we shall confine ourselves to overt acts and specific circum

stances.

The first step towards proceedings, was the appointment of an Army of Observation, under the command of Junot; while the Treaty of Fontainebleau stipulated for the joint occupancy of Portugal by a French and Spanish force. Junot's advanced guard crossed the frontier on the 19th of November, 1807, and by the close of the month, after an unresisted, but destructive march, reached Lisbon. His entry of the capital was unopposed, though the army and populace were in excellent temper for fighting, and the English sailors and marines in Sir Sidney Smith's fleet, were eager to be let loose against the enemy. The Regent, however, most wisely forbade a resistance, which, under actual circumstances, could have been attended only by partial and temporary success, followed by far heavier calamities than those which might be expected to result from quiet submission.

• The morning of the 27th had been fixed for the embarkation; and at an early hour, numbers of both sexes and of all ages were assembled in the streets and upon the shore at Belem, where the wide space between the river and the fine Jeronymite convent was filled with carts and packages of every kind. From the restlessness and well-founded alarm of the people, it was feared that they would proceed to some excess of violence against those who were the objects of general suspicion. The crowd however was not yet very great when the Prince appeared, both because of the distance from Lisbon, and that the hour of the embarkation was not known. He came from the Ajuda, and the Spanish 'Infante D. Pedro in the carriage with him; the troops who were to be on duty at the spot had not yet arrived, and when the Prince alighted upon the quay, there was a pressure round him, so that as he went down the steps to the water-edge, he was obliged to make way with his hand. He was pale and trembling, and his face was bathed in tears. The multitude forgot for a moment their own condition in commiseration for his; they wept also, and followed him, as the boat pushed off, with their blessings. There may have been some among the spectators who remembered, that from this very spot Vasco de Gama had embarked for that discovery which opened the way to all their conquests in the East; and Cabral for that expedition which gave to Portugal an empire in the West, and prepared for her Prince an asylum now when the mother country itself was lost.' p. 88.

Early in 1808, the French army began the projected occupation of Spain, by the treacherous seizure of the strongest fortresses in the northern provinces. The division of Murat entered Madrid in March. All these transactions were under friendly pretexts, but their real object was sufficiently apparent. Murat refused to acknowledge Ferdinand, and after a dis

gusting farce of finesse and manœuvre, the catastrophe of Bayonne took place, and Joseph Bonaparte assumed the title of King of Spain. The miserable Junta, whose most efficient members were Azanza and O'Farrill, to which the government had been confided by Ferdinand when he left his capital for the frontier, truckled to the conquerors; but the people flew to arms, and their premature insurrection in Madrid, occasioned severe loss to the French, though it fell far heavier upon themselves.

At the commencement of the conflict, Murat ordered a detachment of 200 men to take possession of the arsenal. Two officers happened to be upon guard there, by name Daviz and Velarde; the former about thirty years of age; the latter, some five years younger, was the person who had been sent to compliment Murat on his arrival in Spain. Little could they have foreseen, when they went that morning to their post, the fate which awaited them, and the renown which was to be its reward! Having got together about twenty soldiers of their corps, and a few countrymen who were willing to stand by them, they brought out a twenty-four pounder in front of the arsenal, to bear upon the straight and narrow street by which the enemy must approach, and planted two others in like manner to command two avenues which led into the street of the arsenal. They had received no instructions, they had no authority for acting thus; and if they escaped in the action, their own government would without doubt either pass or sanction a sentence of death against them for their conduct; never therefore did any men act with more perfect self-devotion. Having loaded with grape, they waited till the discharge would take full effect; and such havoc did it make, that the French instantly turned back. The possession of the arsenal was of so much importance at this time, that two columns were presently ordered to secure it: they attempted it at the cost of many lives; and the Spaniards fired above twenty times before the enemy could break into the neighbouring houses, and fire upon them from the windows. Velarde was killed by a musket-ball. Daviz had his thigh broken; he continued to give orders sitting, till he received three other wounds, the last of which put an end to his life. Then the person to whom he left the command offered to surrender: while they were making terms, a messenger arrived bearing a white flag, and crying out that the tumult was appeased. About two o'clock, the firing had ceased every where, through the personal interference of the junta, the council of Castille, and other tribunals, who paraded the streets with many of the nobles, and with an escort of Spanish soldiers and imperial guards intermixed. It might then have been hoped that the carnage of this dreadful day was ended; the slaughter among the Spaniards had been very great, This, however, did not satisfy Murat. Conformably to the system of his master, the work of death was to be continued in cool-blood. A military tribunal under General Gronchy was formed, and the Spaniards who were brought before it were sent away to be slaughtered, with little inquiry

whether they had taken part in the struggle or not. Three groupes of forty each were successively shot in the Prado, the great public walk of Madrid. Others in like manner were put to death near the Puesta del Sol, and the Puesta del S. Vicente, and by the church of N. Senora de la Soledad, one of the most sacred places in the city. In this manner was that second of May employed by the French at Madrid. The inhabitants were ordered to illuminate their houses,— a necessary means of safety for their invaders, in a city not otherwise lighted; and through the whole night, the dead and the dying might be seen distinctly as in broad noon-day, lying upon the bloody pavement. When morning came, the same mockery of justice was continued, and fresh murders were committed deliberately with the forms of military execution during several succeeding days.'

pp. 247-250.

This conflict, which took place May the 2nd, 1808, gave fire to the train which had been gradually preparing, and which, in its explosion, set all Spain in a blaze, and flung the originator of her calamities from his throne. The firing having been heard at Mostoles, a small town south of Madrid, the Alcalde immediately despatched the following bulletin to the southern provinces.

The country is in danger. Madrid is perishing through the perfidy of the French. All Spaniards, come to deliver it!'

The massacre at Madrid was a signal which called the Spanish nation to arms. Asturias elected a representative Junta, which assembled at Oviedo; and the same system was adopted in the other provinces, though the Junta of Seville was considered as the central and presiding body. The revolution was retarded at Cadiz by the indecision (putting on it the most favourable construction) of Solano; but the determination of the people prevailed, and in the ferocity of awakened suspicion, they murdered the commandant. The French fleet in the harbour was compelled to surrender; though Don Thomas de Morla, who succeeded Solano, seems to have protracted that event as long as possible by his ineffective measures of attack. At Gibraltar, a different scene was taking place. Castaños, an honourable and enlightened man, who commanded the Spanish camp of observation at San Roque, communicated at once with Sir Hugh Dalrymple, and they jointly arranged a system of mutual counsel and aid. At Valencia, the people, or rather the rabble, murdered the governor, Miguel de Saavedra; and, instigated by the sanguinary Calvo, a canon of St. Isidro, massacred the French resident. The provincial Junta, with a view to arrest the progress of slaughter, called on the religious orders to interfere; and a

procession of monks visited, by torch-light, the scene of blood, but, intimidated by the threats of Calvo, withdrew without effectual mediation. When the morning dawned, it was discovered that in some of the victims, life was not yet extinct; and the mob shewed their better feeling, by concealing the circumstance from the merciless Canon, and conveying them to the hospital. The populace exhibited another proof of their accessibility to humane considerations, in their determination to spare the lives of a hundred and fifty of the French who had taken refuge in the citadel. But Calvo was not to be disappointed of his prey: he exhibited a letter,' said to have been found on the person of one of them, containing a plot for giving up the city to an army of their countrymen. This horrible device was successful, and not a Frenchman of that division escaped the butchery.

• One circumstance alone occurred, which may relieve the horror of this dreadful narrative. M. Pierre Bergiere had acquired a large fortune in Valencia, and was remarkable for his singular charity. It was not enough for him to assist the poor and the sick and the prisoner with continual alms; he visited them, and ministered to their wants himself in the sick room and in the dungeon. Yet, his wellknown virtues did not exempt him from the general proscription of his countrymen; and he too, having been confessed and absolved, was thrust out to the murderers. The wretch who was about to strike him, was one whom he had frequently relieved in prison, and upon recognizing him, withheld his arm. Calling, however, to mind that Bergiere was a Frenchman, he raised it again; but his heart again smote him, and saying, "Art thou a Devil or a Saint, that I cannot kill thee?" he pulled him through the crowd, and made way for his escape.'

During these atrocities, the Junta seem to have been panicstricken, making no effort to exert an authority which never was so much needed. The Canon was not satisfied with this timid and unwilling acquiescence; he wished to involve them in the responsibility for these wholesale murders, or to bring them into discredit and danger by making them act in opposition to the wishes of the multitude whom he guided. With these views, he commanded five Frenchmen to be led to the door of the hall wherein they held their sittings, and sent in a messenger to ask in his name for a written order to put them to death. The intention was readily understood, but the moment was not yet come for acting decisively against this merciless demagogue; and the Conde de Cervellon replied: "You have killed many Frenchmen without an order, and none can be wanted now." Mr. Tupper went out to the assassins, and addressed them on behalf of the prisoners; he was struck at with a knife by one who called him a Frenchman himself; the blow was parried, voices were heard crying that he was an Englishman, and one man declared he would put to death, the first person who should offer violence to the English

;

Consul. But any interposition for the miserable French was in vain they were knocked down and stabbed, and their bodies were left upon the steps of the hall. There were still several Frenchmen concealed in the city, who were in danger every moment of being discovered and massacred. Mr. Tupper, when he found that all appeals to the humanity of the mob were unavailing, had recourse to a different method, and proposed to an assembly of ruffians, armed with the knives which they had already used in murder, and were eager to use again in the same service, that the survivors should be given up to him, that he might send them prisoners to England, promising in exchange for them a supply of arms and ammunition from Gibraltar. By this means their lives were preserved.

The Canon Calvo was now in that state of insanity which is sometimes produced by the possession of unlimited authority. He declared himself the supreme and only representative of King Ferdinand, and was about to issue orders for dismissing the Conde de Cervellon from his rank as Captain-general, dissolving the Junta, and putting the Archbishop to death. A sense of their own imminent danger then roused the Junta. They invited him to join them, and assist at their deliberations. He came, followed by a crowd of ruffians, who filled the avenues when he entered the hall: he demeaned himself insolently, and threatened the assembly, till P. Rico, a Franciscan, one of the most active and intrepid in the national cause, rose and called their attention to a matter upon which the safety of the city depended; and then denounced the Canon as a traitor, fand called upon the members immediately to arrest him. Calvo was confounded at this attack. When he recovered himself, he proposed to retire while the Junta were investigating his conduct; they well understood his intention, and voted that he should immediately be sent in irons to Majorca; and before the mob, who at his bidding would have massacred the Junta, knew that he had been accused, he was conducted secretly under a strong guard to the mole, put in chains, and embarked for that island. The Junta then acted with vigour and severity: they seized about two hundred of the assassins, had them strangled in prison, and exposed their bodies upon a scaffold. The Canon was afterwards brought back, and suffered the same deserved fate. What confession he made was not known; he would not permit the priest to reveal it, farther than an acknowledgement that God and his crimes had brought him to that end.' PP. 286-289.

At Zaragoza, the citizens flew to arms, deposed their Captaingeneral, and elected the celebrated Palafox in his stead. Measures of general armament were ordered by the Supreme Junta; and, from one end of Spain to the other, all was activity and ardour. Happily for the cause of patriotism, the French armies in the Peninsula were at this time inadequate to the emergency; and the necessity for exertion was counteracted by the impossibility of meeting the organized insurrections which demanded suppression in every quarter. Strong divisions