds. The French officer was stoned, and saved with difficulty by a patrol: the coach was torn to pieces. Murat had not been unprepared for something of the kind: the battalion on guard at his palace was at once turned out, and fired a dozen volleys into the unarmed mob, which fled devious, leaving scores of dead and wounded on the ground.

The Grand-Duke thought that the matter was over, but it had but just begun. At the noise of the firing the excited citizens flocked into the streets armed with whatever came to hand, pistols, blunderbusses, fowling-pieces, many only with the long Spanish knife. They fell upon, and slew, a certain number of isolated French soldiers, armed and unarmed, who were off duty and wandering round the town, but they also made a fierce attack[p. 61] on Murat’s guard. Of course they could do little against troops armed and in order: in the first hour of the fight there were only about 1,000 men at the Grand-Duke’s disposal, but this small force held its own without much loss, though eight or ten thousand angry insurgents fell upon them. But within seventy minutes the French army from the suburban camps came pouring into the city, brigade after brigade. After this the struggle was little more than a massacre: many of the insurgents took refuge in houses, and maintained a fierce but futile resistance for some time; but the majority were swept away in a few minutes by cavalry charges. Only at one point did the fight assume a serious shape. Almost the entire body of the Spanish garrison of Madrid refrained from taking any part in the rising: without the orders of the Junta the chiefs refused to move, and the men waited in vain for the orders of their officers. But at the Artillery Park two captains, Daoiz and Velarde, threw open the gates to the rioters, allowed them to seize some hundreds of muskets, and when the first French column appeared ran out three guns and opened upon it with grape[66]. Though aided by no more than forty soldiers, and perhaps 500 civilians, they beat off two assaults, and only succumbed to a third. Daoiz was bayonetted, Velarde shot dead, and their men perished with them; but they had poured three volleys of grape into a street packed with the enemy, and caused the only serious losses which the French suffered that day.

The whole struggle had occupied not more than four hours: when it was over Murat issued an ‘order of the day,’ sentencing all prisoners taken with arms in their hands, all persons discovered with arms concealed in their houses, and all distributors of seditious leaflets, ‘the agents of the English government,’ to be shot. It seems that at least a hundred persons were executed under this edict, many of them innocent bystanders who had taken no part in the fighting. Next morning Murat withdrew his Draconian decree, and no further fusillades took place. It is impossible, in the conflict of authorities, to arrive at any clear estimate of the numbers slain on each side on May 2[67]. Probably Tore?o is not[p. 62] far out when he estimates the whole at something over a thousand. Of these four-fifths must have been Spaniards, for the French only lost heavily at the arsenal: the number of isolated soldiers murdered in the streets at the first outbreak of the riot does not seem to have been very large.

Many French authors have called the rising a deliberate and preconcerted conspiracy to massacre the French garrison. On the other hand Spanish writers have asserted that Murat had arranged everything so as to cause a riot, in order that he might have the chance of administering a ‘whiff of grape-shot,’ after his master’s plan. But it is clear that both are making unfounded accusations: if the insurrection had been premeditated, the Spanish soldiery would have been implicated in it, for nothing would have been easier than to stir them up. Yet of the whole 3,000 only forty ran out to help the insurgents. Moreover, the mob would have been found armed at the first commencement of trouble, which it certainly was not. On the other hand, if Murat had been organizing a massacre, he would not have been caught with no more than two squadrons of cavalry and five or six companies of infantry under his hand. These might have been cut to pieces before the troops from outside could come to their help. He had been expecting riots, and was prepared to deal with them, but was surprised by a serious insurrection on a larger scale than he had foreseen, and at a moment when he was not ready.

For a few days after May 2, Murat at Madrid and his master at Bayonne were both living in a sort of fools’ paradise, imagining that ‘the affairs of Spain were going off wonderfully well,’ and that ‘the party of Ferdinand had been crushed by the prompt suppression of its conspiracy.’ The Grand-Duke had the simplicity or the effrontery to issue a proclamation in which he said ‘that every good Spaniard had groaned at the sight of such disorders,’ and another in which the insurrection was attributed to ‘the machinations of our common enemy, i.e. the British government[68].’ On May 4 Don Antonio laid down the presidency of the Junta without a word of regret, and went off to Bayonne, having first borrowed 25,000 francs from Murat. The latter, by virtue of[p. 63] a decree issued by Charles IV, then assumed the presidency of the Junta of Regency. The rest of the members of that ignoble body easily sank into his servile instruments, though they had at last received a secret note smuggled out from Bayonne, in which Ferdinand (the day before his abdication) told them to regard his removal into the interior of France as a declaration of war, and to call the nation to arms. To this they paid no attention, while they pretended to take the document of resignation, which Bonaparte had forced him to sign, as an authentic and spontaneous expression of his will. The fact is that twenty years of Godoy had thoroughly demoralized the bureaucracy and the court of Spain: if the country’s will had not found better exponents than her ministers and officials, Napoleon might have done what he pleased with the Peninsula.

At present his sole interest seems to have lain in settling the details of his brother Joseph’s election to the Spanish throne. Ferdinand’s final resignation of all his rights having been signed on May 10, the field was open for his successor. The Emperor thought that some sort of deputation to represent the Spanish nation ought to be got together, in order that his brother might not seem to receive the crown from his own hands only. Murat was first set to work to terrorize the Junta of Regency, and the ‘Council of Castile,’ a body which practically occupied much the same position as the English Privy Council. At his dictation the Junta yielded, but with an ill grace, and sent petitions to Bayonne asking for a new monarch, and suggesting (as desired) that the person chosen might be Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples [May 13]. Murat had just been informed that as all had gone well with the Emperor’s plans he should have his reward: he might make his choice between the thrones of Naples and of Portugal. He wisely chose the former, where the rough work of subjection had already been done by his predecessor.

But resolved to get together something like a representative body which might vote away the liberty of Spain, Napoleon nominated, in the Madrid Gazette of May 24, 150 persons who were to go to Bayonne and there ask him to grant them a king. He named a most miscellaneous crowd—ministers, bishops, judges, municipal officers of Madrid, dukes and counts, the heads of the religious orders, the Grand Inquisitor and some of his colleagues, and six well-known Americans who were to speak for the colonies. To the eternal disgrace of[p. 64] the ruling classes of Spain, no less than ninety-one of the nominees were base enough to obey the orders given them, to go to Bayonne, and there to crave as a boon that the weak and incompetent Joseph Bonaparte might be set to govern their unhappy country, under the auspices of his brother the hero and regenerator. Long before the degrading farce was complete, the whole country was in arms behind them, and they knew themselves for traitors. The election of King Joseph I was only taken in hand on June 15, while twenty days before the north and south of Spain had risen in arms in the name of the captive Ferdinand VII.

It took a week for the news of the insurrection of May 2 to spread round Spain: in the public mouth it of course assumed the shape of a massacre deliberately planned by Murat. It was not till some days later that the full details of the events at Bayonne got abroad. But ever since the surprise of the frontier fortresses in February and March, intelligent men all over the country had been suspecting that some gross act of treachery was likely to be the outcome of the French invasion. Yet in most of the districts of Spain there was a gap of some days between the arrival of the news of the King’s captivity and the first outbreak of popular indignation. The fact was that the people were waiting for the lawful and constituted authorities to take action, and did not move of themselves till it was certain that no initiative was to be expected from those in high places. But Spain was a country which had long been governed on despotic lines; and its official chiefs, whether the nominees of Godoy or of the knot of intriguers who had just won their way to power under Ferdinand, were not the men to lead a war of national independence. Many were mere adventurers, who had risen to preferment by flattering the late favourite. Others were typical bureaucrats, whose only concern was to accept as legitimate whatever orders reached them from Madrid: provided those orders were couched in the proper form and written on the right paper, they did not look to see whether the signature at the bottom was that of Godoy or of the Infante Don Antonio, or of Murat. Others again were courtiers who owed their position to their great names, and not to any personal ability. It is this fact that accounts for the fortnight or even three weeks of torpor that followed the events of the second and sixth of May. Murat’s orders during that space travelled over the country, and most of the captains-general and other authorities[p. 65] seemed inclined to obey them. Yet they were orders which should have stirred up instant disobedience; the Mediterranean squadron was to be sent to Toulon, where (if it did not get taken on the way by the British) it would fall into the hands of Napoleon. A large detachment of the depleted regular army was to sail for Buenos Ayres, with the probable prospect of finding itself ere long on the hulks at Portsmouth, instead of on the shores of the Rio de la Plata. The Swiss regiments in Spanish pay were directed to be transferred to the French establishment, and to take the oath to Napoleon. All this could have no object save that of diminishing the fighting power of the country.

The first province where the people plucked up courage to act without their officials, and to declare war on France in spite of the dreadful odds against them, was the remote and inaccessible principality of the Asturias, pressed in between the Bay of Biscay and the Cantabrian hills. Riots began at its capital, Oviedo, as early as the first arrival of the news from Madrid on May 9, when Murat’s edicts were torn down in spite of the feeble resistance of the commander of the garrison and some of the magistrates. The Asturias was one of the few provinces of Spain which still preserved vestiges of its mediaeval representative institutions. It had a ‘Junta General,’ a kind of local ‘estates,’ which chanced to be in session at the time of the crisis. Being composed of local magnates and citizens, and not of officials and bureaucrats, this body was sufficiently in touch with public opinion to feel itself borne on to action. After ten days of secret preparation, the city of Oviedo and the surrounding country-side rose in unison on May 24: the partisans of the new government were imprisoned, and next day the estates formally declared war on Napoleon Bonaparte, and ordered a levy of 18,000 men from the principality to resist invasion. A great part of the credit for this daring move must be given to the president of the Junta, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, who had stirred up his colleagues as early as the thirteenth by declaring that ‘when and wherever one single Spaniard took arms against Napoleon, he would shoulder a musket and put himself at that man’s side.’ The Asturians had knowledge that other provinces would follow their example; there was only one battalion of regular troops and one of militia under arms in the province; its financial resources were small. Its only strength lay in the rough mountains that had once sheltered King Pelayo from the[p. 66] Moors. It was therefore an astounding piece of patriotism when the inhabitants of the principality threw down the challenge to the victor of Jena and Austerlitz, confiding in their stern resolution and their good cause. All through the war the Asturias played a very creditable part in the struggle, and never let the light of liberty go out, though often its capital and its port of Gihon fell into French hands.

One of the first and wisest measures taken by the Asturian Junta was an attempt to interest Great Britain in the insurrection. On May 30 they sent to London two emissaries (one of whom was the historian Tore?o) on a Jersey privateer, whose captain was persuaded to turn out of his course for the public profit. On June 7 they had reached London and had an interview with Canning, the Foreign Secretary of the Tory government which had lately come into power. Five days later they were assured that the Asturias might draw on England for all it required in the way of arms, munitions, and money. All this was done before it was known in England that any other Spanish province was stirring, for it was not till June 22 that the plenipotentiaries of the other juntas began to appear in London.

The revolt of other provinces followed in very quick succession. Galicia rose on May 30, in spite of its captain-general, Filanghieri, whose resistance to the popular voice cost him his popularity and, not long after, his life. Corunna and Ferrol, the two northern arsenals of Spain, led the way. This addition to the insurgent forces was very important, for the province was full of troops—the garrisons that protected the ports from English descents. There were eighteen battalions of regulars and fourteen of militia—a whole army—concentrated in this remote corner of Spain. Napoleon’s plan of removing the Spanish troops from the neighbourhood of Madrid had produced the unintended result of making the outlying provinces very strong for self-defence.

It is more fitting for a Spanish than an English historian to descend into the details of the rising of each province of Spain. The general characteristics of the outburst in each region were much the same: hardly anywhere did the civil or military officials in charge of the district take the lead. Almost invariably they hung back, fearing for their places and profits, and realizing far better than did the insurgents the enormous military power which they were challenging. The leaders of the movement were either[p. 67] local magnates not actually holding office—like the celebrated Joseph Palafox at Saragossa—or demagogues of the streets, or (but less frequently than might have been expected) churchmen, Napoleon was quite wrong when he called the Spanish rising ‘an insurrection of monks.’ The church followed the nation, and not the nation the church: indeed many of the spiritual hierarchy were among the most servile instruments of Murat. Among them was the primate of Spain, the Archbishop of Toledo, who was actually a scion of the house of Bourbon. There were many ecclesiastics among the dishonoured ninety-one that went to Bayonne, if there were others who (like the Bishop of Santander) put themselves at the head of their flocks when the country took arms.

It was a great misfortune for Spain that the juntas, which were everywhere formed when the people rose, had to be composed in large part of men unacquainted with government and organization. There were many intelligent patriots among their members, a certain number of statesmen who had been kept down or disgraced by Godoy, but also a large proportion of ambitious windbags and self-seeking intriguers. It was hard to constitute a capable government, on the spur of the moment, in a country which had suffered twenty years of Godoy’s rule.

An unfortunate feature of the rising was that in most of the provinces, and especially those of the south, it took from the first a very sanguinary cast. It was natural that the people should sweep away in their anger every official who tried to keep them down, or hesitated to commit himself to the struggle with France. But there was no reason to murder these weaklings or traitors, in the style of the Jacobins. There was a terrible amount of assassination, public and private, during the first days of the insurrection. Three captains-general were slain under circumstances of brutal cruelty—Filanghieri in Galicia, Torre del Fresno in Estremadura, Solano at Cadiz. The fate of Solano may serve as an example: he tried to keep the troops from joining the people, and vainly harangued the mob: pointing to the distant sails of the English blockading squadron he shouted, ‘There are your real enemies!’ But his words had no effect: he was hunted down in a house where he took refuge, and was being dragged to be hung on the public gallows, when the hand of a fanatic (or perhaps of a secret friend who wished to spare him a dishonourable death) dealt him a fatal[p. 68] stab in the side. Gregorio de la Cuesta, the Governor-General of Old Castile, who was destined to play such a prominent and unhappy part in the history of the next two years, nearly shared Solano’s fate. The populace of Valladolid, where he was residing, rose in insurrection like those of the other cities of Spain. They called on their military chief to put himself at their head; but Cuesta, an old soldier of the most unintelligent and brainless sort, hated mob-violence almost more than he hated the French. He held back, not from a desire to serve Bonaparte, but from a dislike to being bullied by civilians. The indignant populace erected a gallows outside his house and came to hang him thereon. It was not, it is said, till the rope was actually round his neck that the obstinate old man gave in. The Castilians promptly released him, and put him at the head of the armed rabble which formed their only force. Remembering the awful slaughter at Cabezon, at Medina de Rio Seco, and at Medellin, which his incapacity and mulish obstinacy was destined to bring about, it is impossible not to express the wish that his consent to take arms had been delayed for a few minutes longer.

All over Spain there took place, during the last days of May and the first week of June, scores of murders of prominent men, of old favourites of Godoy, of colonels who would not allow their regiments to march, of officials who had shown alacrity in obeying the orders of Murat. In the Asturias and at Saragossa alone do the new juntas seem to have succeeded in keeping down assassination. The worst scenes took place at Valencia, where a mad priest, the Canon Baltasar Calvo, led out a mob of ruffians who in two days [June 6-7] murdered 338 persons, the whole colony of French merchants residing in that wealthy town. It is satisfactory to know that when the Junta of Valencia felt itself firmly seated in the saddle of power, it seized and executed this abominable person and his chief lieutenants. In too many parts of Spain the murderers went unpunished: yet remembering the provocation which the nation had received, and comparing the blood shed by mob-violence with that which flowed in Revolutionary France, we must consider the outburst deplorable rather than surprising.

When the insurrection had reached its full development, we find that it centred round five points, in each of which a separate junta had seized on power and begun to levy an army. The most powerful focus was Seville, from which all Andalusia took its[p. 69] directions: indeed the Junta of Seville had assumed the arrogant style of ‘supreme Junta of Spain and the Indies,’ to which it had no legitimate title. The importance of Andalusia was that it was full of troops, the regular garrisons having been joined by most of the expeditionary corps which had returned from southern Portugal. Moreover it was in possession of a full treasury and a fleet, and had free communication with the English at Gibraltar. On June 15 the Andalusians struck the first military blow that told on Napoleon, by bombarding and capturing the French fleet (the relics of Trafalgar) which lay at their mercy within the harbour of Cadiz.

The second in importance of the centres of resistance was Galicia, which was also fairly well provided with troops, and contained the arsenals of Ferrol and Corunna. The risings in Asturias, and the feebler gatherings of patriots in Leon and Old Castile, practically became branches of the Galician insurrection, though they were directed by their own juntas and tried to work for themselves. It was on the army of Galicia that they relied for support, and without it they would not have been formidable. The boundaries of this area of insurrection were Santander, Valladolid, and Segovia: further east the troops of Moncey and Bessières, in the direction of Burgos and Aranda, kept the country-side from rising. There were sporadic gatherings of peasants in the Upper Ebro valley and the mountains of Northern Castile, but these were mere unorganized ill-armed bands that half a battalion could disperse. It was the same in the Basque Provinces and Navarre: here too the French lay cantoned so thickly that it was impossible to meddle with them: their points of concentration were Vittoria and the two fortresses of Pampeluna and San Sebastian.

The other horn of the half-moon of revolt, which encircled Madrid, was composed of the insurrections in Murcia and Valencia to the south and Aragon to the north. These regions were much less favourably situated for forming centres of resistance, because they were very weak in organized troops. When the Aragonese elected Joseph Palafox as their captain-general and declared war on France, there were only 2,000 regulars and one battery of artillery in their realm. The levies which they began to raise were nothing more than half-armed peasants, with no adequate body of officers to train and drill them. Valencia and Murcia were a little better off, because the arsenal of Cartagena and its garrison lay within[p. 70] their boundaries, but there were only 9,000 men in all under arms in the two provinces. Clearly they could not hope to deliver such a blow as Galicia or Andalusia might deal.

The last centre of revolt, Catalonia, did not fall into the same strategical system as the other four. It looked for its enemies not at Madrid, but at Barcelona, where Lecchi and Duhesme were firmly established ever since their coup de main in February. The Catalans had as their task the cutting off of this body of invaders from its communication with France, and the endeavour to prevent new forces from joining it by crossing the Eastern Pyrenees. The residence of the insurrectionary Junta was at Tarragona, but the most important point in the province for the moment was Gerona, a fortress commanding the main road from France, which Napoleon had not had the foresight to seize at the same moment that he won by treachery Barcelona and Figueras. While the Spaniards could hold it, they had some chance of isolating the army of Duhesme from its supports. In Catalonia, or in the Balearic Isles off its coast, there were in May 1808, about 16,000 men of regular troops, among whom there were only 1,200 soldiers of the cavalry arm. There was no militia, but by old custom the levée en masse might always be called out in moments of national danger. These irregulars, somatenes as they were called (from somaten, the alarm-bell which roused them), turned out in great numbers according to ancient custom: they had been mobilized thirteen years before in the French War of 1793-5 and their warlike traditions were by no means forgotten. All through the Peninsular struggle they made a very creditable figure, considering their want of organization and the difficulty of keeping them together.

The French armies, putting aside Duhesme’s isolated force at Barcelona, lay compactly in a great wedge piercing into the heart of Spain. Its point was at Toledo, just south of Madrid: its base was a line drawn from San Sebastian to Pampeluna across the Western Pyrenees. Its backbone lay along the great high road from Vittoria by Burgos to Madrid. The advantageous point of this position was that it completely split Central Spain in two: there was no communication possible between the insurgents of Galicia and those of Aragon. On the other hand the wedge was long and narrow, and exposed to be pierced by a force striking at it either from the north-east or the north-west. The Aragonese[p. 71] rebels were too few to be dangerous; but the strong Spanish army of Galicia was well placed for a blow at Burgos, and a successful attack in that direction would cut off Madrid from France, and leave the troops in and about the capital, who formed the point of the intrusive wedge, in a very perilous condition. This is the reason why, in the first stage of the war, Napoleon showed great anxiety as to what the army of Galicia might do, while professing comparative equanimity about the proceedings of the other forces of the insurrection.

Having thus sketched the strategic position of affairs in the Peninsula during the first days of June, we must set ourselves to learn the main characteristics of the military geography of Spain, and to estimate the character, organization, and fighting value of the two armies which were just about to engage. Without some knowledge of the conditions of warfare in Spain, a mere catalogue of battles and marches would be absolutely useless.