Betwixt the Convention of Cintra and the appearance of Napoleon in person with his veterans in Spain there was a curious pause in the great drama of the Peninsular War. The French had fallen back to the Ebro. Joseph, a king without subjects and without a capital, could plan nothing and do nothing. There were still nearly 80,000 French soldiers at his disposal, and there was really no force in Spain that could have stood before his stroke. But the new King of Spain was haunted by the sense of a nation in revolt, a nation in which, in noble and in peasant alike, there was no other feelino, towards him but that of furious hate. "Prudence," he wrote apologetically to his imperious brother, "does not permit three corps, the strongest of which is only 18,000 men, to separate to a greater distance than six days' march, in the midst of 11 million people in a state of hostility."

The English, it is true, held Portugal; but the British mind cannot interest itself in two subjects at once; and English public opinion was much more intent on discovering who ought to be hanged for the Convention of Cintra than on the question of what ought to be done to push the French out of Spain. The British army in Portugal had lost its three generals, and had not yet gained a fourth. Spain itself was a bewildered and bewildering tangle of follies, hatreds, jealousies, distracted ambitions, and semi- idiotic dreams.

The British Cabinet, indeed, had begun to organise, on a more rational plan, its agents in Spain. A single responsible agent was appointed to each province, with Stuart at Madrid as chief of the civil agents. But nothing could infuse method or sanity into Spanish affairs. A Central Junta existed; it passed decrees requiring itself to be addressed as "Majesty," and granting spacious titles and generous salaries to all its members. But it exercised no real control over the provincial juntas.

Stuart described it, after long experience, as "never having made a single exertion for the public good." No provincial junta would assist another, or permit its troops to march out of its own boundaries. Sometimes, indeed, the juntas were trembling on the point of civil war amongst themselves; sometimes they were dazzled by wild visions of foreign conquest. The only art in which they shone was the art of infinite and intolerable delay. The single active sentiment they cherished towards their ally, England, was an ardent desire for its gold.

Spanish generals were worthy of Spanish juntas. "They knew," says Napier, "so little of war, that before their incapacity was understood, their errors, too gross for belief, contributed to their safety."

They were all equally independent, equally ignorant, and equally unreliable. " No one general," says Napier, "knew what another had done, was doing, or intended to do; " and there was no error possible in war of which they were not guilty. And yet Juntas and generals -- and, it is painful to add, the British Cabinet -- shared in the most ridiculous expectations of what was about to happen. The French, every one believed, were in retreat. Victorious Spaniards would soon be marching through the Pyrenees. France was to be invaded.

The part the English were to play in this imaginary drama was to be that of mere benevolent spectators. When Moore's army entered Spain, its officers were told repeatedly by the Spanish, "We are obliged to our friends the English; we thank them for their goodwill. We shall escort them through France to Calais; the journey will be pleasanter than a long voyage. They will not have the trouble of fighting the French, and we shall be pleased to have them as spectators of our victories!"

Spain, in fact, was a realm of dreams-of rosetinted dreams, with a strain of lunacy running through them. Only Cervantes could have done justice to the pride, the follies, the distractions, the lunatic hopes, the yet more lunatic ambitions, that filled Spain with their fever at this moment.

There remained one keen, strong, masterful brain that was under no illusion about Spanish affairs, and that had a perfectly clear plan of action in relation to them. Napoleon understood perfectly the shock which the surrender at Baylen and the defeat at Vimiero had given, not merely to his fame, but to his power. The rising in Spain was a lesson to the whole Continent, with very mischievous suggestions.

In vain had he overthrown kings if it were shown that the peoples could overthrow him. Austria, Prussia, Italy, might learn that lesson and apply it. The Spanish conflagration must be trampled out thoroughly, and the time for doing it was brief. For if the war in Spain were prolonged, Prussia might rise, Austria sullenly betake itself again to arms, and the Continent catch fire!

Napoleon's plan was to march into Spain an irresistible military force. There were 500,000 troops, familiar with victory and in the highest state of efficiency, under the French eagles on the Continent. He drew from these eight great corps-d'armee, numbering in all more than 200,000 men. They included his best troops, with the far-famed and invincible Guard itself. They were led by his most trusted marshals -- Ney and Soult, Victor and St. Cyr, Mortier and Lannes.

These vast and disciplined columns moved steadily towards the Pyrenees, forming such a tempest of war as had never yet burst over Spain. With that curious attention to minute and apparently insignificant detail which characterised Napoleon, he took pains to kindle the imagination of his veterans as they entered on this new campaign.

Accolades

As they marched through the chief cities they were feasted and entertained; flowers, by his orders, were flung on the tramping battalions; theatrical representations cheered them when they halted at night. He directed his Minister of War to have songs composed to be sung to his troops having for their theme "the liberty of the sea."

The soldiers must be persuaded that their bayonets were to avenge Trafalgar, and they were to overthrow the fleets of "perfidious Albion" on the plains of Andalusia or in the wild mountain-passes of Asturia!"

"You must have three kinds of songs made," Napoleon added gravely, "so that the soldiers may not hear the same songs twice."

Napoleon, moreover, took care to educate public opinion, and to "educate" it in characteristic fashion by deceiving it. On November 19 -- four days, that is, before the battle of Tudela was fought -- he wrote to his Minister, Champigney: "Send off an intelligent courier who will spread the report that Spain has submitted, or is on the point of submitting, completely; that 80,000 Spaniards are already destroyed," &c., &c. Invention, in a word, was to outrun history.

Napoleon had many of the arts and much of the temper of a great stage-manager; but, it may be added, he was decorating with the tinsel of a playwright the terrors of a thunderbolt. These troops, the victors of Austerlitz and of Friedland, directed by the matchless skill and urged by the vehement will of the greatest soldier of his generation, seemed sufficient to overrun twenty Spains.

The echoing passes of the Pyrenees were filled with the ceaseless flow of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, a living flood of armed men, glittering with steel, that threatened to submerge Spain as the ancient flood once overwhelmed the inhabited earth. The truth is, Napoleon aimed not merely to stamp out the insurrection in Spain; he wished to startle and overawe the imagination of the world in the process. There was to be something supernatural in the scale and swiftness of his campaign. His blow was to have the impact and the resistlessness of one of the great forces of Nature. All the nations of Europe were to look on and watch the fate which overtook the one nation which dared to lift its hand against the imperial eagles of France.

Napoleon's own rhetoric had a roll as of drums in it, especially when describing his intention as to the wickedly intruding English. "When I shall show myself beyond the Pyrenees," he said, "the leopard in terror will plunge into the ocean to avoid shame, defeat, and death."

The "leopard," however, proved a beast of disappointing temper. It somehow omitted to plunge into the ocean when French bayonets came sparkling through the Pyrenees. As a matter of fact, it was those very bayonets that, in the long-run, hurried back-and in sadly reduced numbersthrough the Pyrenees under the stroke of that muchabused leopard's paw!

As a matter of sober history, however, all Napoleon's haughty purposes about Spain might have been realised but for the daring resolve of one English soldier. The armies and generals of Spain were to Napoleon only what chaff is to the flail; they were scattered before his march as grainless husks are driven before a hurricane. But Moore's heroic thrust at Napoleon's communications arrested the march of the French legions and saved Spain -- perhaps even saved the Continent as well as Spain.

Moore divides with Wellington the glories of the Peninsular War. It is true Moore commanded in only one campaign. He fought only one battle in the Peninsula, a battle in which he lost his own life. But Wellington would probably have had no opportunity for those six immortal campaigns which drove the French across the Pyrenees and helped to destroy Napoleon, but for that audacious march of Moore, which stayed the rush of Napoleon on Southern Spain, and wrecked the whole plan of his Spanish campaign.

Timetable

Napoleon crossed the Spanish frontier on November 3; on the 8th he reached Vittoria, and his armies were put in instant movement. The Spanish forces were grouped along the line of the Ebro and over a distance Of 200 miles.

They formed four armies. Palafox, with 40,000 men, was on the French right, covering Tudela; Castanos was opposite the French centre; Blake, with 40,000 men, covered the Asturias, while as a reserve near Burgos was the army of Estremadura. The Spanish generals, scattered over a wide area of country, without concert with each other, and with something less than 100,000 men, had to oppose Napoleon, who occupied a central position, and was able to put 160,000 men into the battlefield. The result of such a campaign betwixt such combatants was certain.

Napoleon's plan was to march on Burgos, breaking the Spanish line in two, then wheel round on either flank, push one Spanish wing into the sea and the other to the Pyrenees.

Soult at Gamonal broke through the Spanish centre, slew 2500 Spaniards and captured Burgos -- and all this within fifty hours of leaving Bayonne!

Victor at Espinosa destroyed Blake, and that general on November 12 reached Reynosa with 7000 fugitives, "without artillery, without arms, without spirit, and without hope," as Napier tersely puts it. Soult seized Santander, Lefebvre marched on Valladolid, and the north of Spain was overrun.

Napoleon then let loose his magnificent cavalry over the plains of Leon and Castile, and Castanos fell hastily back from Madrid.

Storming the Somosierra Pass

On November 23, with 45,000 men, he was hopeiessly overthrown at Tudela. Spain was now prostrate, and Napoleon marched straight on Madrid. The Somosierra pass had to be forced, a steep and wild ravine held by 12,000 men and sixteen guns, a position that ought to have been impregnable. Napoleon carried it by one of the most remarkable feats in even his wonderful career.

A huge column of French infantry was drawn up to storm the ravine, barred by an army with its artillery. The fire of the skirmishers filled the steep and narrow valley with smoke, a smoke made denser by the eddying mists rolling down from the mountain summits. Napoleon suddenly arrested the infantry, and sent forward the Polish light cavalry of his Guard.

At full gallop, with bent heads and plumes blown backward, the gallant horsemen raced up the steep and rugged ascent. The fog concealed them until they broke, a torrent of rushing and armed men, on the astonished Spaniards. The battery was carried, the pass cleared, and 12,000 men yielded an impregnable position to the charge of a few squadrons of light horse.

On December 2 the French were before Madrid, on the 4th that city surrendered. Six weeks had proved sufficient to destroy the armed strength of Spain. Saragossa still stood, ready for a new siege; some 20,000 British troops were moving along the Portuguese roads to the Spanish frontier; but practically Spain was overthrown. And to an assemblage of notables in Madrid Napoleon announced, "I will drive the English armies from the Peninsula. There is no obstacle capable of resisting the execution of my will."

He proposed to march, in person, straight on Lisbon, while his marshals overran Catalonia, Valencia, and Andalusia. Napoleon had at that moment more than 300,000 men on his muster-rolls in Spain. Madrid was in his hands; he commanded all the great lines of communication. Before starting on his triumphant march he conferred a new political constitution on Spain, in which he abolished the Inquisition, reduced the number of convents by one-third, and cancelled all feudal rights.

"If Spain," he announced, "did not prove submissive, he would give his brother another throne, and put the crown of Spain upon his own head."

And there seemed no power that could prevent that surprising performance. But at this moment Moore steps on the stage and changes the course of history.

Moore had nominally 35,000 troops under his command, but they were scattered over a wide area. Many were sick; he had less than 24,000 in hand when actually in front of the enemy. His instructions were to advance into Spain, enter into communication with the Spanish generals, and frame a common plan of operations with them. A hundred thousand Spanish soldiers, he was told, were in arms. Burgos was to be the meeting-point of the allied forces.

As a matter of fact, these Spanish armies, before Moore reached the scene of action, had vanished like shadows. Burgos was in the hands of the French. And when Moore, marching from Lisbon, with his troops moving along widely separated lines of road, reached Salamanca, he found himself in an open town, only three marches from the French armies, without so much as a Spanish picket to cover his front.

Napoleon's tempest of war, too, by this time was sweeping from the Pyrenees towards Madrid. Perhaps no general was ever before or since in a situation so trying. To advance was madness; to retreat without striking a blow seemed dishonour, a betrayal of Spain and a reproach to England. Moore found himself, too, in a sort of realm of Egyptian darkness. He could get no definite information as to the forces and movements of the enemy.

Napoleon, it may be added, was almost as badly served, in spite of his vast and splendid cavalry, as Moore, and, under the belief that the English had fallen back on Portugal, moved straight on to Madrid, leaving his right flank open to Moore. Had he known Moore's position, he would certainly have turned and flung himself with overwhelming force on the British army.

Moore, however, with cool and deliberate daring, had resolved to abandon his communications with Portugal and risk his fate in Spain. It galled his soldierly pride to have marched so far into the heart of Spain, to be within actual reach of the enemy, and yet strike no blow. He could, he reckoned, crush at least a single corps of the enemy, and then fall back to his ships across the Asturian hills. So he resolved to leap on Soult's corps.

On December 16 he wrote: "If Marshal Soult is so good as to approach us, we shall be much obliged to him; but if not, we shall marchtowards him. It will be very agreeable to give a wipe to such a corps."

But presently a larger and yet more audacious policy shaped itself in Moore's brain. The British agents assured him that Madrid would hold stubbornly out against Napoleon, and Moore resolved to push on and strike at Napoleon's communications with France. He would throw himself, in a word, across the French line betwixt Bayonne and Madrid.

"I see my situation," Moore wrote in his journal, "and nothing could be worse, for I have no Spanish army to give me the least assistance. Yet I am determined to try our fortune. We have no business here as things are; but being here, it would never do to abandon Spain without a struggle."

"The movement I am making," he wrote again, "is of the most dangerous kind. I not only risk to be surrounded every moment by superior forces, but to have my communication intercepted with the Galicias. But I wish it to be known to the whole world that we do not abandon the Spanish cause till long after the Spaniards have abandoned us."

"I mean to proceed," he wrote again, "bridle in hand; for if the bubble bursts and Madrid falls, we shall have to run for it."

Chapter VII: The Retreat to Corunna