the army, the one during, and the other immediately after, a battle, and these necessarily superseding each other, and both the original commander, within the space of twenty-four hours." The world still shares that wonder of the six major-generals who formed the court of inquiry. The inquiry, however, made it clear that Wellesley had been fatally hampered by the elderly and leisurely generals put over him, and he emerged from the trial with reputation undamaged.

The Convention, with all its defects, was undoubtedly a blow to the French, a substantial advantage for the British. Napoleon summed up the situation in a sentence: "I was going," he says, "to send Junot before a council of war, when, fortunately, the English tried their generals, and saved me the pain of punishing an old friend."

CHAPTER VI

MOORE AND NAPOLEON

ETWIXT the Convention of Cintra and the

BET

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 feeling 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 1 1,000,000 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 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'armée, 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, form