Wellington’s Peninsular Campaign

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Introduction
The Treaty of Tilsit saw Napoleon at the height of his power. Russia had become his ally; the rest of Continental Europe was helpless against him. Only England, made safe by that narrow little strip of water between her and France, continued to defy the conqueror. Unable to reach his foe with military arms, Napoleon began against her a tremendous economic war. He forbade Europe to trade with British ships; every port over which his influence extended was closed against them.

Portugal, which was closely connected with England, objected to the Emperor’s decrees, and he sent an army which took possession of the hapless little country. This brought French troops into Spain — Spain which had been steadily decaying ever since the days of Philip II, until she had become in these times a mere vassal state to France. Her worthless king, Charles IV, had an equally worthless son, Ferdinand, and a wicked queen. The State was really ruled by the minister, Godoy, who was in Napoleon’s pay. Probably the Emperor had long intended to sweep out the whole worthless group and establish one of his own brothers as a monarch in their place. He deemed the present moment, when his troops were establishing themselves in Portugal, as propitious for his purpose.

Unluckily for himself he failed to appreciate the fierce loyalty of the Spaniards. In all his previous conquests he had been able to maintain at least partly the appearance of being a liberator come to rescue the down trodden common people from their oppressors. The halo of the French Revolutionary movement still clung faintly around him. But in Spain he was openly and undeniably a foreigner trying to force an undesired foreign ruler upon the natives, and he found the opposition very different from any he had before encountered. Though beaten, the Spaniards never remained in subjection, never became his subjects to fight for him against others. ” It was the Spanish ulcer,” said he himself when he looked back from St. Helena, ” that ruined me.”

This selection is by John Richard Green.

Time: 1808-1813
Place: Spain

The effect of the Continental system on Britain was to drive it to a policy of aggression upon neutral states, which seemed to be as successful as it was aggressive. The effect of his system on Napoleon himself was precisely the same. It was to maintain this material union of Europe against Britain that he was driven to aggression after aggression in North Germany, and to demands upon Russia which threatened the league that had been formed at Tilsit. Above all, it was the hope of more effectually crushing the world power of Britain that drove him, at the very moment when Canning was attacking America, to his worst aggression — the aggression upon Spain. Spain was already his subservient ally; but her alliance became every hour less useful. The country was ruined by misgovernment: its treasury was empty; its fleet rotted in its harbors. To seize the whole Span ish Peninsula, to develop its resources by an active administration, to have at his command not only a regenerated Spain and Portugal, but their mighty dominions in Southern and Central America, to renew with these fresh forces the struggle with Britain for her empire of the seas — these were the designs by which Napoleon was driven to the most ruthless of his enterprises.

He acted with his usual subtlety. In October, 1807, France and Spain agreed to divide Portugal between them; and on the advance of their forces the reigning house of Braganza fled helplessly from Lisbon to a refuge in Brazil. But the seizure of Portugal was only a prelude to the seizure of Spain. Charles IV, whom a riot in his capital drove at this moment to abdication, and his son and successor, Ferdinand VII, were alike drawn to Bayonne in May, 1808, and forced to resign their claims to the Spanish crown, while a French army entered Madrid, and proclaimed Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain.

High-handed as such an act was, it was in harmony with the general system which Napoleon was pursuing elsewhere, and which had as yet stirred no national resistance. Holland had been changed into a monarchy by a simple decree of the French Emperor, and its crown bestowed on his brother Louis. For another brother, Jerome, a kingdom of Westphalia had been built up out of the electorates of Hesse-Cassel and Hanover. Joseph himself had been set as king over Naples before his transfer to Spain. But the spell of submission was now suddenly broken, and the new King had hardly entered Madrid when Spain rose as one man against the stranger. Desperate as the effort of its people seemed, the news of the rising was welcomed throughout England with a burst of enthusiastic joy.

“Hitherto,” cried Sheridan, a leader of the Whig opposition, “Bonaparte has contended with princes without dignity, numbers without ardor, or peoples without patriotism. He has yet to learn what it is to combat a people who are animated by one spirit against him.” Tory and Whig alike held that “ never had so happy an opportunity existed for Britain to strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world”; and Canning at once re solved to change the system of desultory descents on colonies and sugar islands for a vigorous warfare in the Peninsula. Sup plies were sent to the Spanish insurgents with reckless profusion, and two small armies placed under the command of Sir John Moore and Sir Arthur Wellesley for service in the Peninsula.

In July, 1808, the surrender at Baylen of a French force which had invaded Andalusia gave the first shock to the power of Napoleon, and the blow was followed by one almost as severe. Landing at the Mondego with fifteen thousand men, Sir Arthur Wellesley drove the French army of Portugal from the field of Vimiera, and forced it to surrender in the Convention of Cintra on August 30th. But the tide of success was soon roughly turned. Napoleon appeared in Spain with an army of two hundred thou sand men; and Moore, who had advanced from Lisbon to Salamanca to support the Spanish armies, found them crushed on the Ebro, and was driven to fall hastily back on the coast. His force saved its honor in a battle before Corunna on January 16, 1809, which enabled it to embark in safety; but elsewhere all seemed lost. The whole of Northern and Central Spain was held by the French armies; and even Saragossa, which had once heroically repulsed them, submitted after a second equally desperate resistance.

The landing of the wreck of Moore’s army and the news of the Spanish defeats turned the temper of England from the wildest hope to the deepest despair; but Canning remained un moved. On the day of the evacuation of Corunna he signed a treaty of alliance with the Junta which governed Spain in the absence of its king; and the English force at Lisbon, which had already prepared to leave Portugal, was reinforced with thirteen thousand fresh troops and placed under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley.

Continued.

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