Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume IV. Вальтер Скотт
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defence.
Cadiz contained a garrison of 20,000 men, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, under the command of General Graham, a distinguished officer, whose merits, like those of Buonaparte, had been first distinguished at the siege of Toulon. Marshal Soult, as first in command in Spain, disposed himself to form the siege of this city, the capture of which would have been almost the death-knell to the cause of the patriots.
But although these important successes read well in the Moniteur, yet such was the indomitable character of the Spaniards, which Napoleon had contrived fully to awaken, that misfortunes, which would have crushed all hope in any other people, seemed to them only an incentive to further and more desperate resistance. When they talked of the state of their country, they expressed no dismay at their present adverse circumstances. It had cost their ancestors, they said, two centuries to rid themselves of the Moors; they had no doubt that in a shorter time they should free themselves of the yoke of France; but they must reckon on time and opportunity, as well as valour. The events of the war in many respects gave credit to their hopes. The Spaniards, often found weak where they thought themselves strongest, proved sometimes most powerful, where, to all human appearance, they seemed weakest. While they lost Andalusia, believed to be so defensible, the mountainous province of Galicia, through which the French had so lately marched triumphantly in pursuit of the British, taking in their progress the important maritime towns of Corunna and Ferrol, was wrenched from the conquerors by the exertions of Romana, assisted by the warlike natives of the country, and at the head of an undisciplined and ill-equipped army.
In Catalonia, too, the French had hardly time to accomplish the conquest of towns and fortresses to which we have alluded, when they found themselves checked, baffled, and sometimes defeated, by the Catalans, under Lacy, O'Donnell, and D'Eroles, who maintained the patriotic cause at the head of those energetic marksmen, the Somatenes, or Miquelets. Nay, while the French were extending their seeming conquests to the Mediterranean Sea, and thundering at the gates of Cadiz, so little were they in peaceful possession of Navarre, and the other provinces adjoining to France, that not an officer with despatches could pass from Burgos to Bayonne without a powerful escort, and bands of Spaniards even showed themselves on the French frontier, and passed it for the purpose of skirmishing and raising contributions. Such being the case on the frontiers nearest to France, it may be well supposed, that the midland provinces were not more subordinate. In fact, through the whole Peninsula the French held no influence whatever that was not inspired by the force of the bayonet and sabre; and where these could not operate, the country was in universal insurrection.
The basis of this extensive and persevering resistance was laid in the general system of Guerilla, or partisan warfare, to which the genius of the Spanish people, and the character of their country, are peculiarly fitted, and which offered a resistance to the invaders more formidable by far than that of regular armies, because less tangible, and less susceptible of being crushed in general actions. It was with the defenders of Spain, as with the guardian of the enchanted castle in the Italian romance. An armed warrior first encountered the champion who attempted the adventure, and when he had fallen under the sword of the assailant, the post which he had occupied appeared manned by a body of pigmies, small in size, but so numerous and so enterprising as to annoy the knight-errant far more than the gigantic force of his first adversary. The qualities of a partisan, or irregular soldier, are inherent in the national character of the Spaniard. Calm, temperate, capable of much fatigue, and veiling under a cold demeanour an ardent and fiery character, they are qualified to wait for opportunities of advantage, and are not easily discouraged by difficulty or defeat. Good marksmen in general, and handling the lance, sword, and dagger with address, they are formidable in an ambush, and not less so in a close mêlée, where men fight hand to hand, more as nature dictates than according to the rules of war. The obstinacy of the Castilian character also, had its advantages in this peculiar state of warfare. Neither promises nor threats made any impression on them; and the severities executed in fulfilment of menaces, only inflamed the spirit of hostility by that of private revenge, to which the Spaniard is far more accessible than either to the voice of caution or persuasion.
Neither were the officers less qualified for the task than the men. The command of a guerilla was of a character not to be desired by any who did not find himself equal to, and in some measure called upon to accept, the dangerous pre-eminence. There were few Spanish officers possessed of the scientific knowledge of war, and of course few adequate to lead armies into the field; but the properties necessary for a guerilla leader are imprinted in the human mind, and ready for exercise whenever they are required. These leaders were, as it chanced: some of them men of high birth and military education; some had been smugglers or peasants, or had practised other professions; as was discovered from their noms-de-guerre, as the Curate, the Doctor, the Shepherd, and so forth.44 Many of their names will be long associated with the recollection of their gallant actions; and those of others, as of Mina and the Empecinado,45 will, at the same time, remind us of the gross ingratitude with which their heroic efforts have been rewarded.
These daring men possessed the most perfect knowledge of the passes, strengths, woods, mountains, and wildernesses, of the provinces in which they warred; and the exact intelligence which they obtained from the peasantry, made them intimately acquainted with the motions of the enemy. Was too weak a French detachment moved, it ran the risk of being cut off; was the garrison too feeble at the place which it left, the fort was taken. The slightest as well as the most important objects, met the attention of the guerillas; a courier could not move without a large escort, nor could the intrusive King take the amusement of hunting, however near to his capital, unless, like Earl Percy in the ballad, attended by a guard of fifteen hundred men. The Juramentados, those Spaniards that is, who had sworn allegiance to King Joseph, were of course closely watched by the guerillas, and if they rendered themselves inconveniently or obnoxiously active in the cause they had espoused, were often kidnapped and punished as traitors; examples which rendered submission to, or active co-operation with the French, at least as imprudent as boldly opposing the invaders.
The numbers of the guerillas varied at different times, as the chiefs rose or declined in reputation, and as they possessed the means of maintaining their followers. Some led small flying armies of two thousand and upwards. Others, or the same chiefs under a reverse of fortune, had only ten or twenty followers. The French often attempted to surprise and destroy the parties by which they suffered most, and for that purpose detached moveable columns from different points, to assemble on the rendezvous of the guerilla. But, notwithstanding all their activity and dexterity on such expeditions, they rarely succeeded in catching their enemy at unawares; or if it so happened, the individuals composing the band broke up, and dispersed by ways only known to themselves; and when the French officers accounted them totally annihilated, they were again assembled on another point, exercising a partisan war on the rear, and upon the communications, of those who lately expected to have them at their mercy. Thus invisible when they were sought for, the guerillas seemed every where present when damage could be done to the invaders. To chase them was to pursue the wind, and to circumvent them was to detain water with a sieve.
Soult had recourse to severity to intimidate these desultory but most annoying enemies, by publishing a proclamation [May 9] threatening to treat the members of the guerillas, not as regular soldiers, but as banditti taken in the fact, and thus execute such of them as chanced to be made prisoners. The chiefs, in reply to this proclamation, published a royal decree, as they termed it, declaring that each Spaniard was, by the necessity of the times, a soldier, and that he was entitled to all military privileges when taken with arms in his hands. They therefore announced, that having ample means of retaliation in their power, they would not scruple to make use of them, by executing three Frenchmen for every one of their followers who should suffer in consequence of Soult's unjust and inhuman proclamation.46 These threats were fulfilled on both sides. It is said, a horrid example of cruelty was given by a French general, who in a manner crucified, by nailing to trees, eight prisoners, whom he had taken from the guerillas of the Empecinado. The daring Spaniard's passions were wound up too high to listen either to pity or fear; he retaliated the cruelty by nailing the same number of Frenchmen to the same trees, and leaving them to
Napier, vol. ii., p. 349; Southey, vol. iii., p. 511.
"Various explanations have been offered of this name. One account says, that upon finding his family murdered by the French, Juan Martin Diaz smeared his face with pitch and made a solemn vow of vengeance. Another, that he was so called because of his swarthy complexion. But in the account of his life it is said, that all the inhabitants of Castrillo de Duero, where he was born, have this nickname indiscriminately given them by their neighbours, in consequence of a black mud, called
Southey, vol. iv., p. 405.