Blake, had been enabled to place himself between Gerona and the Spanish army. It did not, however, surrender till its walls had become wholly useless; nor till the strength of its inhabitants had been wholly exhausted by fatigue and famine. It capitulated on the 10th of December, 1809, and the French on the 11th entered the city, where they found eight standards and 200 pieces of cannon. By the capitulation the garrison was to evacuate the city with all the honours of war, and be conducted prisoners of war to France. The inhabitants were to be respected; that is, both their persons and property was to be safe: and the catholic religion was to be continued and protected.

Thus at the close of 1809, all the fortresses of Spain had fallen into the hands of the enemy, and all her principal armies been defeated and dispersed; and by dispersion, for a time annihilated. The defects to which these evils are to be attributed, need not be pointed out to any one who has perused even a general and imperfect account of the campaign. But the grand cause of the whole was undoubtedly the senselessness, the ignorance, the contracted views, and the paltry intrigues among the supreme junta, who were more attentive to the preservation of their own power than to the defence of the country. If at the same time that they had declared an intention of reforming abuses and respecting the rights of the people, they had diffused a knowledge of all that was going on on the theatre of the peninsula of Europe, of the relative interests and strength of different powers

In

and parties, and collected the public opinion into one luminous focus, and cherished the public spirit to which public opinion would have given birth, public virtue, genius, talents of every kind would have sprung up, raised their heads, and flourished. But instead of this, their very first and chief care was to prevent the intercourse of minds, by restraining the press. They were more afraid of tumults among the Spanish people than of the French. They neither knew how to infuse energy where it was wanting, nor to direct it where it existed. many parts of Spain there was a spirit of resistance, which in the hands of an able government, might not only have rendered it of avail against the enemy, but in rousing the indifferent, and even forcing the unwilling to cooperate in the struggle. But selfishness, indolence, procrastination, and imbecility marked throughout the conduct of the junta. The war that was kindled on the Danube, and in Italy and the Tyrol, procured them a respite when they were on the point of destruction. This fortunate juncture fed the hopes, but did not call forth. exertion on the part of the Spanish government.

The mighty and decisive battle of Wagram was fought on the 5th of July. Though no troops were sent from France to Spain until October, after the conclusion of a peace with Austria, intelligence of that decisive victory of Wagram conveyed by the telegraph had a visible influence on the conduct of the Spanish army in Spain, which after that crisis were seen withdrawing from the north towards

the

the southern provinces of Spain, and indicating a disposition to resume offensive operations. Towards the end of the year Buonaparte poured fresh troops into the peninsula, and resumed the design of reducing Cadiz, the most important point in Spain, and planting his eagles on the towers of Lisbon, which the war with Austria had suspended.

The aspect of affairs became now more alarming than ever; and the junta, whether from a consciousness of their own imbecility and want of authority, or an apprehension that the public dissatisfaction with their management, for it can scarcely be called go

vernment, might burst into some fatal explosion, issued a procla mation for the meeting of the cortes*. The first of January, 1810, was fixed for the assembling of the cortes, and the first of March following that for entering on their functions. But if this great national assembly had been convened in January, 1809, when Buonaparte set out from Valladolid to make war on the Austrians, the French troops he left behind him, before the conclusion of the year, might have been driven out of the peninsula; and at all events, some efforts would have been made worthy of a great and high-spirited nation.

CHAP.

IT

[T is not the least remarkable among the circumstances that attract attention in the conduct of Buonaparte that he thought it worth while to have recourse to the aid of excessive exaggeration, fictions, or in plain term, lies. This was a system which so profound a calculator must have been well aware could not maintain itself long. But he calculated, no doubt, that certain objects of importance would be obtained before his lies should be detected. At the same time that the correspondence between Count Metternich and Champagny betrayed the utmost jealousy and mistrust on the part of both France and Austria, Buonaparte proclaimed daily in his newspapers in France, Italy, and Spain, that the most perfect harmony and cordiality prevailed between the courts of the Thuilleries and Vienna. And in his German and Polish newspapers again, he represented the cause of the Spanish insurgents, as he called the patriots, as quite desperate; their tumultuous parties as broken and dispersed. He stated that Saragossa was reduced some weeks before it actually surrendered; and that Lisbon, in the beginning of 1809, was in the hands of the French. He wished

to discourage the Austrians by his account of the state of affairs in Spain; and to dishearten the Spaniards by precluding all hopes of co-operation from the Austrians. Having so uniformly and strongly declared that the views and inclinations of Austria towards France were wholly pacific, he was, when on the very point of breaking out, under the manifest dilemma of either contradicting himself on this subject, or of admitting that he plunged both his French and Italian subjects and his vassals in Germany deeper and deeper into the gulph of war without necessity. He made a distinction, therefore, between the will of the emperor Francis and even that of those most in his confidence, as we have noticed above, and the general spirit and tone of the country, which, if not vigorously counteracted, would draw along with it both the emperor and his ministers.* He derided, in his journals, the Austrian project of making war on France. He said that the maintenance of this must depend, as the preparations for it had done, on paper money, which would soon fall to an enormous discount, and at last to nothing. But it was evident to all the world, and to none more manifest than to Buonaparte him

self,

self, that the credit or discredit of that money would depend on the fortune of arms to which the Austrians were now to appeal.

The point of time for commencing hostilities against France was well chosen. If they had been commenced or unequivocally and decidedly announced sooner, the designs of Buonaparte on Spain would have been suspended, or so artfully disguised that the mass of the Spanish nation might not have discovered them. After his decoying and dragging into captivity the royal family, all Spain, as we have seen, was in a blaze. If, again, the Austrians had delayed hostilities until Spain should be subdued, the courage and the military glory of the French would have been more increased, and their power more irresistible. In either case France would have been involved in only two wars; one with Austria and one with Spain. But in April, 1809, there was presented to France the prospect of three successive wars; the war begun, but far from being terminated, in Spain, which must, for a time, be turned from a system of attack to one of defensive measures, and thereby give the Spaniards an opportunity of drawing breath and recruiting their strength; a war with Austria; and, thirdly, what may be called a definitive war in Spain, in case of the French being successful in their war against Austria. By this prolongation of war the chances of success to the general cause of the final deliverance of Europe, a benefit by which Austria, however humbled for a time, must be ultimately bene

fitted, would be multiplied. While the tyrant of France should thus drag his fatigued troops from one extremity of Europe to another, some portions of those troops might be brought to put the ques tion to themselves, to what end they were thus toiling, shedding their blood, and endangering their lives, and act accordingly. While the great French army, with Buonaparte at its head, should advance from one quarter of Europe to another, fortunate circumstances might occur sufficiently powerful to excite formidable insurrections in his rear.

War was declared by Austria against France in the form of a proclamation of the archduke Charles, glowing with sentiments the most fitted to rouze indignation against the French, and awaken all their love for their own country, dated at Vienna, April 6, 1809.* Proclamations in the same strain were also issued, one by the emperor Francis to the Austrian nation, April 8; and of the same date by the archduke Charles to the German nations. These proclamations were followed by a manifesto, detailing the various causes of just offence, provocation, and alarm, which Austria had received from France; the sacrifices the emperor had made for the continuance of peace; the principles of self-defence; and a due regard to the independence and the interests to the neighbouring and all other nations that guided the conduct of his imperial majesty at the pre

sent crisis.

The principal consideration that

determined the Austrian government to enter on war with France at this particular time was the great distance of Buonaparte's strongest army. In order to take advantage of this circumstance, it was necessary to act with promptitude and celerity. And as an immense line of frontier might be attacked by the French, whom it was therefore necessary to keep in check, the Austrians could not concentrate their forces without opening a passage to Vienna for five different French armies, viz. from the Venetian territory, from Bavaria, from Franconia, from Saxony, and, lastly, from Silesia. This concentration of the Austrian forces too would have required much time, and the combined movements of so many troops would have been the signal of war to Buonaparte. But of all the passages that might be opened the most to be dreaded by Austria was that to Vienna from Munich. It was the shortest and the easiest, as well as that on which the greatest number of troops could be brought to march at the same time. It was in this direction, of course, that the main force of the Austrians was to proceed, and bear on Bavaria, for the defence of the Austrian dominions. It is farther to be considered that the most important conquest that could be made by Austria in a military point of view, as appears from a single glance at her frontiers, was the Tyrol. That as the course of the war would in its progress be directed by that of the Danube it would be necessary to have the command of a bridge across that river, even in Bavaria, for establishing a communication between the troops of

Austria and those of Bohemia; and that the most convenient point for such a communication was Ratisbon, as it is nearest to the two routes of Egra and Pilsen, between Bohemia and Bavaria.

The state and distribution of the Austrian arms, in the beginning of April, 1809, was as follows.

The whole of the army was divided into nine corps, each corps consisting of 30 or 40,000 men. The first six of these corps was under the immediate orders of his serene highness the archduke Charles, commander in chief of all the forces. Under the archduke the count de Bellegarde was at the head of the first corps; count Kollowrath of the second; the prince of Hohenzollern of the third; the baron of Rosenberg of the fourth; the archduke Lewis of the fifth; and general Hiller of the sixth. The seventh corps was sent under the archduke Ferdinand into Poland; and the eighth and ninth to Italy, under the archduke John. The lieutenantgeneral of the eighth corps was the marquis of Chastellar; of the ninth corps general Guilay. Besides these corps there were two of reserve; one of 20,000 men, commanded by prince John of Lichtenstein; the other of 10,000 under the orders of general Kinmayer: and troops to the number of 25,000 in the Tyrol, Croatia, and in small parties acting as partizans on the confines of Bohemia. In addition to all these there was a kind of militia in the interior of the Austrian kingdoms and provinces, called the land-wehr. So that it was computed, that when the archduke Charles entered on the campaign, he had at his disposal not much less than 400,000 men.