Chapter VIII: Modern Spain (1)

THE HOUSE OF HAPSBURG--PHILIP II.--DEFEAT OF THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA--A BOURBON AMONG THEM--THE PENINSULAR WAR--ALFONSO XIII.

With the death of Ferdinand begins the period of uninterrupted Hapsburg rule in Spain, which lasted for nearly two centuries. In the course of this period, the monarchy obtained absolute authority, and Spain, after rising for a time to be the foremost State in Europe, sank to the position of a second-rate power, from which it has never since emerged. Aragon and Castile were distinct kingdoms, and the former was again divided into the three provinces of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, each of which had its own Cortes, its own privileges, and the most warmly-cherished traditions of independence. The foreign possessions of the two crowns were a source of weakness rather than of strength. France stood ready at the earliest opportunity to contest the possession of Navarre with Castile, and that of Naples with Aragon.

The difficulties of domestic government were increased by the fact that the prospective ruler was a youthful foreigner, who had never visited Spain, and who was completely ignorant of the customs and even of the language of the country. Charles--the son of Philip, archduke of Austria, and of Jane, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella--had been born and educated in the Netherlands, of which he had been nominal ruler ever since the death of his father in 1506. All his friends and advisers were Flemings, who cared nothing for Spanish interests, and had already acquired an evil reputation for selfish greed. The first symptom of discontent in Spain was excited by Charles’s demand to be recognized as king, in utter disregard of his mother. In Aragon the demand was unhesitatingly refused, but in Castile the vigorous measures of the famous Cardinal Ximenez secured Charles’s proclamation.

The regent, however, had great difficulties to face. The nobles, delighted to be rid of the strong government of Ferdinand, wished to utilize the opportunity to regain the privileges and independence they had lost. In this crisis the loyal devotion of Ximenez saved the monarchy. Throwing himself upon the support of the citizen class, he organized a militia which overawed the nobles and maintained order. A French invasion of Navarre was repulsed, and to avoid any danger from the discontent of the inhabitants, all the fortresses of the province, with the single exception of Pamplona, were dismantled. These distinguished services were rewarded with more than royal ingratitude by Charles, who came to Spain in 1517, and who allowed the aged cardinal to die on November 8th, without even granting him an interview.

Charles’s enormous inheritance was increased by the successes of Cortes in Mexico and of Pizarro in Peru, by his own annexation of the Milanese, and by his conquests in northern Africa.

The glory of Spain was then at its apogee. After his death, which occurred in 1558, the decline set in. From this time also the House of Hapsburg became divided into its contemporary branches.

Charles was succeeded by Philip II., his only legitimate son. The administration of the latter, while successful at home, was a failure abroad. During his reign a claim to the throne of Portugal was successfully asserted, and the unity of the Peninsula was completed. Moreover, colonial possessions were greatly extended. Yet his religious intolerance excited the revolt of the Netherlands, which resulted in a loss of the seven northern provinces. His effort to obtain a preponderant influence over France was dexterously foiled by the succession and triumph of Henry IV. But his great and historical defeat was that which he experienced with the Armada.

Besides the Spanish crown, Philip succeeded to the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the Duchy of Milan, Franche-Comte, and the Netherlands. In Africa he possessed Tunis, Oran, the Cape Verd, and the Canary Islands; and in Asia, the Philippine and Sunda Islands, and a part of the Moluccas. Beyond the Atlantic he was lord of the most splendid portions of the New World. The empires of Peru and Mexico, New Spain, and Chili, with their abundant mines of the precious metals, Hispaniola and Cuba, and many other of the American islands, were provinces of the sovereign of Spain.

Philip had also the advantage of finding himself at the head of a large standing army in a perfect state of discipline and equipment, in an age when, except some few insignificant corps, standing armies were unknown to Christendom. The renown of the Spanish troops was justly high, and the infantry in particular was considered the best in the world. His fleet, also, was far more numerous, and better appointed, than that of any other European power; and both his soldiers and his sailors had the confidence in themselves and their commanders which a long career of successful warfare alone can create.

One nation only had been his active, his persevering, and his successful foe. England had encouraged his revolted subjects in Flanders against him, and given them the aid in men and money without which they must soon have been humbled in the dust. English ships had plundered his colonies; had defied his supremacy in the New World, as well as the Old; they had inflicted ignominious defeats on his squadrons; they had captured his cities, and burned his arsenals on the very coasts of Spain. The English had made Philip himself the object of personal insult. He was held up to ridicule in their stage plays and masks, and these scoffs at the man had (as is not unusual in such cases) excited the anger of the absolute king, even more vehemently than the injuries inflicted on his power. Personal as well as political revenge urged him to attack England. Were she once subdued, the Dutch must submit; France could not cope with him, the empire would not oppose him; and universal dominion seemed sure to be the result of the conquest of that malignant island.

For some time the destination of an enormous armament which he had long been preparing was not publicly announced. Only Philip himself, the Pope Sixtus, the Duke of Guise, and Philip’s favorite minister, Mendoza, at first knew its real object. Rumors were sedulously spread that it was designed to proceed to the Indies to realize vast projects of distant conquest. Sometimes hints were dropped by Philip’s embassadors in foreign courts that their master had resolved on a decisive effort to crush his rebels in the Low Countries. But Elizabeth and her statesmen could not view the gathering of such a storm without feeling the probability of its bursting on their own shores. As early as the spring of 1587, Elizabeth sent Sir Francis Drake to cruise off the Tagus. Drake sailed into the Bay of Cadiz and the Lisbon Roads, and burned much shipping and military stores, causing thereby an important delay in the progress of the Spanish preparations. Drake called this “Singeing the king of Spain’s beard.” Elizabeth also increased her succors of troops to the Netherlanders, to prevent the Prince of Parma from overwhelming them, and from thence being at full leisure to employ his army against her dominions.

Philip had an ally in France who was far more powerful than the French king. This was the Duke of Guise, the chief of the League, and the idol of the fanatic partisans of the Romish faith. Philip prevailed on Guise openly to take up arms against Henry III. (who was reviled by the Leaguers as a traitor to the true Church, and a secret friend to the Huguenots); and thus prevent the French king from interfering in favor of Queen Elizabeth. “With this object, the commander, Juan Iniguez Moreo, was dispatched by him in the early part of April to the Duke of Guise at Soissons. He met with complete success. He offered the Duke of Guise, as soon as he took the field against Henry III., three hundred thousand crowns, six thousand infantry, and twelve hundred pikemen, on behalf of the king, his master, who would, in addition, withdraw his embassador from the court of France, and accredit an envoy to the Catholic party. A treaty was concluded on these conditions, and the Duke of Guise entered Paris, where he was expected by the Leaguers, and whence he expelled Henry III. on the 12th of May, by the insurrection of the barricades. A fortnight after this insurrection, which reduced Henry III. to impotence, and, to use the language of the Prince of Parma, did not even ‘permit him to assist the Queen of England with his tears, as he needed them all to weep over his own misfortunes,’ the Spanish fleet left the Tagus and sailed toward the British isles.”

Meanwhile in England, from the sovereign on the throne to the peasant in the cottage, all hearts and hands made ready to meet the imminent deadly peril. A camp was formed at Tilbury; and there Elizabeth rode through the ranks, encouraging her captains and her soldiers by her presence and her words.

The ships of the royal navy at this time amounted to no more than thirty-six; but the most serviceable merchant vessels were collected from all the ports of the country; and the citizens of London, Bristol, and the other great seats of commerce, showed as liberal a zeal in equipping and manning vessels as the nobility and gentry displayed in mustering forces by land. The seafaring population of the coast, of every rank and station, was animated by the same ready spirit; and the whole number of seamen who came forward to man the English fleet was 17,472. The number of the ships that were collected was 191; and the total amount of their tonnage 31,985. There was one ship in the fleet (the “Triumph”) of 1,100 tons, one of 1,000, one of 900, two of 800 each, three of 600, five of 500, five of 400, six of 300, six of 250, twenty of 200, and the residue of inferior burden. Application was made to the Dutch for assistance: and, as Stowe expresses it, “The Hollanders came roundly in, with threescore sail, brave ships of war, fierce and full of spleen, not so much for England’s aid, as in just occasion for their own defense; these men foreseeing the greatness of the danger that might ensue, if the Spaniards should chance to win the day and get the mastery over them; in due regard whereof their manly courage was inferior to none.”

The equipment of the Spanish forces consisted of 130 ships (besides caravels), 3,165 cannon, 8,050 sailors, 2,088 galley-slaves, 18,973 soldiers, 1,382 noblemen, gentlemen, and attendants, 150 monks, with Martin Alarco, vicar of the Inquisition--the whole under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia.

While this huge armada was making ready in the southern ports of the Spanish dominions, the Prince of Parma, with almost incredible toil and skill, collected a squadron of warships at Dunkirk, and his flotilla of other ships and of flat-bottomed boats for the transport to England of the picked troops, which were designed to be the main instruments in subduing England. Thousands of workmen were employed, night and day, in the construction of these vessels, in the ports of Flanders and Brabant.

One hundred of the kind called hendes, built at Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent, and laden with provisions and ammunition, together with sixty flat-bottomed boats, each capable of carrying thirty horses, were brought, by means of canals and fosses, dug expressly for the purpose, to Nieuport and Dunkirk. One hundred smaller vessels were equipped at the former place, and thirty-two at Dunkirk, provided with twenty thousand empty barrels, and with materials for making pontoons, for stopping up the harbors, and raising forts and intrenchments. The army which these vessels were designed to convey to England amounted to thirty thousand strong, besides a body of four thousand cavalry, stationed at Courtroi, composed chiefly of the ablest veterans of Europe; invigorated by rest (the siege of Sluys having been the only enterprise in which they were employed during the last campaign), and excited by the hopes of plunder and the expectation of certain conquest.

Philip had been advised by the deserter, Sir William Stanley, not to attack England in the first instance, but first to effect a landing and secure a strong position in Ireland; his admiral, Santa Cruz, had recommended him to make sure, in the first instance, of some large harbor on the coast of Holland or Zealand, where the Armada, having entered the Channel, might find shelter in case of storm, and whence it could sail without difficulty for England; but Philip rejected both these counsels, and directed that England itself should be made the immediate object of attack; and on the 20th of May the Armada left the Tagus, in the pomp and pride of supposed invincibility, and amid the shouts of thousands, who believed that England was already conquered. But steering to the northward, and before it was clear of the coast of Spain, the Armada was assailed by a violent storm, and driven back with considerable damage to the ports of Biscay and Galicia. It had, however, sustained its heaviest loss before it left the Tagus, in the death of the veteran admiral Santa Cruz, who had been destined to guide it against England.

This experienced sailor, notwithstanding his diligence and success, had been unable to keep pace with the impatient ardor of his master. Philip II. had reproached him with his dilatoriness, and had said with ungrateful harshness, “You make an ill return for all my kindness to you.” These words cut the veteran’s heart, and proved fatal to Santa Cruz. Overwhelmed with fatigue and grief, he sickened and died. Philip II. had replaced him by Alonzo Perez de Gusman, duke of Medina Sidonia, one of the most powerful of the Spanish grandees, but wholly unqualified to command such an expedition. He had, however, as his lieutenants, two seamen of proved skill and bravery, Juan de Martinez Recalde of Biscay, and Miguel Orquendo of Guipuzcoa.

On the 12th of July the Armada, having completely refitted, sailed again for the Channel, and reached it without obstruction or observation by the English.

The design of the Spaniards was, that the Armada should give them, at least for a time, the command of the sea, and that it should join the squadron which Parma had collected off Calais. Then, escorted by an overpowering naval force, Parma and his army were to embark in their flotilla, and cross the sea to England, where they were to be landed, together with the troops which the Armada brought from the ports of Spain. The scheme was not dissimilar to one formed against England a little more than two centuries afterward.

The orders of King Philip to the Duke of Medina Sidonia were, that he should, on entering the Channel, keep near the French coast, and, if attacked by the English ships, avoid an action, and steer on to Calais Roads, where the Prince of Parma’s squadron was to join him. The hope of surprising and destroying the English fleet in Plymouth led the Spanish admiral to deviate from these orders, and to stand across to the English shore; but, on finding that Lord Howard was coming out to meet him, he resumed the original plan, and determined to bend his way steadily toward Calais and Dunkirk, and to keep merely on the defensive against such squadrons of the English as might come up with him.

It was on Saturday, the 20th of July, that Lord Effingham came in sight of his formidable adversaries. The Armada was drawn up in form of a crescent, which from horn to horn measured some seven miles. There was a southwest wind; and before it the vast vessels sailed slowly on. The English let them pass by; and then, following in the rear, commenced an attack on them. A running fight now took place, in which some of the best ships of the Spaniards were captured; many more received heavy damage; while the English vessels, which took care not to close with their huge antagonists, but availed themselves of their superior celerity in tacking and maneuvering, suffered little comparative loss.

The Spanish admiral showed great judgment and firmness in following the line of conduct that had been traced out for him; and on the 27th of July he brought his fleet unbroken, though sorely distressed, to anchor in Calais Roads. The Armada lay off Calais, with its largest ships ranged outside, “like strong castles fearing no assault; the lesser placed in the middle ward.” The English admiral could not attack them in their position without great disadvantage, but on the night of the 29th he sent eight fire-ships among them, with almost equal effect to that of the fire-ships which the Greeks so often employed against the Turkish fleets in their war of independence. The Spaniards cut their cables and put to sea in confusion. One of the largest galeasses ran foul of another vessel and was stranded. The rest of the fleet was scattered about on the Flemish coast, and when the morning broke, it was with difficulty and delay that they obeyed their admiral’s signal to range themselves round him near Gravelines. Now was the golden opportunity for the English to assail them, and prevent them from ever letting loose Parma’s flotilla against England; and nobly was that opportunity used. Drake and Fenner were the first English captains who attacked the unwieldy leviathans: then came Fenton, Southwell, Burton, Cross, Raynor, and then the lord-admiral, with Lord Thomas Howard and Lord Sheffield. The Spaniards only thought of forming and keeping close together, and were driven by the English past Dunkirk, and far away from the Prince of Parma, who, in watching their defeat from the coast, must, as Drake expressed it, have chafed like a bear robbed of her whelps. This was indeed the last and the decisive battle between the two fleets.

Many of the largest Spanish ships were sunk or captured in the action of this day. And at length the Spanish admiral, despairing of success, fled northward with a southerly wind, in the hope of rounding Scotland, and so returning to Spain without a further encounter with the English fleet. Lord Effingham left a squadron to continue the blockade of the Prince of Parma’s armament; but that wise general soon withdrew his troops to more promising fields of action. Meanwhile the lord-admiral himself and Drake chased the vincible Armada, as it was now termed, for some distance northward; and then, when it seemed to bend away from the Scotch coast toward Norway, it was thought best, in the words of Drake, “to leave them to those boisterous and uncouth northern seas.”

The sufferings and losses which the unhappy Spaniards sustained in their flight round Scotland and Ireland are well known. Of their whole Armada only fifty-three shattered vessels brought back their beaten and wasted crews to the Spanish coast which they had quitted in such pageantry and pride.

At the death of Philip, which occurred on September 13, 1598, he left to his son and successor, Philip III., an empire nominally undiminished, but unwieldy and internally exhausted. Resources had been squandered. The attention of the masses had been turned from industry to war. The soldiery once regarded as invincible had lost their prestige in the Netherland swamps. Enormous taxes, from which nobles and clergy were exempt, were multiplied on the people. That being insufficient, Philip III. proved his orthodoxy by completing the work. In 1609 the Moors, or Moriscoes, as they were called, were ordered to quit the Peninsula within three days, and the penalty of death was decreed against all who failed to obey, and against any Christians who should shelter the recalcitrants.

The edict was obeyed, but it was the ruin of Spain. The Moriscoes were the backbone of the industrial population, not only in trade and manufactures, but also in agriculture. The haughty and indolent Spaniards had willingly left what they considered degrading employments to their inferiors. The Moors had introduced into Spain the cultivation of sugar, cotton, rice and silk. They had established a system of irrigation which had given fertility to the soil. The province of Valencia in their hands had become a model of agriculture to the rest of Europe. In manufactures and commerce they had shown equal superiority to the Christian inhabitants, and many of the products of Spain were eagerly sought for by other countries. All these advantages were sacrificed to an insane desire for religious unity.

The resources of Spain, already exhausted, never recovered from this terrible blow. Philip III. died in March, 1621. His reign had not been glorious or advantageous to Spain, but it contrasts favorably with those of his successors. Spanish literature and art, which had received a great impulse from the intercourse with foreign countries under previous rulers, reached their zenith during his lifetime. Three writers have obtained European fame--Cervantes, who produced the immortal “Don Quixote” between 1605 and 1613, and two of the most fertile of romantic dramatists, Lope de Vega and Calderon. In the domain of art, Spain produced two of the greatest masters of the seventeenth century, Velasquez and Murillo.

Philip II. was succeeded by Philip III. After him came Philip IV. and then Charles II. Of these monarchs Mignet said: “Philip II. was merely a king. Philip III. and Philip IV. were not kings, and Charles II. was not even a man.” The death of the latter precipitated the War of the Succession, the military operations of which were rendered famous by the military exploits of Eugene and Marlborough. But this is not the place to recite them. The chief scenes of hostilities were the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, and their narration belongs more properly to the histories of these lands. Suffice it to say that by the Treaty of Utrecht war was concluded in 1711, and Philip V., a Bourbon, second grandson of Louis XIV., was, in accordance with the will of Charles II., acknowledged King of Spain. By the same treaty England gained Gibraltar, while the Spanish Netherlands, Milan, Naples and Sardinia were ceded to Austria.

With the accession of a Bourbon, Spain entered into a new period of history, during which it once more played a part in the politics of Europe, as also in its wars; those, for instance, of the Polish and Austrian successions--the country meanwhile being additionally embroiled with England.

Philip V. was succeeded by Ferdinand VI., and the latter by Charles III., whose death, together with the accession of Charles IV., were contemporary with the French Revolution. The execution of Louis XVI. made a profound impression on a country where loyalty was a superstition. Charles IV. was roused to demand vengeance for the insult to his family. Godoy, the Prime Minister, could but follow the national impulse; and Spain became a member of the first coalition against France. But the two campaigns which ensued provoked the contempt of Europe. They form a catalogue of defeats. Under the circumstances it is no wonder that Spain followed the example of Prussia and concluded a treaty of peace.

The next event of importance was Napoleon’s famous coup de main--the seizure of the Spanish royal family at Bayonne--the jugglery which he performed with the crown, its transference by him from Ferdinand VII. (son of Charles IV.) to Joseph Bonaparte, and the revolt of the South American colonies which that act produced.

Then came the restoration of Spanish independence through England’s aid; Wellington’s famous campaign; the battles of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos; the entry into Madrid; the retreat of Joseph to Valencia; Napoleon’s crushing defeat at Leipzig, and Ferdinand’s return from captivity at Valençay.

The circumstances through which these last-mentioned events were induced or precipitated, and which are collectively known as the Peninsular War, originated at the moment when Napoleon was practically master of Europe. Its whole face was changed. Prussia was occupied by French troops. Holland was changed into a monarchy by a simple decree of the French emperor, and its crown bestowed on his brother Louis. Another brother, Jerome, became King of Westphalia, a new realm built up out of the electorates of Hesse-Cassel and Hanover. A third brother, Joseph, was made King of Naples; while the rest of Italy, and even Rome itself, was annexed to the French empire. It was the hope of effectually crushing the world-power of Britain which drove him to his worst aggression, the aggression upon Spain.

Napoleon acted with his usual subtlety. In October, 1807, France and Spain agreed to divide Portugal between them; and on the advance of their forces the reigning House of Braganza fled helplessly from Lisbon to a refuge in Brazil. But the seizure of Portugal was only a prelude to the seizure of Spain. Charles IV., whom a riot in his capital drove at this moment to abdication, and his son, Ferdinand VII., were drawn to Bayonne in May, 1808, and forced to resign their claims to the Spanish crown; while a French army entered Madrid and proclaimed Napoleon’s brother Joseph king of Spain.

This high-handed act of aggression was hardly completed when Spain rose as one man against the stranger; and desperate as the effort of its people seemed, the news of the rising was welcomed throughout England with a burst of enthusiastic joy. “Hitherto,” cried Sheridan, a leader of the Whig opposition, “Bonaparte has contended with princes without dignity, numbers without ardor, or peoples without patriotism. He has yet to learn what it is to combat a people who are animated by one spirit against him.” Tory and Whig alike held that “never had so happy an opportunity existed in Britain to strike a bold stroke for the rescue of the world”; and Canning at once resolved to change the system of desultory descents on colonies and sugar islands for a vigorous warfare in the Peninsula.

The furious and bloody struggle which ensued found its climax at Vittoria, but it would be difficult to find in the whole history of war a more thrilling chapter than that which tells of the six great campaigns of which the war itself was composed.

The Peninsular War was perhaps the least selfish conflict ever waged. It was not a war of aggrandizement or of conquest. It was fought to deliver Europe from the despotism of Napoleon. At its close the fleets of Great Britain rode triumphant, and in the Peninsula between 1808-14 her land forces fought and won nineteen pitched battles, made or sustained ten fierce and bloody sieges, took four great fortresses, twice expelled the French from Portugal and once from Spain. Great Britain expended in these campaigns more than one hundred million pounds sterling on her own troops, besides subsidizing the forces of Spain and Portugal. This “nation of shopkeepers” proved that when kindled to action it could wage war on a scale and in a fashion that might have moved the wonder of Alexander or of Cæsar, and from motives too lofty for either Cæsar or Alexander so much as to comprehend. It is worth while to tell afresh the story of some of the more picturesque incidents in that great strife.

On April 6, 1812, Badajos was stormed by Wellington; and the story forms one of the most tragical and splendid incidents in the military history of the world. Of “the night of horrors at Badajos,” Napier says, “posterity can scarcely be expected to credit the tale.” No tale, however, is better authenticated, or, as an example of what disciplined human valor is capable of achieving, better deserves to be told. Wellington was preparing for his great forward movement into Spain, the campaign which led to Salamanca, the battle in which “forty thousand Frenchmen were beaten in forty minutes.” As a preliminary he had to capture, under the vigilant eyes of Soult and Marmont, the two great border fortresses, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos. He had, to use Napier’s phrase, “jumped with both feet” on the first-named fortress, and captured it in twelve days with a loss of twelve hundred men and ninety officers.

But Badajos was a still harder task. The city stands on a rocky ridge which forms the last spur of the Toledo range, and is of extraordinary strength. The river Rivillas falls almost at right angles into the Guadiana, and in the angle formed by their junction stands Badajos, oval in shape, girdled with elaborate defenses, with the Guadiana, five hundred yards wide, as its defense to the north, the Rivillas serving as a wet ditch to the west, and no less than five great fortified outposts--Saint Roque, Christoval, Picurina, Pardaleras, and a fortified bridge-head across the Guadiana--as the outer zone of its defenses. Twice the English had already assailed Badajos, but assailed it in vain. It was now held by a garrison five thousand strong, under a soldier, General Phillipson, with a real genius for defense, and the utmost art had been employed in adding to its defenses. On the other hand, Wellington had no means of transport and no battery train, and had to make all his preparations under the keen-eyed vigilance of the French. Perhaps the strangest collection of artillery ever employed in a great siege was that which Wellington collected from every available quarter and used at Badajos. Of the fifty-two pieces, some dated from the days of Philip II. and the Spanish Armada, some were cast in the reign of Philip III., others in that of John IV. of Portugal, who reigned in 1640; there were 24-pounders of George II.’s day, and Russian naval guns; the bulk of the extraordinary medley being obsolete brass engines which required from seven to ten minutes to cool between each discharge.

Wellington, however, was strong in his own warlike genius and in the quality of the troops he commanded. He employed eighteen thousand men in the siege, and it may well be doubted whether--if we put the question of equipment aside--a more perfect fighting instrument than the force under his orders ever existed. The men were veterans, but the officers on the whole were young, so there was steadiness in the ranks and fire in the leading. Hill and Graham covered the siege, Picton and Barnard, Kempt and Colville led the assaults. The trenches were held by the third, fourth, and fifth divisions, and by the famous light division. Of the latter it has been said that the Macedonian phalanx of Alexander the Great, the Tenth Legion of Cæsar, the famous Spanish infantry of Alva, or the iron soldiers who followed Cortes to Mexico, did not exceed it in warlike quality. Wellington’s troops, too, had a personal grudge against Badajos, and had two defeats to avenge. Perhaps no siege in history, as a matter of fact, ever witnessed either more furious valor in the assault, or more of cool and skilled courage in the defense. The siege lasted exactly twenty days, and cost the besiegers five thousand men, or an average loss of two hundred and fifty per day. It was waged throughout in stormy weather, with the rivers steadily rising, and the tempests perpetually blowing; yet the thunder of the attack never paused for an instant.

Wellington’s engineers attacked the city at the eastern end of the oval, where the Rivillas served it as a gigantic wet ditch; and the Picurina, a fortified hill, ringed by a ditch fourteen feet deep, a rampart sixteen feet high, and a zone of mines, acted as an outwork. Wellington, curiously enough, believed in night attacks, a sure proof of his faith in the quality of the men he commanded; and on the eighth night of the siege, at nine o’clock, five hundred men of the third division were suddenly flung on the Picurina. The fort broke into a ring of flame, by the light of which the dark figures of the stormers were seen leaping with fierce hardihood into the ditch and struggling madly up the ramparts, or tearing furiously at the palisades. But the defenses were strong, and the assailants fell literally in scores.

Napier tells how “the axmen of the light division, compassing the fort like prowling wolves,” discovered the gate at the rear, and so broke into the fort. The engineer officer who led the attack declares that “the place would never have been taken had it not been for the coolness of these men” in absolutely walking round the fort to its rear, discovering the gate, and hewing it down under a tempest of bullets. The assault lasted an hour, and in that period, out of the five hundred men who attacked, no less than three hundred, with nineteen officers, were killed or wounded! Three men out of every five in the attacking force, that is, were disabled, and yet they won!

There followed twelve days of furious industry, of trenches pushed tirelessly forward through mud and wet, and of cannonading that only ceased when the guns grew too hot to be used. Captain MacCarthy, of the Fiftieth Regiment, has left a curious little monograph on the siege, full of incidents, half tragic and half amusing, but which show the temper of Wellington’s troops. Thus he tells how an engineer officer, when marking out the ground for a breaching-battery very near the wall, which was always lined with French soldiers in eager search of human targets, “used to challenge them to prove the perfection of their shooting by lifting up the skirts of his coat in defiance several times in the course of his survey; driving in his stakes and measuring his distances with great deliberation, and concluding by an extra shake of his coat-tails and an ironical bow before he stepped under shelter!”

On the night of April 6, Wellington determined to assault. No less than seven attacks were to be delivered. Two of them--on the bridge-head across the Guadiana and on the Pardaleras--were mere feints. But on the extreme right Picton with the third division was to cross the Rivillas and escalade the castle, whose walls rose, time-stained and grim, from eighteen to twenty-four feet high. Leith with the fifth division was to attack the opposite or western extremity of the town, the bastion of San Vincente, where the glacis was mined, the ditch deep, and the scarp thirty feet high. Against the actual breaches Colville and Andrew Barnard were to lead the light division and the fourth division, the former attacking the bastion of Santa Maria and the latter the Trinidad. The hour was fixed for ten o’clock, and the story of that night attack, as told in Napier’s immortal prose, is one of the great battle-pictures of literature; and any one who tries to tell the tale will find himself slipping insensibly into Napier’s cadences.

The night was black; a strange silence lay on rampart and trench, broken from time to time by the deep voices of the sentinels that proclaimed all was well in Badajos. “Sentinelle garde à vous,” the cry of the sentinels, was translated by the British private as “All’s well in Badahoo!” A lighted carcass thrown from the castle discovered Picton’s men standing in ordered array, and compelled them to attack at once. MacCarthy, who acted as guide across the tangle of wet trenches and the narrow bridge that spanned the Rivillas, has left an amusing account of the scene. At one time Picton declared MacCarthy was leading them wrong, and, drawing his sword, swore he would cut him down. The column reached the trench, however, at the foot of the castle walls, and was instantly overwhelmed with the fire of the besieged. MacCarthy says we can only picture the scene by “supposing that all the stars, planets, and meteors of the firmament, with innumerable moons emitting smaller ones in their course, were descending on the heads of the besiegers.” MacCarthy himself, a typical and gallant Irishman, addressed his general with the exultant remark, “‘Tis a glorious night, sir--a glorious night!” and, rushing forward to the head of the stormers, shouted, “Up with the ladders!” The five ladders were raised, the troops swarmed up, an officer leading, but the first files were at once crushed by cannon fire, and the ladders slipped into the angle of the abutments. “Dreadful their fall,” records MacCarthy of the slaughtered stormers, “and appalling their appearance at daylight.” One ladder remained, and, a private soldier leading, the eager red-coated crowd swarmed up it. The brave fellow leading was shot as soon as his head appeared above the parapet; but the next man to him--again a private--leaped over the parapet, and was followed quickly by others, and this thin stream of desperate men climbed singly, and in the teeth of the flashing musketry, up that solitary ladder, and carried the castle.

In the meanwhile the fourth and light divisions had flung themselves with cool and silent speed on the breaches. The storming party of each division leaped into the ditch. It was mined, the fuse was kindled, and the ditch, crowded with eager soldiery, became in a moment a sort of flaming crater, and the storming parties, five hundred strong, were in one fierce explosion dashed to pieces. In the light of that dreadful flame the whole scene became visible--the black ramparts, crowded with dark figures and glittering arms, on the one side; on the other, the red columns of the British, broad and deep, moving steadily forward like a stream of human lava. The light division stood at the brink of the smoking ditch for an instant, amazed at the sight. “Then,” says Napier, “with a shout that matched even the sound of the explosion,” they leaped into it and swarmed up to the breach. The fourth division came running up and descended with equal fury but the ditch opposite the Trinidad was filled with water; the head of the division leaped into it, and, as Napier puts it, “about one hundred of the fusiliers, the men of Albuera, perished there.” The breaches were impassable. Across the top of the great slope of broken wall glittered a fringe of sword-blades, sharp-pointed, keen-edged on both sides, fixed in ponderous beams chained together and set deep in the ruins. For ten feet in front the ascent was covered with loose planks, studded with sharp iron points. Behind the glittering edge of sword-blades stood the solid ranks of the French, each man supplied with three muskets, and their fire scourged the British ranks like a tempest.

Hundreds had fallen, hundreds were still falling; but the British clung doggedly to the lower slopes, and every few minutes an officer would leap forward with a shout, a swarm of men would instantly follow him, and, like leaves blown by a whirlwind, they swept up the ascent. But under the incessant fire of the French, the assailants melted away. One private reached the sword-blades, and actually thrust his head beneath them till his brains were beaten out, so desperate was his resolve to get into Badajos. The breach, as Napier describes it, “yawning and glittering with steel, resembled the mouth of a huge dragon belching forth smoke and flame.” But for two hours, and until two thousand men had fallen, the stubborn British persisted in their attacks. Currie, of the 52d, a cool and most daring soldier, found a narrow ramp beyond the Santa Maria breach only half-ruined; he forced his way back through the tumult and carnage to where Wellington stood watching the scene, obtained an unbroken battalion from the reserve, and led it toward the broken ramp. But his men were caught in the whirling madness of the ditch and swallowed up in the tumult. Nicholas, of the engineers, and Shaw of the 43d, with some fifty soldiers, actually climbed into the Santa Maria bastion, and from thence tried to force their way into the breach. Every man was shot down except Shaw, who stood alone on the bastion. “With inexpressible coolness he looked at his watch, said it was too late to carry the breaches,” and then leaped down! The British could not penetrate the breach; but they would not retreat. They could only die where they stood. The buglers of the reserve were sent to the crest of the glacis to sound the retreat; the troops in the ditch would not believe the signal to be genuine, and struck their own buglers who attempted to repeat it. “Gathering in dark groups, and leaning on their muskets,” says Napier, “they looked up in sullen desperation at Trinidad, while the enemy, stepping out on the ramparts, and aiming their shots by the light of fire-balls, which they threw over, asked as their victims fell, ‘Why they did not come into Badajos.’”

All this while, curiously enough, Picton was actually in Badajos, and held the castle securely, but made no attempt to clear the breach. On the extreme west of the town, however, at the bastion of San Vincente, the fifth division made an attack as desperate as that which was failing at the breaches. When the stormers actually reached the bastion, the Portuguese battalions, who formed part of the attack, dismayed by the tremendous fire which broke out on them, flung down their ladders and fled. The British, however, snatched the ladders up, forced the barrier, jumped into the ditch, and tried to climb the walls. These were thirty feet high, and the ladders were too short. A mine was sprung in the ditch under the soldiers’ feet; beams of wood, stones, broken wagons, and live shells were poured upon their heads from above. Showers of grape from the flank swept the ditch.

The stubborn soldiers, however, discovered a low spot in the rampart, placed three ladders against it, and climbed with reckless valor. The first man was pushed up by his comrades; he, in turn, dragged others up, and the unconquerable British at length broke through and swept the bastion. The tumult still stormed and raged at the eastern breaches, where the men of the light and fourth division were dying sullenly, and the men of the fifth division marched at speed across the town to take the great eastern breach in the rear. The streets were empty, but the silent houses were bright with lamps. The men of the fifth pressed on; they captured mules carrying ammunition to the breaches, and the French, startled by the tramp of the fast-approaching column, and finding themselves taken in the rear, fled. The light and fourth divisions broke through the gap hitherto barred by flame and steel, and Badajos was won!

In that dreadful night assault the English lost three thousand five hundred men. “Let it be considered,” says Napier, “that this frightful carnage took place in the space of less than a hundred yards square--that the slain died not all suddenly, nor by one manner of death--that some perished by steel, some by shot, some by water; that some were crushed and mangled by heavy weights, some trampled upon, some dashed to atoms by the fiery explosions--that for hours this destruction was endured without shrinking, and the town was won at last. Let these things be considered, and it must be admitted a British army bears with it an awful power. And false would it be to say the French were feeble men. The garrison stood and fought manfully and with good discipline, behaving worthily. Shame there was none on any side. Yet who shall do justice to the bravery of the British soldiers or the noble emulation of the officers?... No age, no nation, ever sent forth braver troops to battle than those who stormed Badajos.”

In addition to Badajos, the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo and of San Sebastian deserve mention. The annals of strife nowhere record assaults more daring than those which raged in turn around these three great fortresses. Of them all that of Badajos was the most picturesque and bloody; that of San Sebastian the most sullen and exasperating; that of Ciudad Rodrigo the swiftest and most brilliant. A great siege tests the fighting quality of an army as nothing else can test it. In the night watches in the trenches, in the dogged toil of the batteries, and the crowded perils of the breach, all the frippery and much of the real discipline of an army dissolves. The soldiers fall back upon what may be called the primitive fighting qualities--the hardihood of the individual soldier, the daring with which the officers will lead, the dogged loyalty with which the men will follow. As an illustration of the warlike qualities in a race by which empire has been achieved, nothing better can be desired than the story of how the breaches were won at Ciudad Rodrigo.

At the end of 1811 the English and the French were watching each other jealously across the Spanish border. The armies of Marmont and of Soult, sixty-seven thousand strong, lay within touch of each other, barring Wellington’s entrance into Spain. Wellington, with thirty-five thousand men, of whom not more than ten thousand men were British, lay within sight of the Spanish frontier. It was the winter time. Wellington’s army was wasted by sickness, his horses were dying of mere starvation, his men had received no pay for three months, and his muleteers none for eight months. He had no siege train, his regiments were ragged and hungry, and the French generals confidently reckoned the British army as, for the moment at least, une quantite negligeable.

And yet at that precise moment, Wellington, subtle and daring, was meditating a leap upon the great frontier fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, in the Spanish province of Salamanca. Its capture would give him a safe base of operations against Spain; it was the great frontier place d’armes for the French; the whole siege equipage and stores of the army of Portugal were contained in it. The problem of how, in the depth of winter, without materials for a siege, to snatch a place so strong from under the very eyes of two armies, each stronger than his own, was a problem which might have taxed the warlike genius of a Cæsar. But Wellington accomplished it with a combination of subtlety and audacity simply marvelous.

He kept the secret of his design so perfectly that his own engineers never suspected it, and his adjutant-general, Murray, went home on leave without dreaming anything was going to happen. Wellington collected artillery ostensibly for the purpose of arming Almeida, but the guns were transshipped at sea and brought secretly to the mouth of the Douro. No less than eight hundred mule-carts were constructed without anybody guessing their purpose. Wellington, while these preparations were on foot, was keenly watching Marmont and Soult, till he saw that they were lulled into a state of mere yawning security, and then, in Napier’s expressive phrase, he “instantly jumped with both feet upon Ciudad Rodrigo.”

This famous fortress, in shape, roughly resembles a triangle with the angles truncated. The base, looking to the south, is covered by the Agueda, a river given to sudden inundations; the fortifications were strong and formidably armed; as outworks it had to the east the great fortified Convent of San Francisco, to the west a similar building called Santa Cruz; while almost parallel with the northern face rose two rocky ridges called the Great and Small Teson, the nearest within six hundred yards of the city ramparts, and crowned by a formidable redoubt called Francisco. The siege began on January 8. The soil was rocky and covered with snow, the nights were black, the weather bitter. The men lacked intrenching tools. They had to encamp on the side of the Agueda furthest from the city, and ford that river every time the trenches were relieved. The 1st, 3d, and light divisions formed the attacking force; each division held the trenches in turn for twenty-four hours. Let the reader imagine what degree of hardihood it took to wade in the gray and bitter winter dawn through a half-frozen river, and, without fire or warm food, and under a ceaseless rain of shells from the enemy’s guns, to toil in the frozen trenches, or to keep watch, while the icicles hung from eyebrow and beard, over the edge of the battery for twenty-four hours in succession.

Nothing in this great siege is more wonderful than the fierce speed with which Wellington urged his operations. Massena, who had besieged and captured the city the year before in the height of summer, spent a month in bombarding it before he ventured to assault. Wellington broke ground on January 8, under a tempest of mingled hail and rain; he stormed it on the night of the 19th.

He began operations by leaping on the strong work that crowned the Great Teson the very night the siege began. Two companies from each regiment of the light division were detailed by the officer of the day, Colonel Colborne, for the assault. Colborne (afterward Lord Seaton), a cool and gallant soldier, called his officers together in a group and explained with great minuteness how they were to attack. He then lanched his men against the redoubt with a vehemence so swift that, to those who watched the scene under the light of a wintry moon, the column of redcoats, like the thrust of a crimson sword-blade, spanned the ditch, shot up the glacis, and broke through the parapet with a single movement. The accidental explosion of a French shell burst the gate open, and the remainder of the attacking party instantly swept through it. There was fierce musketry fire and a tumult of shouting for a moment or two, but in twenty minutes from Colborne’s lanching his attack every Frenchman in the redoubt was killed, wounded, or a prisoner.

The fashion in which the gate was blown open was very curious. A French sergeant was in the act of throwing a live shell upon the storming party in the ditch, when he was struck by an English bullet. The lighted shell fell from his hands within the parapet, was kicked away by the nearest French in mere self-preservation; it rolled toward the gate, exploded, burst it open, and instantly the British broke in.

For ten days a desperate artillery duel raged between the besiegers and the besieged. The parallels were resolutely pushed on in spite of rocky soil, broken tools, bitter weather, and the incessant pelting of the French guns. The temper of the British troops is illustrated by an incident which George Napier--the youngest of the three Napiers--relates. The three brothers were gallant and remarkable soldiers. Charles Napier in India and elsewhere made history; William, in his wonderful tale of the Peninsular War, wrote history; and George, if he had not the literary genius of the one nor the strategic skill of the other, was a most gallant soldier. “I was a field-officer of the trenches,” he says, “when a 13-inch shell from the town fell in the midst of us. I called to the men to lie down flat, and they instantly obeyed orders, except one of them, an Irishman and an old marine, but a most worthless drunken dog, who trotted up to the shell, the fuse of which was still burning, and striking it with his spade, knocked the fuse out; then taking the immense shell in his hands, brought it to me, saying, ‘There she is for you, now, yer ’anner. I’ve knocked the life out of the crater.’”

The besieged brought fifty heavy guns to reply to the thirty light pieces by which they were assailed, and day and night the bellow of eighty pieces boomed sullenly over the doomed city and echoed faintly back from the nearer hills, while the walls crashed to the stroke of the bullet. The English fire made up by fierceness and accuracy for what it lacked in weight; but the sap made no progress, the guns showed signs of being worn out, and, although two apparent breaches had been made, the counterscarp was not destroyed. Yet Wellington determined to attack, and, in his characteristic fashion, to attack by night. The siege had lasted ten days, and Marmont, with an army stronger than his own, was lying within four marches. That he had not appeared already on the scene was wonderful.

In a general order issued on the evening of the 19th Wellington wrote, “Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed this evening.” The great breach was a sloping gap in the wall at its northern angle, about a hundred feet wide. The French had crowned it with two guns loaded with grape, the slope was strewn with bombs, hand-grenades and bags of powder; a great mine pierced it beneath; a deep ditch had been cut between the breach and the adjoining ramparts, and these were crowded with riflemen. The third division, under General Mackinnon, was to attack the breach, its forlorn hope being led by Ensign Mackie, its storming party by General Mackinnon himself. The lesser breach was a tiny gap, scarcely twenty feet wide, to the left of the great breach; this was to be attacked by the light division, under Craufurd, its forlorn hope of twenty-five men being led by Gurwood, and its storming party by George Napier. General Pack, with a Portuguese brigade, was to make a sham attack on the eastern face, while a fourth attack was to be made on the southern front by a company of the 83d and some Portuguese troops. In the storming party of the 83d were the Earl of March, afterward Duke of Richmond; Lord Fitzroy Somerset, afterward Lord Raglan; and the Prince of Orange--all volunteers without Wellington’s knowledge!