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by Lord Wellington's interference, availed nothing; they were opposed by every species of low cunning and court intrigue. For the old corruptions existed in full vigour, notwithstanding the removal of the court to Brazil; and the body politic continued to suffer under its inveterate disease, a morbus pediculosus, from which nothing but a cortes can purify it, and restore it to health and strength. In Spain, we did our duty by urging that the cortes should be convoked; had we considered the Portugueze as much as the house of Braganza, or had we looked forward to the real and vital interests of that family, we should have urged it in Portugal also, sure of obtaining equal benefit for the prince and the people, if we had made it the condition of our assistance.

Much, however, has been done for

Portugal, enough to be ever remembered by that country with gratitude, and by Great Britain with a generous and ennobling pride. An English commissariat, scrupulously exact in all its dealings, relieved the farmers in great measure from the oppression of their own government; the soldiers learnt to respect their officers and themselves; they rapidly improved in discipline; they acquired confidence, and became proud of their profession. The government itself found it necessary to alter its old system of secresy and delusion; the dispatches of Lord Wellington and Marshal Beresford were published in the Lisbon Gazette, and the people of Portugal were officially informed of the real circumstances of the war, as fairly and as fully as they had been ia the War of the Acclamation.

CHAP. XV.

State of the British Army. Astorga taken by the French. Siege and Fall of Ciudad Rodrigo. Success of the Portugueze at Pueblo de Sanabria.

WHILE Marshal Beresford was thus disciplining the Portugueze army, and preparing them to resist the most formidable invasion with which their country had ever been threatened, the British troops were recovering from the privations of the last campaign, and the diseases incident to that part of Estremadura in which they had been quartered. When Lord Wellington moved from Badajoz, the number of sick amounted to 8880, exclusive of artillery and engineers. Fortunately, so near as Elvas, there is a hilly and healthy country, to which the sick could be removed; and when they took up a position on the frontiers of Beira, the army rapidly recovered. Here Lord Wellington observed the movements of the French; he was too weak to undertake offensive operations against them; but he penetrated their plans, and had formed his own.

Portugal, notwithstanding its length of frontier, is one of the most defensible countries in Europe, and all invading armies have ever found it to be so. On the side of Alentejo, Lord Wellington knew that the invasion would not be attempted; for even if Badajoz and Elvas had been reduced,

It

Lisbon was secured by the Tagus; and there is no part of the kingdom in which an army would suffer so severely as in this province, from diseases, and from want of water. On the side of Gallicia, the French had experienced the difficulties of a retreat too lately to risk the same danger again, even if it had not been necessary again to obtain possession of Gallicia as a previous measure. appeared certain, therefore, that the attack would be made by the only remaining and most practicable route for an invading army,-through Beira. The preliminary measure would be to obtain possession of Ciudad Rodrigo. Soult, the ablest of the French generals who have been employed in Spain, had long recommended the capture of this city; and Lord Wellington, equally aware of its importance, had long foreseen its danger. He knew, in the preceding year, that the siege had been recommended by a council of war held at Salamanca, and its success, he then said, would do more evil than the French could effect in any other way; for it would cut off the only communication of the Spanish government with the northern provinces, give the enemy the command

⚫ Sept. 1. 1809.

of Castille, and probably draw after it the loss of the Portugueze fortress of Almeida.

Before the French began the siege, they thought it necessary to obtain complete possession of Leon, that their communication might be open with Valladolid. They had been driven from Astorga, in the September of the preceding year, by D. Josef Maria Santocildes, colonel of the provincial regiment of Santiago, who remained as governor there. The city was surrounded with walls, which gave it an appearance of antiquity, not of strength. They had been erected many centuries ago, and were so massy, and at the same time considered as of so little consequence for purposes of defence, that the poor were permitted to dig holes in them which served for habitations. The garrison consisted of about 3000 men, of whom from 5 to 600 were on the hospital list. Some attempts had been made to render the city defensible, according to the system of modern warfare, by the enemy, after Buonaparte entered it in pursuit of Sir J. Moore; and when the Spaniards recovered it, they added to these works. Still the fortifications were such, that though the French might deem them sufficient against an armed peasantry, or a guerilla party, it was never expected that any resistance would be made against a regular force. After the French had over-run Andalusia, and when they were proclaiming, that the brigands had been put to the sword, and the Napoleonic throne established in Cadiz, for this falsehood was in such phrase asserted in their Spanish gazettes, Loison, whose head-quarters were at Baneza, the nearest town, wrote to the governor, telling him, that King Joseph had entered Seville amid the acclamations of all the in

habitants; that Andalusia had submitted; the junta Feb. 16. was dissolved; and almost all the people of Spain, awakened now to a sense of their true interest, had had recourse to the clemency of their sovereign, who received them like a father. He urged Santocildes to imitate so good an example, and appoint a place where they might meet and confer upon such terms as would not fail to persuade him to this wise and honourable course. Santocildes replied, that he knew his duty, and should fulfil it.

On the 21st of March, Junot invested Astorga with about 12,000 men, of whom about a tenth part were ca valry, by means of which he became completely master of the open country. The vigorous measures of Santocildes obstructed his operations so much, that a month elapsed before he opened his batteries. They began on three sides at once, at day-break on the 20th of April, and soon effected a breach on the north, by the Puerta de Hierro; but immediately behind the breach the Spaniards pulled down a house, the foundations of which served as a formidable trench; they kept up their fire during the night, and at eleven the following morning Junot once more summoned the governor to surrender, declaring that, if he held out two hours longer, the city should be stormed, and the garrison put to the sword. The governor returned a becoming answer; the batteries then renewed their fire; the bombardment was recommenced; the cathedral was set on fire, with many other houses, and a whole street in the suburbs; and the French, thinking to profit by the confusion, assaulted the breach: 2000 men were appointed to this service; great part of them perished before they could

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reach the wall; the remainder mount ed the breach; the works within impeded them; a destructive fire was poured upon them; and after an hour and a half they were repulsed. At the same time the suburb was assaulted, and with the same success; the enemy being three times baffled in their attempts. Their loss this day amounted to 1500 men.

Had the city been well stored, it would have cost the French still dearer; but after this signal success, Santocildes found himself with only thirty round of cartridges remaining for the men, and eight only for the artillery. Junot passed the night in making a covered way from the tren ches to the foot of the breach, where he lodged a large body of picked men. Meantime a council of war was held; the impossibility of resisting with success for want of ammunition was admitted; some officers proposed that they should cut their way through the besiegers ;-the strength of the enemy's cavalry was one impediment to this, but it was rejected on account of the inhabitants. Astorga was not like Hostalrich, where the garrison had only themselves to provide for; and unless terms were made for the inhabitants, what they might expect from such conquerors as Junot and Loison was but too well known. Fresh works of defence were thrown up within the breach while this deliberation was going on, that nothing might be omitted, and at day-break a capitulation was proposed. They demanded and obtained the honours of war for themselves; security for the inhabitants, both in person and property; that the men should keep their knapsacks, and the officers their horses, swords, and baggage. This part of the capitulation was broken, and the officers plundered as they left

the town. Even Junot, however, returned Santocildes his sword, saying, that so brave a man ought not to be without one. In the course of the siege the enemy lost 2500 in killed alone; so dearly was Astorga purchased. But the more gallant its resistance, the more was that miscon duct to be regretted which had infected the provincial juntas as strongly as the central government. Since July last, Gallicia had been entirely delivered from the enemy; the population of that province, when the cen sus of 1797 was taken, amounted to 1,142,630 persons; the people had shown their spirit, and if due exertions had been made on the part of their civil and military authorities, an army might have been formed, capable not only of preserving Astorga, but of essentially co-operating with the Bri, tish and Portugueze.

After this conquest, Junot, leaving a smail garrison in Astorga, marched into Old Castille, where Ney had previously been joined by the corps of Loison, Regnier, and Kellerman. The campaign had already begun here. In the beginning of March the French army were upon the Tormes, with their advanced posts upon the Agueda. Lord Wellington was at Viseu, and his advanced posts, under General Craufurd, were upon the Agueda also, and between that river and the Coa. An affair of outposts, at Barba del Puerco, March 19. was the first time that the British and French troops met after the battle of Talavera; four companies of the 85th, under Lieut.-Col. Beckwith, were posted at Barba del Puerco; immediately opposite, on the other side the Agueda, is the village of St Felices, where the French had a strong party. The only bridge below Ciudad Rodrigo is between these

villages, and as the river at this season was swollen with the rain, this was the only passage. The country is rocky and mountainous, and though the advanced sentries of both parties were within a few yards of the bridge, it was not expected that either party would attempt to annoy the other; so great were the obstacles which the nature of the ground presented. The French, however, collected a brigade in St Felices, and after night had closed marched 600 men toward the bridge. About midnight they were all assembled there, and made the advanced sentries prisoners; a picquet of 80 men, posted behind the rocks, immediately fired upon them and retreated in excellent order; they pushed on up the mountain hoping to surprise the remainder of the men, but were presently repulsed. The loss was trifling on either side. Marshal Ney, however, ventured to assert, that the English had been routed at the point of the bayonet, and that their transports were ready at Porto and Lisbon.

The French had learnt at Vimeiro, and Coruna, and Talavera, to respect British valour, but they had not yet been taught to respect English policy; and they fully expected that if they brought a superior force against him, Lord Wellington would fly through Portugal, and seek shelter in his ships. Preparations, therefore, were made for a third invasion of Portugal, with an army far exceeding in number those which Junot and Soult had commanded, even if they had been united, and under Massena, a general of higher rank than either. No general in the French service had enjoyed so high a reputation since Hoche, and Pichegru, and Moreau had disappeared. Buonaparte, in his Italian campaign, called him, in his

own inflated style, the favourite Child of Victory; and after the last Austrian war, made him Prince of Essling, because his skill and exertions had contributed so greatly to the escape of the French from utter destruction at the battle of Aspern. He was appointed commander-in-chief of the provinces of the north of Spain, including the kingdoms of Old Castille, Leon, and Asturias; the provinces of St Andero, Soria, Valladolid and Valencia, Toro, Zamora, Salamanca and Avila; the army under him was named the army of Portugal; and, as Soult had done before him, it is believed that he went to make the conquest of Portugal, expecting to be rewarded with its crown for his success.

In the later wars between Spain and Portugal, the three cities where the Spaniards used to collect their armies before they invaded the ene my's country were, Tuy, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajoz. Of these fortresses, Tuy, like Valença on the opposite frontier, is now of little strength or importance. Badajoz is a strong place. Ciudad Rodrigo hardly to be ranked in the third order of fortresses, It was built some centuries ago, when the site was sufficiently convenient for a fortified town; but the situation is bad: the works, at the time when the French besieged it, were old and imperfect, and it had other local disadvantages. It is commanded from many points; one height, within 500 toises of the city, exceeds by about fifty yards the highest of its buildings. There were no bomb-proofs, and the suburbs, in which there were four convents, and the number of gardens without the walls, materially assisted the operations of a besieging army. The population of the city had been estimated at about 10,000; but it appears not much to have ex

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