30

DUPONT REINFORCED.

Cadiz. From Toledo, late in May, he started out with his division and cavalry to join hands with the French fleet in Cadiz. With troops mostly conscripts, ill-prepared for the work in hand, he crossed the Sierra Morena and reached Andujar June 2, to learn that Andalusia had risen, that the French squadron was captured, and that he himself was surrounded by numberless irregulars, to sustain whom Castaños was raising a regular army in his rear. Marching to Cordova, on June 7 he sacked the town, and with his plunder marched back to Andujar, which he reached June 19. Here he received orders to remain, and not to recross the Sierra Morena, lest the moral effect should be bad. The inhabitants had fled. Victual was scarce. The French collected the harvest, ground the corn, and baked their own bread; but the young conscripts were losing strength. Dupont was being starved out, as later Victor was in Estremadura.

Meanwhile the Seville Junta put on foot forty thousand regulars with good artillery, under Castaños, aided by Reding, an able Swiss officer. On July 16, to reinforce Dupont, Vedel came up at Andujar, followed by Gobert to Baylen. Castaños was moving from Cordova on the left bank, and Reding, from Granada, forced a passage of the Guadalquivir against Gobert. Dupont ordered Vedel back to Baylen to head off Reding, of whose oncoming he heard. Not finding Reding there, he lay behind a range of hills, — Vedel imagined that he had marched towards the mountain gaps, and followed on to Carolina. Reding then seized Baylen, separating Dupont and Vedel, and with Castaños on his right and Reding on his left, Dupont's only resource was to cut his way out through Baylen. On July 19, at daybreak, his van found Reding intrenched on the hills, with plenty of artillery. Though outnumbered two to one, the French attacked lustily, but by noon they had lost two thousand men, and the Swiss troops in French ser

CAPITULATION OF DUPONT.

31

vice deserted to the enemy. Dupont- the fighter of Ulm— unwisely asked a truce.

At the sound of battle Vedel returned to aid Dupont, whom he reached late in the day, and disregarding the truce, he attacked with some success. Thus Reding was caught between Dupont and Vedel, as Dupont was between Reding and Castaños. Under the truce, Dupont ordered Vedel to cease his attack. Matters were undecided. Dupont demanded the right to retire to the mountains. Reding referred him to Castaños. The latter saw his chance, by a little temporizing, to win a decided success. Vedel urged the sacrifice of the artillery and train, and proposed to Dupont to cut their way through, but Dupont at the last moment weakened, and capitulated July 22. Vedel strove to march away, as he was not surrounded, but Dupont ordered him back. One squadron of cuirassiers did fray itself a passage at Baylen, as the whole army might have done. Dupont's forces became prisoners, and Vedel's were to evacuate Spain by sea. The Spaniards did not, it is alleged, carry out the capitulation in good faith.

Napoleon was in the highest degree incensed by Dupont's conduct, writing to Clarke, August 3:

"I send you some documents for yourself alone. Read them with a map in hand, and you will see whether, since the world exists, there has been anything so stupid, so inept, so cowardly. Here, then, are justified the Macks, the Hohenlohes, etc. One may perfectly see from Dupont's own recital that all that has arrived is the result of the most inconceivable ineptness. He appeared to have done well at the head of his division; as chief he has done horribly. When this blow of fate struck us, everything in Spain was prospering."

From Madrid, to the aid of Dupont, a small column had been sent, which at Madridejos heard of the disaster. Joseph, who had been king in the capital just a week, quit Madrid July 28. The army retired to Burgos and thence to the Ebro,

32

TROOPS ORDERED TO SPAIN.

and at Miranda, Bessières from the right was called in and Verdier from the left the French having been obliged to raise the siege of Saragossa, after almost carrying the city by assault, upon the Valencian army coming to its relief. Castaños shortly entered Madrid.

When, on July 17, at Bayonne, Napoleon had heard of Bessières' victory, he concluded that, as he held Madrid and Lisbon, and Joseph was on the way to his new capital, everything would go right, and he returned to Bordeaux in a triumphal progress. On receiving the news of Baylen, he saw all his plans upset. Within three days he had completed new ones; had made suggestions of good-will to the czar, so as to forestall the ugly news, and had asked for a meeting; had demanded from Austria the reason of her armament, and had ordered towards Spain half of the Grand Army: Victor's 1st Corps from Brandenburg via Cassel through Mainz, Marchand with the 6th Corps and Mortier with the 5th from Silesia through Bayreuth and Mainz, a number of infantry regiments from Wesel to Paris to form Sébastiani's command, a number of 4th battalions in Italy to Perpignan, a division of Italians under Pino to Lyon, a division of Poles from Davout's command, and a number of divisions of cavalry from sundry places. France was almost denuded of troops, and good divisions were taken from the Grand Army; but these were replaced by a levy of one hundred and sixty thousand men in September, out of the conscription of 1810 and the exemptions of the three previous years. The troops could not, however, arrive in Spain before the end of October.

The emperor reached Paris August 14, and at once began collecting clothing and supplies in Bayonne and Perpignan, purchasing provisions, horses and mules, organizing a train of nearly eight hundred wagons to transport the baggage of the moving troops, creating hospitals, and, as was his wont, pro

TO AVENGE BAYLEN.

33

viding three pairs of shoes for each infantryman he expected to send across the border.

Soult's 4th Corps evacuated Prussia, save the big fortresses, he himself going to Spain. Boudet, Carra St. Cyr, Legrand and Molitor were to march to France. The Grand Army in Germany became the Army of the Rhine under Davout, who was reinforced in Silesia, and stood on a line from Magdeburg along the Elbe and Saale to Bayreuth. Bernadotte remained in the Hanseatic towns. This made something like one hundred thousand men, which could be more than doubled by the 4th and 5th battalions, by the troops which had reëntered France, and by the allied contingents. In Italy were one hundred thousand men under Eugene, and in Dalmatia twenty thousand under Marmont. The effective sufficed to secure French interests against Austria for a number of months, and warranted Napoleon in saying to the legislative body that "as passions have so much blinded the English counsels as to make them renounce the protection of the seas and present their army on the Continent, I will leave in a few days to put myself at the head of my army, and with the help of God, myself crown in Madrid the king of Spain, and plant my eagles on the forts of Lisbon." The emperor thus meant to avenge Baylen, and it seemed as if, at the head of a quarter of a million men, he might easily do so.

VOL. III.

Sword of the Period.

SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY. JULY TO SEPTEMBER,

1808.

JOSEPH had retired behind the Ebro. The siege of Saragossa was stopped and Dahesme cooped up in Barcelona. Napoleon at once ordered a large part of the Grand Army from Germany to Spain. England sent an expedition to Portugal in command of a division in which was Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had already made a name for himself in India and won the battle of Assaye. Reaching Portugal, Wellesley found the Spaniards in a bad way. The English disembarked at Mondego Bay just after Dupont's defeat, which allowed Spenser to come around from Cadiz. This was the beginning of the Peninsular War. Although compromised by Baylen, Junot marched boldly out to meet the English, without, however, concentrating all his forces. Delaborde held Wellesley back for a day or two, and at Vimiero Junot attacked him August 21. Though not senior, Wellesley happened to be in command. He fought a defensive battle, the type of all his battles in the Peninsula. He held his own, Junot retired on Lisbon, which revolted, and as a result the Convention of Cintra was made, by which the French troops were sent back to France. Many think that Wellesley here showed that, as a tactical method, the line was superior to the column. He showed rather that the fire of a line of English troops in a good defensive position could stop the assault in battalion-columns of the French. He certainly utilized his knowledge of his English soldiers to the best advantage, but against any other troops the column remained what it had been. Wellesley, who returned to England, was blamed for the Convention of Cintra, but exonerated by a Court of Inquiry. Napoleon was much vexed by Cintra, succeeding Baylen, and made ready to go to Spain.

THE moral effect of Baylen was grave. That the Dupont who fought so stubbornly at Ulm was capable of such weakness astonishes the soldier; and that French troops, who had earned a marvelous reputation since 1796, were capable of surrender, reduced them in the eyes of the Spaniards, vain of their prowess, to the level of all other soldiers, and much