SECTION XVIII

THE CONQUEST OF ANDALUSIA

CHAPTER I

THE CONSEQUENCES OF OCAÑA. DECEMBER 1809–JANUARY 1810

The news of the disaster of Ocaña gave a death-blow to the Central Junta. Its attempt to win back its lost credit by an offensive campaign against Madrid having ended in such a lamentable fashion, there was nothing left for it but to acquiesce in its own supersession by the oft-discussed national Cortes. But that assembly was not to meet till March 1, 1810—a date still four months in the future,—and even its form and constitution had not yet been settled. For it would have been absurd to have called it together in the ancient and unrepresentative shape,—a legacy from the time of Charles V,—in which it had been wont to meet under the Bourbon kings. Many regions had few or no members; decayed mediaeval towns of Old Castile had more deputies than the most populous provinces. Moreover, it had yet to be settled how that larger half of the realm which was now occupied by the French was to elect its representatives. The commission was still sitting to determine these vital points, and in this moment of dismay the day of the assembly of the Cortes seemed very far distant. The French might be following hard on the heels of Areizaga’s broken host, and might enter Seville, long before it had been decided what sort of a Cortes was to take over the power from the hands of the discredited Central Junta.

That most unhappy government, therefore, had to face both an acute constitutional crisis and an acute military crisis. Something had to be done without delay to satisfy public opinion concerning the convocation of the Cortes, or the revolution which had been checked by Wellesley’s aid in September would certainly burst forth again. But even more pressing was the necessity for rallying and reinforcing the army which had been crushed at Ocaña, before the French should resume their advance. The actual administrative power was for the moment in the hand of the first of those temporary executive committees to which the Junta had agreed to delegate its authority by the decree of September 19. This body, composed of six members, among whom La Romana was numbered, had come into office on November 1. The rest of the Junta were only too eager to throw on their comrades the weight of the responsibility which should have fallen upon them all. The executive committee was accused on all sides of slow and feeble action. It published, as soon as possible, the details concerning the constitution of the forthcoming Cortes, which (in pursuance of the recommendation of the commission of inquiry) was to consist of two classes of members, elected representatives who were to be allotted in due proportion to all the provinces of the realm, and ‘privilegiados’ or chosen individuals from the nobility and the higher clergy. The American colonies were to be given members no less than the mother country, but their numbers were to be small. Such an arrangement seemed to foreshadow a double-chambered legislature, resembling that of Great Britain, and British precedents had no doubt been running in the minds of the framers of the constitution. But—as we shall see—the Cortes, when it actually met, took no such shape. The mandate for the election of the assembly was duly published; and so far public opinion was to a certain extent satisfied, for it was clear that the Central Junta was at last about to abdicate. But though the majority of the Spanish people were contented to wait, provided that the executive committee should show signs of rising to the occasion, and doing its best as an interim government, there were some politicians who saw in the crisis only an opportunity for pushing their private ambitions. Those veteran intriguers, the Conde de Montijo and Francisco Palafox, undismayed by the failure of the September plot, began to make arrangements with the Seville demagogues for a fresh attempt at a coup d’état. Their plots seem to have distracted Romana and his colleagues from their obvious military duties—the conspirator at home is always the enemy who looms most large before the eyes of a weak government. But after some search both were discovered, arrested and imprisoned.

Meanwhile the executive committee, with the Junta’s approval, issued a long series of edicts concerning the reorganization of the army, and the defence of Andalusia from the French attack, which might at any moment begin. The ‘Army of the Centre,’ of which Areizaga was still, strange to say, left in command, was to be raised to 100,000 men by a strenuous conscription. The press was to be all-embracing, married men, novices in monasteries, persons in minor orders, only sons of widows, all the classes hitherto exempt, were to be subject to it. To provide funds the clergy were ordered to send in to the mint all church plate save such as was strictly necessary for the celebration of the sacraments, and all private citizens were bidden to contribute one half of their table-silver. In order to provide teams for the artillery—which had lost nearly all its horses and guns at Ocaña—a strict requisition for draught animals was begun all over Andalusia. Engineers were sent out to fortify all the passes of the Sierra Morena, with permission to exact forced labour from the peasantry of the hill country. Three members of the Junta—Rabe, Riquelme and Campo Sagrado—were sent to Areizaga’s head quarters at La Carolina as ‘field deputies,’ to stir up or support the energy of the commander-in-chief. This was a device borrowed from the practice of the French Revolution, and had no better effect than might have been expected. As in 1793, the ‘Representatives on Mission’ were either useless or positively harmful. They either wished to thrust amateurish plans of their own upon the military men, or at least distracted them by constant inquisitorial supervision.

On the whole the effect of this volley of violent decrees was small. With six months to carry them out they might, no doubt, have produced great results. But within nine weeks after the disaster of Ocaña the French had commenced their attack, and in that space of time little had been accomplished. The money was beginning to come in, the recruits were being collected, but had not been armed or clothed, still less drilled. Of the fortifications in the passes many had been sketched out, but only a few had begun to take tangible shape. To man them there was still only the wrecks of Areizaga’s old army, which had hardly begun to receive its drafts of conscripts. Its whole force at the New Year did not exceed 30,000 men, and these were distributed over a front of more than 150 miles, for not only the main group of passes in front of La Carolina had to be watched, but also the eastern ingress into Andalusia by Baeza and Ubeda, and the western defiles from Almaden and Benalcazar, which lead directly down on to Cordova. The whole country-side was in a state of desperate turmoil and excitement, yet very little in the way of practical defence had been completed by the middle of January.

Meanwhile, in accordance with the ridiculous constitution of the ‘executive committee,’ half of its members went out of office at the New Year, and were succeeded by other individuals of the Junta. Among those superseded was La Romana, who was now directed to go off to Valencia as captain-general. The Junta seems to have considered that he would be less dangerous in company with his brother José Caro in that province, than when posted at the seat of government, with his brother to back him by threats of Valencian military interference. Yet La Romana did not depart, and was still lingering at Seville when the French crossed the Sierra Morena.

There was a larger military problem before the Junta and the new ‘executive committee’ than the mere defence of Andalusia. The whole arrangement of the national armies had to be recast in consequence of the black day of Ocaña. The corps of Del Parque and Albuquerque, as well as all the smaller outlying bodies of troops, had to receive new orders. Above all it was necessary to discover what were the plans of Wellington, for the present position of the British army at Badajoz was the most important factor in the whole situation. As long as it remained there, in support of the small force under Albuquerque which was guarding the passages of the Tagus at Almaraz and Arzobispo, the western section of the front of Andalusia was secure. The defence of the eastern section, too, was in no small degree helped by the fact that Wellington’s solid troops were in a position to march up the Guadiana, and to threaten the flank of any French army which might intend to attack the Despeña-Perros, or any other of the passes which lead from La Mancha down to the Andalusian plains.

It was a terribly disquieting fact for the Junta that, even before Ocaña had been fought and lost, Wellington had begun to announce his intention of leaving Badajoz and retiring within the boundaries of Portugal. He had paid a flying visit to Seville on the 2nd-4th of November, just as Areizaga’s unhappy advance into La Mancha was commencing. The project had been concealed from him, and when he learnt of it he had expressed his entire disapprobation of it, and had refused to give any promise to support the Spanish armies in their offensive movements. For this reason he had been bitterly provoked when Areizaga and Albuquerque both wrote him, a little later, to say that they had been promised the assistance of his army by the Junta. He had consistently prophesied ill of the adventure, and had recorded his opinion that both Del Parque and Areizaga would probably lose their armies. In a dispatch of November 20, six days before the news of Ocaña reached him, he had announced his...