Chapter IX (2)

Metternich's first undertaking gave singular evidence of the flexibility of system which was henceforward to guard Austria's interests. Before the grass had grown over the graves at Wagram, the Emperor Francis was persuaded to give his daughter in marriage to Napoleon. For some time past Napoleon had determined on divorcing Josephine and allying himself to one of the reigning houses of the Continent. His first advances were made at St. Petersburg; but the Czar hesitated to form a connection which his subjects would view as a dishonour; and the opportunity was seized by the less fastidious Austrians as soon as the fancies of the imperial suitor turned towards Vienna. The Emperor Francis, who had been bullied by Napoleon upon the field of Austerlitz, ridiculed and insulted in every proclamation issued during the late campaign, gave up his daughter for what was called the good of his people, and reconciled himself to a son-in-law who had taken so many provinces for his dowry. Peace had not been proclaimed four months when the treaty was signed which united the House of Bonaparte to the family of Marie Antoinette. The Archduke Charles represented Napoleon in the espousals; the Archbishop of Vienna anointed the bride with the same sacred oil with which he had consecrated the banners of 1809; the servile press which narrated the wedding festivities found no space to mention that the Emperor's bravest subject, the Tyrolese leader Hofer, was executed by Napoleon as a brigand in the interval between the contract and the celebration of the marriage. Old Austrian families, members of the only aristocracy upon the Continent that still possessed political weight and a political tradition, lamented the Emperor's consent to a union which their prejudices called a mis-alliance, and their consciences an adultery; but the object of Metternich was attained. The friendship between France and Russia, which had inflicted so much evil on the Continent since the Peace of Tilsit, was dissolved; the sword of Napoleon was turned away from Austria for at least some years; the restoration of the lost provinces of the Hapsburg seemed not impossible, now that Napoleon and Alexander were left face to face in Europe, and the alliance of Austria had become so important to the power which had hitherto enriched itself at Austria's expense.

[Napoleon annexes Papal States, May, 1809.]

Napoleon crowned his new bride, and felt himself at length the equal of the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons. Except in Spain, his arms were no longer resisted upon the Continent, and the period immediately succeeding the Peace of Vienna was that which brought the Napoleonic Empire to its widest bounds. Already, in the pride of the first victories of 1809, Napoleon had completed his aggressions upon the Papal sovereignty by declaring the Ecclesiastical States to be united to the French Empire (May 17, 1809). The Pope retorted upon his despoiler with a Bull of Excommunication; but the spiritual terrors were among the least formidable of those then active in Europe, and the sanctity of the Pontiff did not prevent Napoleon's soldiers from arresting him in the Quirinal, and carrying him as a prisoner to Savona. Here Pius VII., was detained for the next three years. The Roman States received the laws and the civil organisation of France. [164] Bishops and clergy who refused the oath of fidelity to Napoleon were imprisoned or exiled; the monasteries and convents were dissolved; the cardinals and great officers, along with the archives and the whole apparatus of ecclesiastical rule, were carried to Paris. In relation to the future of European Catholicism, the breach between Napoleon and Pius VII., was a more important event than was understood at the time; its immediate and visible result was that there was one sovereign the fewer in Europe, and one more province opened to the French conscription.

[Napoleon annexes, Holland, July, 1810.]

The next of Napoleon's vassals who lost his throne was the King of Holland. Like Joseph in Spain, and like Murat in Naples, Louis Bonaparte had made an honest effort to govern for the benefit of his subjects. He had endeavoured to lighten the burdens which Napoleon laid upon the Dutch nation, already deprived of its colonies, its commerce, and its independence; and every plea which Louis had made for his subjects had been treated by Napoleon as a breach of duty towards himself. The offence of the unfortunate King of Holland became unpardonable when he neglected to enforce the orders of Napoleon against the admission of English goods. Louis was summoned to Paris, and compelled to sign a treaty, ceding part of his dominions and placing his custom-houses in the hands of French officers. He returned to Holland, but affairs grew worse and worse. French troops overran the country; Napoleon's letters were each more menacing than the last; and at length Louis fled from his dominions (July 1, 1810), and delivered himself from a royalty which had proved the most intolerable kind of servitude. A week later Holland was incorporated with the French Empire.

[Annexation of Le Valais, and of the North German coast.]

Two more annexations followed before the end of the year. The Republic of the Valais was declared to have neglected the duty imposed upon it of repairing the road over the Simplon, and forfeited its independence. The North German coast district, comprising the Hanse towns, Oldenburg, and part of the Kingdom of Westphalia, was annexed to the French Empire, with the alleged object of more effectually shutting out British goods from the ports of the Elbe and the Weser. Hamburg, however, and most of the territory now incorporated with France, had been occupied by French troops ever since the war of 1806, and the legal change in its position scarcely made its subjection more complete. Had the history of this annexation been written by men of the peasant-class, it would probably have been described in terms of unmixed thankfulness and praise. In the Decree introducing the French principle of the free tenure of land, thirty-six distinct forms of feudal service are enumerated, as abolished without compensation. [165]

[Extent of Napoleon's Empire and Dependencies, 1810.]

Napoleon's dominion had now reached its widest bounds. The frontier of the Empire began at Lübeck on the Baltic, touched the Rhine at Wesel, and followed the river and the Jura mountains to the foot of the Lake of Geneva; then, crossing the Alps above the source of the Rhone, it ran with the rivers Sesia and Po to a point nearly opposite Mantua, mounted to the watershed of the Apennines, and descended to the Mediterranean at Terracina. The late Ecclesiastical States were formed into the two Departments of the Tiber and of Trasimene; Tuscany, also divided into French Departments, and represented in the French Legislative Body, gave the title of Archduchess and the ceremonial of a Court to Napoleon's sister Eliza; the Kingdom of Italy, formed by Lombardy, Venice, and the country east of the Apennines as far south as Ascoli, belonged to Napoleon himself, but was not constitutionally united with the French Empire. On the east of the Adriatic the Illyrian Provinces extended Napoleon's rule to the borders of Bosnia and Montenegro. Outside the frontier of this great Empire an order of feudatories ruled in Italy, in Germany, and in Poland. Murat, King of Naples, and the client-princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, holding all Germany up to the frontiers of Prussia and Austria, as well as the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, were nominally sovereigns within their own dominions; but they held their dignities at Napoleon's pleasure, and the population and revenues of their States were at his service.

[Benefits of Napoleon's rule.]

[Wrongs of Napoleon's rule.]

[Commercial blockade.]

The close of the year 1810 saw the last changes effected which Europe was destined to receive at the hands of Napoleon. The fabric of his sovereignty was raised upon the ruins of all that was obsolete and forceless upon the western Continent; the benefits as well as the wrongs or his supremacy were now seen in their widest operation. All Italy, the northern districts of Germany which were incorporated with the Empire, and a great part of the Confederate Territory of the Rhine, received in the Code Napoleon a law which, to an extent hitherto unknown in Europe, brought social justice into the daily affairs of life. The privileges of the noble, the feudal burdens of the peasant, the monopolies of the guilds, passed away, in most instances for ever. The comfort and improvement of mankind were vindicated as the true aim of property by the abolition of the devices which convert the soil into an instrument of family pride, and by the enforcement of a fair division of inheritances among the children of the possessor. Legal process, both civil and criminal, was brought within the comprehension of ordinary citizens, and submitted to the test of publicity. These were among the fruits of an earlier enlightenment which Napoleon's supremacy bestowed upon a great part of Europe. The price which was paid for them was the suppression of every vestige of liberty, the conscription, and the Continental blockade. On the whole, the yoke was patiently borne. The Italians and the Germans of the Rhenish Confederacy cared little what Government they obeyed; their recruits who were sent to be killed by the Austrians or the Spaniards felt it no especial hardship to fight Napoleon's battles. More galling was the pressure of Napoleon's commercial system and of the agencies by which he attempted to enforce it. In the hope of ruining the trade of Great Britain, Napoleon spared no severity against the owners of anything that had touched British hands, and deprived the Continent of its entire supply of colonial produce, with the exception of such as was imported at enormous charges by traders licensed by himself. The possession of English goods became a capital offence. In the great trading towns a system of permanent terrorism was put in force against the merchants. Soldiers ransacked their houses; their letters were opened; spies dogged their steps. It was in Hamburg, where Davoust exercised a sort of independent sovereignty, that the violence and injustice of the Napoleonic commercial system was seen in its most repulsive form; in the greater part of the Empire it was felt more in the general decline of trade and in a multitude of annoying privations than in acts of obtrusive cruelty. [166] The French were themselves compelled to extract sugar from beetroot, and to substitute chicory for coffee; the Germans, less favoured by nature, and less rapid in adaptation, thirsted and sulked. Even in such torpid communities as Saxony political discontent was at length engendered by bodily discomfort. Men who were proof against all the patriotic exaltation of Stein and Fichte felt that there must be something wrong in a system which sent up the price of coffee to five shillings a pound, and reduced the tobacconist to exclusive dependence upon the market-gardener.

[The Czar withdraws from Napoleon's commercial system, Dec., 1810.]

[France and Russia preparing for war, 1811.]

It was not, however, by its effects upon Napoleon's German vassals that the Continental system contributed to the fall of its author. Whatever the discontent of these communities, they obeyed Napoleon as long as he was victorious, and abandoned him only when his cause was lost. Its real political importance lay in the hostility which it excited between France and Russia. The Czar, who had attached himself to Napoleon's commercial system at the Peace of Tilsit, withdrew from it in the year succeeding the Peace of Vienna. The trade of the Russian Empire had been ruined by the closure of its ports to British vessels and British goods. Napoleon had broken his promise to Russia by adding West Galicia to the Polish Duchy of Warsaw; and the Czar refused to sacrifice the wealth of his subjects any longer in the interest of an insincere ally. At the end of the year 1810 an order was published at St. Petersburg, opening the harbours of Russia to all ships bearing a neutral flag, and imposing a duty upon many of the products of France. This edict was scarcely less than a direct challenge to the French Emperor. Napoleon exaggerated the effect of his Continental prohibitions upon English traffic. He imagined that the command of the European coast-line, and nothing short of this, would enable him to exhaust his enemy; and he was prepared to risk a war with Russia rather than permit it to frustrate his long-cherished hopes. Already in the Austrian marriage Napoleon had marked the severance of his interests from those of Alexander. An attempted compromise upon the affairs of Poland produced only new alienation and distrust; an open affront was offered to Alexander in the annexation of the Duchy of Oldenburg, whose sovereign was a member of his own family. The last event was immediately followed by the publication of the new Russian tariff. In the spring of 1811 Napoleon had determined upon war. With Spain still unsubdued, he had no motive to hurry on hostilities; Alexander on his part was still less ready for action; and the forms of diplomatic intercourse were in consequence maintained for some time longer at Paris and St. Petersburg. But the true nature of the situation was shown by the immense levies that were ordered both in France and Russia; and the rest of the year was spent in preparations for the campaign which was destined to decide the fate of Europe.

[Affairs in Spain and Portugal, 1809-1812.]

[Lines of Torres Vedras, 1809-1810.]

We have seen that during the period of more than two years that elapsed between the Peace of Vienna and the outbreak of war with Russia, Napoleon had no enemy in arms upon the Continent except in the Spanish Peninsula. Had the Emperor himself taken up the command in Spain, he would probably within a few months have crushed both the Spanish armies and their English ally. A fatal error in judgment made him willing to look on from a distance whilst his generals engaged with this last foe. The disputes with the Pope and the King of Holland might well have been adjourned for another year; but Napoleon felt no suspicions that the conquest of the Spanish Peninsula was too difficult a task for his marshals; nor perhaps would it have been so if Wellington had been like any of the generals whom Napoleon had himself encountered. The French forces in the Peninsula numbered over 300,000 men: in spite of the victory of Talavera, the English had been forced to retreat into Portugal. But the warfare of Wellington was a different thing from that even of the best Austrian or Russian commanders. From the time of the retreat from Talavera he had foreseen that Portugal would be invaded by an army far outnumbering his own; and he planned a scheme of defence as original, as strongly marked with true military insight, as Napoleon's own most daring schemes of attack. Behind Lisbon a rugged mountainous tract stretches from the Tagus to the sea: here, while the English army wintered in the neighbourhood of Almeida, Wellington employed thousands of Portuguese labourers in turning the promontory into one vast fortress. No rumour of the operation was allowed to reach the enemy. A double series of fortifications, known as the Lines of Torres Vedras, followed the mountain-bastion on the north of Lisbon, and left no single point open between the Tagus and the sea. This was the barrier to which Wellington meant in the last resort to draw his assailants, whilst the country was swept of everything that might sustain an invading army, and the irregular troops of Portugal closed in upon its rear. [167]

[Retreat of Massena, 1810-11.]

[Massena's campaign against Wellington, 1810.]

In June, 1810, Marshal Massena, who had won the highest distinction at Aspern and Wagram, arrived in Spain, and took up the command of the army destined for the conquest of Portugal. Ciudad Rodrigo was invested: Wellington, too weak to effect its relief, too wise to jeopardise his army for the sake of Spanish praise, lay motionless while this great fortress fell into the hands of the invader. In September, the French, 70,000 strong, entered Portugal. Wellington retreated down the valley of the Mondego, devastating the country. At length he halted at Busaco and gave battle (September 27). The French were defeated; the victory gave the Portuguese full confidence in the English leader; but other roads were open to the invader, and Wellington continued his retreat. Massena followed, and heard for the first time of the fortifications of Torres Vedras when he was within five days' march of them. On nearing the mountain-barrier, Massena searched in vain for an unprotected point. Fifty thousand English and Portuguese regular troops, besides a multitude of Portuguese militia, were collected behind the lines; with the present number of the French an assault was hopeless. Massena waited for reinforcements. It was with the utmost difficulty that he could keep his army from starving; at length, when the country was utterly exhausted, he commenced his retreat (Nov. 14). Wellington descended from the heights, but his marching force was still too weak to risk a pitched battle. Massena halted and took post at Santarem, on the Tagus. Here, and in the neighbouring valley of the Zezere, he maintained himself during the winter. But in March, 1811, reinforcements arrived from England: Wellington moved forward against his enemy, and the retreat of the French began in real earnest. Massena made his way northwards, hard pressed by the English, and devastating the country with merciless severity in order to retard pursuit. Fire and ruin marked the track of the retreating army; but such were the sufferings of the French themselves, both during the invasion and the retreat, that when Massena re-entered Spain, after a campaign in which only one pitched battle had been fought, his loss exceeded 30,000 men.

[Soult conquers Spain as far as Cadiz.]

[Wellington's campaign of 1811.]

Other French armies, in spite of a most destructive guerilla warfare, were in the meantime completing the conquest of the south and the east of Spain. Soult captured Seville, and began to lay siege to Cadiz. Here, at the end of 1810, an order reached him from Napoleon to move to the support of Massena. Leaving Victor in command at Cadiz, Soult marched northwards, routed the Spaniards, and conquered the fortress of Badajoz, commanding the southern road into Portugal. Massena, however, was already in retreat, and Soult's own advance was cut short by intelligence that Graham, the English general in Cadiz, had broken out upon the besiegers and inflicted a heavy defeat. Soult returned to Cadiz and resumed the blockade. Wellington, thus freed from danger of attack from the south, and believing Massena to be thoroughly disabled, considered that the time had come for a forward movement into Spain. It was necessary for him to capture the fortresses of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo on the northern road, and to secure his own communications with Portugal by wresting back Badajoz from the French. He left a small force to besiege Almeida, and moved to Elvas to make arrangements with Beresford for the siege of Badajoz. But before the English commander had deemed it possible, the energy of Massena had restored his troops to efficiency; and the two armies of Massena and Soult were now ready to assail the English on the north and the south. Massena marched against the corps investing Almeida. Wellington hastened back to meet him, and fought a battle at Fuentes d'Onoro. The French were defeated; Almeida passed into the hands of the English. In the south, Soult advanced to the relief of Badajoz. He was overthrown by Beresford in the bloody engagement of Albuera (May 16th); but his junction with the army of the north, which was now transferred from Massena to Marmont, forced the English to raise the siege; and Wellington, after audaciously offering battle to the combined French armies, retired within the Portuguese frontier, and marched northwards with the design of laying siege to Ciudad Rodrigo. Again outnumbered by the French, he was compelled to retire to cantonments on the Coa.

[Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, Jan. 19, 1812.]

[Capture of Badajoz, April 6.]

Throughout the autumn months, which were spent in forced inaction, Wellington held patiently to his belief that the French would be unable to keep their armies long united, on account of the scarcity of food. His calculations were correct, and at the close of the year 1811 the English were again superior in the field. Wellington moved against Ciudad Rodrigo, and took it by storm on the 19th of January, 1812. The road into Spain was opened; it only remained to secure Portugal itself by the capture of Badajoz. Wellington crossed the Tagus on the 8th of March, and completed the investment of Badajoz ten days later. It was necessary to gain possession of the city, at whatever cost, before Soult could advance to its relief. On the night of the 6th of April Wellington gave orders for the assault. The fury of the attack, the ferocity of the English soldiers in the moment of their victory, have made the storm of Badajoz conspicuous amongst the most terrible events of war. But the purpose of Wellington was effected; the base of the English army in Portugal was secured from all possibility of attack; and at the moment when Napoleon was summoning his veteran regiments from beyond the Pyrenees for the invasion of Russia, the English commander, master of the frontier fortresses of Spain, was preparing to overwhelm the weakened armies in the Peninsula, and to drive the French from Madrid.

[Wellington invades Spain, June 1812.]

[Salamanca, July 22.]

[Wellington retires to Portugal.]

It was in the summer of 1812, when Napoleon was now upon the point of opening the Russian campaign, that Wellington advanced against Marmont's positions in the north of Spain and the French lines of communication with the capital. Marmont fell back and allowed Wellington to pass Salamanca; but on reaching the Douro he turned upon his adversary, and by a succession of swift and skilful marches brought the English into some danger of losing their communications with Portugal. Wellington himself now retreated as far as Salamanca, and there gave battle (July 22). A decisive victory freed the English army from its peril, and annihilated all the advantages gained by Marmont's strategy and speed. The French were so heavily defeated that they had to fall back on Burgos. Wellington marched upon Madrid. At his approach King Joseph fled from the capital, and ordered Soult to evacuate Andalusia, and to meet him at Valencia, on the eastern coast. Wellington entered Madrid amidst the wild rejoicing of the Spaniards, and then turned northwards to complete the destruction of the army which he had beaten at Salamanca. But the hour of his final success was not yet come. His advance upon Madrid, though wise as a political measure, had given the French northern army time to rally. He was checked by the obstinate defence of Burgos; and finding the French strengthened by the very abandonment of territory which his victory had forced upon them, he retired to Portugal, giving to King Joseph a few months' more precarious enjoyment of his vassal-sovereignty before his final and irrevocable overthrow.

[The war excites a constitutional movement in Spain.]

In Spain itself the struggle of the nation for its independence had produced a political revolution as little foreseen by the Spaniards as by Napoleon himself when the conflict began. When, in 1808, the people had taken up arms for its native dynasty, the voices of those who demanded a reform in the abuses of the Bourbon government had scarcely been heard amid the tumult of loyal enthusiasm for Ferdinand. There existed, however, a group of liberally-minded men in Spain; and as soon as the invasion of the French and the subsequent successes of the Spaniards had overthrown both the old repressive system of the Bourbons and that which Napoleon attempted to put in its place, the opinions of these men, hitherto scarcely known outside the circle of their own acquaintances, suddenly became a power in the country through the liberation of the press. Jovellanos, an upright and large-minded statesman, who had suffered a long imprisonment in the last reign in consequence of his labours in the cause of progress, now represented in the Central Junta the party of constitutional reform. The Junta itself acted with but little insight or sincerity. A majority of its members neither desired nor understood the great changes in government which Jovellanos advocated; yet the Junta itself was an irregular and revolutionary body, and was forced to appeal to the nation in order to hold its ground against the old legal Councils of the monarchy, which possessed not only a better formal right, but all the habits of authority. The victories of Napoleon at the end of 1808, and the threatening attitude both of the old official bodies and of the new provincial governments which had sprung up in every part of the kingdom, extorted from the Junta in the spring of 1809 a declaration in favour of the assembling of the Cortes, or National Parliament, in the following year. Once made, the declaration could not be nullified or withdrawn. It was in vain that the Junta, alarmed at the progress of popular opinions, restored the censorship of the press, and attempted to suppress the liberal journals. The current of political agitation swept steadily on; and before the end of the year 1809 the conflict of parties, which Spain was henceforward to experience in common with the other Mediterranean States, had fairly begun. [168]

[Spanish Liberals in 1809 and 1810.]

The Spanish Liberals of 1809 made the same attack upon despotic power, and upheld the same theories of popular right, as the leaders of the French nation twenty years before. Against them was ranged the whole force of Spanish officialism, soon to be supported by the overwhelming power of the clergy. In the outset, however, the Liberals carefully avoided infringing on the prerogatives of the Church. Thus accommodating its policy to the Catholic spirit of the nation, the party of reform gathered strength throughout the year 1809, as disaster after disaster excited the wrath of the people against both the past and the present holders of power. It was determined by the Junta that the Cortes should assemble on the 1st of March, 1810. According to the ancient usage of Spain, each of the Three Estates, the Clergy, the Nobles, and the Commons, would have been represented in the Cortes by a separate assembly. The opponents of reform pressed for the maintenance of this mediæval order, the Liberals declared for a single Chamber; the Junta, guided by Jovellanos, adopted a middle course, and decided that the higher clergy and nobles should be jointly represented by one Chamber, the Commons by a second. Writs of election had already been issued, when the Junta, driven to Cadiz by the advance of the French armies, and assailed alike by Liberals, by reactionists, and by city mobs, ended its ineffective career, and resigned its powers into the hands of a Regency composed of five persons (Jan. 30, 1810). Had the Regency immediately taken steps to assemble the Cortes, Spain would probably have been content with the moderate reforms which two Chambers, formed according to the plans of Jovellanos, would have been likely to sanction. The Regency, however, preferred to keep power in its own hands and ignored the promise which the Junta had given to the nation. Its policy of obstruction, which was continued for months after the time when the Cortes ought to have assembled, threw the Liberal party into the hands of men of extremes, and prepared the way for revolution instead of reform. It was only when the report reached Spain that Ferdinand was about to marry the daughter of King Joseph, and to accept the succession to the Spanish crown from the usurper himself, that the Regency consented to convoke the Cortes. But it was now no longer possible to create an Upper House to serve as a check upon the popular Assembly. A single Chamber was elected, and elected in great part within the walls of Cadiz itself; for the representatives of districts where the presence of French soldiery rendered election impossible were chosen by refugees from those districts within Cadiz, amid the tumults of political passion which stir a great city in time of war and revolution.

[Constitution made by the Cortes, 1812.]

On the 24th of September, 1810, the Cortes opened. Its first act was to declare the sovereignty of the people, its next act to declare the freedom of the Press. In every debate a spirit of bitter hatred towards the old system of government and of deep distrust towards Ferdinand himself revealed itself in the speeches of the Liberal deputies, although no one in the Assembly dared to avow the least want of loyalty towards the exiled House. The Liberals knew how passionate was the love of the Spanish people for their Prince; but they resolved that, if Ferdinand returned to his throne, he should return without the power to revive the old abuses of Bourbon rule. In this spirit the Assembly proceeded to frame a Constitution for Spain. The Crown was treated as the antagonist and corrupter of the people; its administrative powers were jealously reduced; it was confronted by an Assembly to be elected every two years, and the members of this Assembly were prohibited both from holding office under the Crown, and from presenting themselves for re-election at the end of their two years' service. To a Representative Body thus excluded from all possibility of gaining any practical acquaintance with public affairs was entrusted not only the right of making laws, but the control of every branch of government. The executive was reduced to a mere cypher.

[The Clergy against the Constitution.]

Such was the Constitution which, under the fire of the French artillery now encompassing Cadiz, the Cortes of Spain proclaimed in the spring of the year 1812. Its principles had excited the most vehement opposition within the Assembly itself; by the nation, or at least that part of it which was in communication with Cadiz, it appeared to be received with enthusiasm. The Liberals, who had triumphed over their opponents in the debates in the Assembly, believed that their own victory was the victory of the Spanish people over the forces of despotism. But before the first rejoicings were over, ominous signs appeared of the strength of the opposite party, and of the incapacity of the Liberals themselves to form any effective Government. The fanaticism of the clergy was excited by a law partly ratifying the suppression of monasteries begun by Joseph Bonaparte; the enactments of the Cortes regarding the censorship of religious writings threw the Church into open revolt. In declaring the freedom of the Press, the Cortes had expressly guarded themselves against extending this freedom to religious discussion; the clergy now demanded the restoration of the powers of the Inquisition, which had been in abeyance since the beginning of the war. The Cortes were willing to grant to the Bishops the right of condemning any writing as heretical, and they were willing to enforce by means of the ordinary tribunals the law which declared the Catholic religion to be the only one permitted in Spain; but they declined to restore the jurisdiction of the Holy Office (Feb., 1813). Without this engine for the suppression of all mental independence the priesthood of Spain conceived its cause to be lost. The anathema of the Church went out against the new order. Uniting with the partisans of absolutism, whom Wellington, provoked by the extravagances of the Liberals, now took under his protection, the clergy excited an ignorant people against its own emancipators, and awaited the time when the return of Ferdinand, and a combination of all the interests hostile to reform, should overthrow the Constitution which the Liberals fondly imagined to have given freedom to Spain.