success must be decided by the cavalry; and yet no measures were adopted by the central junta for providing this essential kind of force. Don Francisco Riquelme, who commanded a division of the Galician army, suggested the propriety of importing horses from South America. They might be landed in Spain for seven or eight pounds a-head; they are used to little and coarse fare; they require no grooming; and the passage from America would take little more time than that from Spithead, without being exposed to many of the risks. This proposal was communicated to General Stewart, that it might be laid before Lord Castlereagh; but it was not attended to; and Riquelme, who might probably have obtained some attention to it from his own government, through General Blake, whose confidence he deservedly possessed, fell early in the campaign.

The provinces of Biscay, Navarre, and Catalonia, filled with French troops, and at all times exposed to fresh invasions, now that the passes and strong holds were in the possession of the enemy, could not declare themselves so early for the patriotic cause as those parts of Spain which were more favourably situated. Catalonia was now in arms; and, after his failure at Gérona, Duhesme could do little more than maintain himself in Barcelona. By land the patriots cut off his supplies, and the English intercepted them by sea, while Lord Cochrane kept the adjoining coast of France, as far as Marseilles, in perpetual alarm, by enterprises as wisely planned as they were fearlessly executed. Biscay took arms at the beginning of August. Before the flight of the intruder could be known there, a junta was formed at Bilbao. This

Aug. 16.

place was of such importance to the French, that they sent 6000 men from Vittoria, with 400 cavalry, to recover it. It is a beautiful but defenceless city, commanded on every side by its hanging gardens. About half a league from the town, a body of patriots, far inferior in number, opposed them; but, having lost two of their leaders, one of them a brother of Castanos, they gave way, and the French entering the city, committed their usual atrocities there. A general and extraordinary junta of the province was now convoked by the invaders, under the presidency of the traitor Massaredo, a Biscayan. Few men in Spain have borne so high a character, before he sold himself to the Buonapartes, and few men have since so infamously distinguished themselves in the intruder's service.

Massaredo addressed this assembly, telling them the insurrection had been excited in Bilbao by worthless persons, of no weight in the province, enemies of tranquillity, who led the people astray for the purpose of fettering the general congress, and substituting a cruel anarchy in its place. These disturbances, he said, arose from the errors into which the public feeling had been led away, and from attending more to individual passion than to reason and the public good; and to such a height had these errors risen, that the sufferings of widows, the lamentations of children, the miseries of misgui ded families, and the general desolation, were accounted as nothing. Heaven grant, exclaimed the traitor, affecting to commiserate evils which he himself was instrumental in bringing on-Heaven grant that the mischiefs which our country has already

endured be not followed by new disasters; for only by weighing well the dangers which threaten it, can it avoid them. There is no longer any uncertainty. The Emperor Napoleon cannot possibly depart from the resolution which he has taken. The great powers of the continent have acknowledged his brother as king of Spain, and have sent their ministers new credentials. Dreadful armies approach, for the purpose of establishing him upon his throne.His majesty, however, had consigned to oblivion the mistakes and errors of the insurgents; he would punish only the heads and beginners of the insurrection; with regard to them, the law must take its course, for the purpose of preventing them, in future, from disturbing the repose and prosperity of their loyal countrymen." Massaredo was once a lover of liberty, and having professed generous and good principles, and perhaps at that time felt them, he must have known that the language which he now held was not less futile than it was base. To whom were the sufferings of the widows and the orphans, the bloodshed, the violations, the general desolation which he predicted, imputable? To the tyrant, whose will and pleasure it was to depose the lawful king of Spain, for the purpose of appointing his brother to succeed him, or to the nation who indignantly refused to have a stranger thus thrust upon them? Bilbao remained a month in possession of the French; it was then retaken by the Marquis de Portazgo, and had not the advanced posts of his army inadvertently begun to fire too soon upon the enemy, at a time when their approach was not suspected, the whole of the garrison would have

Sept. 20.

VOL. I. PART I.

been made prisoners. After an action of between three and four hours, the French fled, losing about 400 men. But considerable bodies of French had now passed the Pyrenees, and Marshal Ney, who arrived at the end of September, to take the chief command Sept. 27. in Spain, feigning to retreat upon Vittoria, for the purpose of deceiving Portazgo, suddenly marched for Bilbao, with the centre of his army. The marquis, aware of his inferiority, drew off in time, with all his artillery, not losing a single man, and took up a position at Balmaseda. There he was joined by a detachment of the Galician army, under Riquelme. Blake, who commanded on the part of Spain, immediately made preparations to recover the city; but General Merlin, whom Ney had left to command there, not waiting to be attacked, evacuated it on the night of the 11th of October.

The French force at this time amounted to about sixty thousand men. They had the Bay of Biscay on their right, the Ebro on their front, and the river and province of Aragon on their left. The Spanish armies were nominally 130,000; but it is probable that they were never, in fact, half this number. The left, or western army, under Blake, did not amount to 20,000, including those regiments which had escaped from Denmark. The line which he occupied extended from Burgos to Bilbao, and he was advancing beyond the latter city, to cut off the communication of the French forces. Palafox commanded the eastern army, or that of Aragon and Valencia, part of which was stationed near Zaragoza, and part advancing toward the Pyrenees, on the left of

20

7

accomplishment of hopes which they had been taught so confidently to expect; and the government itself either partook of, or yielded to the impatience of the people. The wise precautions with which the junta of Seville began the war were forgotten or neglected, and the central junta called upon the generals to hasten their operations against the enemy. However just, they said, the reasons might have been for delay, it had been mischievous, and many evils must be increased by it, especially if the enemy should receive their expected reinforcements. Such inactivity could no longer be borne with indifference, and an end must be put to it. They Oct. 18. therefore appointed Don Francisco Palafox to go as their representative to the armies, with the Marquis de Coupigni, and the Count de Montijo under him, to consult with the generals, concert with them a plan of operations, and himself decide upon such attack as he might think expedient. The honours due to him, they added, as their deputy, were to be the same as those due to a captain-general of the army.

Such a commission manifested only the incapacity of the central junta, and their want of confidence in the generals. The inactivity of which they complained, proceeded from want of skill in some of their commanders, and want of adequate force. Blake, with all his zeal, and all his talents, was crippled, because he had no cavalry thenglish, who were to have co-operated with him, were detained in Portugal till the close of October, to protect Junot and his army from the Portugueze; and then they had to march by land several

hundred miles, instead of going by sea, and landing as near as possible to the scene of action, because their transports were employed in conveying the enemy to France! Before the revolution in Spain offered to this country so fair a hope,-rather so compleat a certainty, of bringing our long war to a happy termination, had measures sufficiently vigorous been pursued,-Mr Canning* had declared his opinion, that we possessed in our navy a greater power of active hostility than the nation was perhaps itself aware of,-a power, he said, scarcely inferior to that of a conquering army, and sufficient to controul even the haughty mind of the ruler of France. Now was the time to have brought that power into action, to put forth the whole strength of our fleets and armies, to have seized St Sebastians and Passage, landed our forces in the rear of the French, and have destroyed all who were within the peninsula before other arinies could come to their assistance. Anhundred thousand men would certainly have effected this; they would have swept the neck of the peninsula from sea to sea, have cleared it for the Spaniards, and should then have left them to defend. it. From a military establishment of thrice that number, an hundred thousand men could well have been spared, or two hundred, for an enterprize of which the object was so important, and the event so calculably certain. Nor would there have been any difficulty in transporting such an army, if ships of war, as they are in every respect the fittest for the purpose, had been employ ed for it. Unhappily the enemy of Spain was more active than her ally..

BUONAPARTE had not expected a patriotic revolution in Spain. Sure of the members of the old government, and of many of the grandees and nobles; having stripped the country of its best troops, and kidnapped the whole royal family, the people, he thought, if they attempted opposition, would instantly be crushed by the overpowering force which he had marched into the heartofthe kingdom, and effectually intimidated by the first slaughter, and the military murders which followed it. It has ever been his policy, and in this it is that the main wisdom of his policy has consisted, to ensure success, as far as the employment of adequate means can render the end certain. On this occasion, as in his expedition to St Domingo, his calculation was erroneous; for the character of the Spaniards, and the strength of good principles, had not been taken into the account. Wholly unprepared, therefore, for such a resistance, his first care was to conceal from the French all knowledge of the mortifying reverses his arms had experienced; while he se

com

cured the subserviency of the other continental powers, and collected fresh armies to pour into Spain.Accordingly, while all Spain was in arms, the French papers represent ed it as joyfully welcoming its new sovereign. "The disturbances," they said, "which broke out in a few of the provinces were pletely quelled: they were occasioned only by the common people, who wished to take advantage of the suspension of government, that they might pillage the rich the disaffected had got together some bands of smugglers, opened the prisons, and put arms into the hands of the felons: these wretches had committed great excesses upon their peaceful countrymen, but every thing was now quiet. The captains-general, the magistrates, and the polished part of the nation displayed the best sentiments, and the greatest repose and best state of mind prevailed. At Cadiz, the public tranquillity did not experience a moment's interrup tion; the inhabitants of that interesting city had resisted with the