to take vengeance for Dupont at Seville and Cadiz. There was no force in Estremadura which could oppose any obstacle to this plan. When the pass of Somosierra was lost, Sanjuan, who commanded there, cut his way sword in hand through a squadron of Poles, and by by-roads reached Segovia, where he found the troops who had retired from Sepulveda. From thence he marched to Guadarrama, united with the Estremaduran troops under General Heredia, and descended to the Escurial, because he was without provisions in the pass. There they received orders to hasten to Madrid, and enter that city by the gate of Segovia. On the way exaggerated reports were spread of the strength of the enemy; traitors and cowards exciting alarm, suspicion increased the insubordination of the soldiers; the artillery and baggage-men forsook their charge and fled, and several corps broke up and dispersed. The whole of Heredia's vanguard dispersed in this manner, in spite of all Sanjuan's efforts to detain them; they would rally, they said, at Talavera: this word went through the army, and served as a pretext for every one who chose to fly. The two generals had only a handful of men with them when they approached Madrid, and then they discovered that the city had been betrayed. No other course remained for them than to repair themselves to Talavera, in the hope of rallying what would still form a considerable force. The rabble of the army, sufficiently faithful to their appointment, bent their way to that city, plundering as they went along; and there Sanjuan met them, unhappily for himself. The wretches who had been most conspicuous in subverting all discipline, and instiga ting the troops to break up, began to apprehend punishment if the army should again assume a regular form; and this was likely to be the case immediately, for above 20,000 men (many having escaped from Madrid) were now collected there, and the government had already begun to take measures for re-equipping them. It was easy for these villains to raise a cry of treachery against Sanjuan : all men knew the importance of the position at Somosierra, and how much the traitors who betrayed Madrid had affected to rely upon it, making the people feel that reliance which they themselves only feigned. But there were few who knew with what insufficient means the general had been supplied: he had scarcely more than 7000 men, and only eight pieces of cannon. Measures for strengthening the post had been improvidently or wilfully delayed. For this, however, Sanjuan was not responsible; and whatever fault had been committed by his cavalry, he, it was well known, had distinguished himself by his personal exertions. But mobs never rea. son, least of all when they are under the influence of fear, and the Spanish troops had suffered so much from incapacity and treason, that when any person was denounced as a traitor, it seemed like a relief to themselves and an act of justice to their country to vent their vengeance upon him. The cry against Sanjuan became general: a friar went at the head of a party to the convent of the Augustines, where he had taken up his quarters, and they cried out that they were come to put Benito Dec. 7. Sanjuan to death. Sanjuan 1808. attempted to expostulate with them, but in vain. He drew his sword to defend himself, and immedi ately he was pierced with their bul lets. The rabble dragged the body to a gibbet, and hung it there; next they sought for Heredia, that they might kill him also; but he was for tunate enough to elude their search. As soon as their fury was allayed, the instigators of these excesses secured themselves by flight; and the troops, who had been misled by them, perceived the consequences of their lawless conduct. If Sanjuan had indeed been a traitor, they felt that they ought to have delivered him up to the proper tribunal;-by taking vengeance into their own hands they had made themselves obnoxious to the laws. Whom too could they trust, whom were they to obey? Instead, therefore, of forming a new army, as they had designed, at Tala vera, they dispersed again, not having now any rallying place appointed, but each man going whither he thought best. Some took the road to Andalusia, some to Avila: the Estremadurans, who were the most numerous, went to their homes. nothing of the laws of arms, scattering disorder and terror wherever they went, and pretending treason in their generals as an excuse for their own detestable conduct; whereas they themselves had been the worst ene mies of their country, by abandoning their generals in the most critical moments. The junta, therefore, pronounced sentence of death against every officer who absented himself from his colours without permission, and confiscation of his property for the relief of the widows and orphans of soldiers in his parish. Soldiers. were made liable to the same penalty; any person who harboured a deserter was to be punished by confiscation of his property, and the same penalty was denounced against all magistrates who suffered deserters to remain within their jurisdiction. But all who, within fifteen days, presented themselves to the nearest authori, ty in order to rejoin the army, were exempted from the pains in this de cree. No punishment was ever inflicted Four days after the murder of Sanupon the assassins of Sanjuan; it juan, and the dispersion of his arwould perhaps have been difficult to my, two divisions of French cavalry, identify, still more to apprehend under Milhaud and Lasalle, entered them; but the friar must have been Talavera. They found the body of known, and if only a proclamation the Spanish general still on the gibhad been issued for bringing him to bet, and this murder furnished Buojustice, it would have been better than naparte with a new subject of invecpassing over such excesses in total tive against the Spaniards; though silence. The dispersion of the sol- this, and the thousand deaths, and diers called forth a severe edict. It all the untold crimes, and all the began by stating, that the martial unutterable miseries with which the laws of Spain had affixed no punish- peninsula was filled, were the consement for officers who deserted their quences of his own single conduct, colours or stations, it never having the fruits of his individual wickedness, been supposed that men of such rank could possibly be guilty of such a crime. But now it had unhappily been seen that many officers, forgetful of all honour and duty, had fled, to the scandal even of those who knew for which God will exact vengeance in his own time, and mankind to the latest generations execrate his name wherever it shall reach. Lasalle fell in with sixteen Englishmen upon the road, stragglers from General Hope's detachment, and it was related in the bulletins of Buonaparte, as an exploit worthy of remembrance and of commendation, that a division of French cavalry, falling in with sixteen Englishmen who had lost their way, put them to the sword. This was but a small part of the force which was destined to proceed in this direction. As soon as Morla had performed the whole of his iniquitous bargain with the tyrant, Lefebvre (Duke of Dantzic) was ordered to advance with his division from Valladolid towards Lisbon. First he advanced to Segovia, which he entered unresisted. The people were dispirited by the panic and flight of their armies; but it should not be forgotten for their exculpation, that the more generous and heroic spirits, having flocked to their country's stand ard among the foremost levies, had already received their crown of martyrdom, or were clinging to the wreck of the two great armies of the north and the centre, or were consummating the sacrifice of duty in Zaragoza. In one place only between Valladolid and the capital did this part of the French army experience any opposition. The pass of Gua darrama was open to them: General Hope had been stationed there, but was recalled by Sir John Moore, and there were no native troops to supply his place. But when the enemy de scended upon the Escurial, and proceeded to take possession of that pa lace, the magnificent monument of a victory which Spain had atchieved over France in open, honourable war, and in a fair field, they found the peasantry assembled to defend the seat and sepulchres of their kings. Undisciplined as they were, ill-armed, and with none to direct their efforts, they stood their ground till they were overpowered by practised troops, superior in numbers as well as in arms; and the French, after the slaughter of these brave peasants before the gates, took up their quarters in the palace of the Philips. He who founded that stately pile, could he then have beheld from his grave what was passing around him, would have seen the inevitable consequences of that despotic system which he and his father had established upon the ruins of the old free constitution of Spain. This part of the bulletin was officially transmitted by Lord Castlereagh to Sir John Moore, with the following highly proper instructions:-" His Majesty cannot overlook this account, descriptive, according to the obvious sense of it, of the mur der of some unresisting stragglers of his army, although his Majesty is disposed to disbelieve a transaction, however sufficiently recorded, which is so utterly repugnant to the usual laws of war, and to every principle of humanity. His Majesty therefore desires that you will take the earliest means of ascertaining the truth of the fact so recorded, and the circumstances under which it was perpetrated, if perpetrated at all. If it shall upon investigation appear to be founded, I am to desire you will cause a protest to be made by you to the nearest head-quarters of the French army, and that you will take such measures as shall appear to you most expedient for the protection of the troops under your orders against conduct so barbarous and so disgraceful." No such measures were taken, in consequence of Sir John Moore's miserable retreat. This instruction, however, exculpates our government from any charge of indifference upon the subject. Lasalle was killed at the battle of Wagram; had he been taken prisoner by the English, it is to be hoped any British general would have hanged him for a murderer, with the bulletin round his neck. It was a noble feeling which led these brave peasants to sacrifice themselves in defence of the Escurial, and the action did not pass unnoticed by those able and enlightened Spaniards whose patriotic writings did honour to themselves and to their country. "Nothing," said Don Isidoro de Antillon," is more worthy of public interest, and nothing will more excite the admiration of posterity, than a deed like this. If indeed we had only armies to oppose to Buonaparte, infallibly we should become his slaves; the victory would be the usurper's beyond all resource. But it is the collective strength of all our inhabited places, the defence of our walls, the obstinate and repeated resistance of the people in the streets and gateways, along the roads and upon the heights, wherever they can cut off or annoy the detachments of the enemy, the universal spirit of holy in surrection, now become as it were the very element of our existence; this it is which disconcerts his plans, which renders his victories useless, and after a thousand vicissitudes, and even disasters, will finally establish the independence and the glory of Spain." Lefebvre entered Madrid on the 8th of December. Buonaparte reviewed his division in the Prado, and dispatched it to Toledo, while Sebastiani with another division marched for Talavera. In that city, by the 19th, about 25,000 French were assembled, including 35,000 cavalry. The wiser inhabitants fled before their arrival, preferring all the miseries of emigration to the insults and atrocities which these barbarians perpetrated wherever they went: For the exaction of heavy contributions, which reduced half the people to beggary, was the least evil which those towns endured that fell under the yoke of the French. Every where the soldiers were permitted to plunder; every where the women were left to their mercy; no asylum could secure them; the churches and convents were profaned with as little compunction as the dwelling houses were broke open; and in many instances, the victims of their brutality were exposed naked in the streets. The Spanish government exclaimed loudly against these enormities. "In other times," they said, "war was carried on between army and army, soldier and soldier; their fury spent itself upon the field of battle, and when courage, combined with fortune, had decided the victory, the conquerors behaved to the conquered like men of honour, and the defenceless people were respected. The progress of civilization had tempered the evils of hostility, till a nation which so lately boasted that it was the most polished in the world, renewed, in the 19th century, the cruelty of the worst savages, and all the horrors which make us tremble in perusing the history of the irruptions of the barbarians of old. Like tygers, these enemies make no distinction in their carnage, the aged, the infants, the women,-all are alike to them, wherever they can find blood to shed." This appeal could be of no avail against a tyrant who, in the very origin of the war, had shown himself dead to all sense of justice, humanity, and even of honour, which sometimes supplies their place, or against generals and officers who could serve him in such a cause. Such men could be taught humanity only by the severest retaliation, and unhappily this was not yet in the Spaniards' power. The language which the government addressed to their own subjects might be more effectual. "What recourse have you," said they, "in submission and in cowardice? If by this abasement you could purchase a miserable existence, that perhaps with base minds might exculpate you. But you fly to your houses to perish in them, or to be idle spectators of the horrors which these ruffian soldiers are preparing for you! Yes! wait for them there, and they will not tarry long ere they come and shed before your eyes the blood of the innocent victims whom you will not defend. Old fathers, wretched mothers, prepare to receive your daughters released from the arms of a hundred barbarians only when they are in the act of death! Or if they recover life, to curse it in the bitterness of unextinguishable shame; tell them to reproach those cowardly husbands, those base lovers, who are content to live, and see them plunged in this abominable infamy. But they will not be suffered to live: hand-cuffed and haltered they will be dragged out of their country; they will be made soldiers by force, though they would not become so from honour and a sense of duty; there they will be exposed in the foremost ranks to the fire of the enemy; there they will not be able to fly,-the toil, the danger, and death will be theirs; the glory and the spoil will be their conquerors', and the crowns which they win will be for the tyrant, the cause of all this misery." It had been happy for Spain if the government had acted as wisely and energetically as it wrote; but it should be remembered in justice to the Spaniards, that the dispersion of the troops was in many instances an act of self-preservation, so utterly were they left without supplies of food or clothing, by the inexperience or inattention of every military department. Even against the testimony and the reproaches of their own government, the Spanish nation stands acquitted. Never did men suffer more patiently, never did men fight more bravely, than Blake's army. There was no want of courage at Tudela; and of the remains of the army which fought there, a large proportion was at this very time defending Zaragoza with a heroism unexampled in modern times, upon any other soil. Wherever, indeed, a new army was to be collected, soldiers were not wanted. After Sanjuan's death, Don Josef Galluzo was appointed to the command; he took his post at the Jan. 10. bridge of Almaraz to defend the left bank of the Tagus ;and in a few days had collected about 8000 soldiers, many of them were without arms,-most of them barefooted, and now unhappily accustomed to flight and desertion. Nevertheless they assembled; for every man felt individually brave, and it was only the want of discipline, which, by preventing them from feeling confidence collectively, made panic contagious in the moment of danger. The province of Estremadura immediately provided money for these troops; this province, though the least populous in the peninsula, had particularly distinguished itself by its exertions; it had raised and equipped, wholly at its own expence, 24,000 men, and had supplied ammunition and arms of every kind from Badajoz to the other provinces. There are four bridges between Talavera and the confluence of the Tietar with the Tagus, the Puente del Arzobispo, or the Archbishops, the Puente del Conde, or the Counts, the bridge of Almaraz, and the Pu |