Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

that he would not send any more succours to him at present (June, 1810), because he could not. "Why don't you," said his minister to Joseph's ambassador at Paris, "raise contributions in Andalusia? above all, at Seville, Murcia, and Malaga? and confiscate English merchandize? In the establishment of the King of Spain there is too much pomp, shew, and luxury. Pay the army: that, is, conquer and pacify the country in the first place. Grant rewards to individuals afterwards. It is impossible but there must be more specie in Spain, considering what must have been imported by the French, the English, and from America. It is the way of the Emperor to support the armies he employs at the expense of the countries he invaded. If the Emperor had not invaded Spain, he could have disbanded his troops, and spared his own treasury. The staff estatablishment of the King of Spain was too numerous, and too expensive. The Spanish corps he had taken into his service were not only an useless expense, but a mischief, as they commonly deserted to the enemy. The favour and kindness shewn to the Spanish gentlemen newly come over from the enemy to the king, served only to disgust those who had espoused his cause from the beginning.'

The ambassador, in reply, stated, among other things, that very heavy arrears of pay were due to the officers both of his catholic majesty's staff and household, and

1

that the ordinary impositions on Spain at present, were almost wholly unproductive. They were levied only on a small portion of the subdued provinces; and even in these, the collectors were often thwarted by the Guerillas. *

It already occurred, as one way of raising money, to seil what the French called the forfeited estates. In the month of July, there was a public sale of the estates of all the Spanish grandees, and other great landed proprietors, who had emigrated to Cadiz, and adhered to Ferdinand VII. But this measure of finance turned out to very little account, and next to nothing.

If it seemed necessary to urge Joseph to the adoption of harsh and cruel measures for the subjection of Spain, there was no necessity for exciting the French generals either to plunder, or to commit any act of atrocity that might be supposed to contribute to the same end. General orders were issued by Soult, at Seville, May 29, for granting no quarter to any Spaniards, not regular troops, found in arms against King Joseph. All such were to be treated as rebels against legitimate authority, and devoted, without mercy, to fire and sword. But the Regency of Spain immediately ordered retaliation, a few examples of which excited a murmur of discontent throughout the whole French army. And by a decree of Buonaparte, the rights of war were allowed to the Guerillas.

* Intercepted letter from Aranza, Duke of Santa Fé, chargé d'affaires at the court of Paris, to Don L. M. Urquijo, minister of King Joseph for foreign relations, Paris, June 20, 1810. Extracted from the Gazette Extraordinary of the Regency of Spain, Aug. 5, 1810.

Towards

Towards the end of the preceding year, Kellerman, general of division, and governor general for Upper Spain, for the districts of Salamancha, Zamora, Toro, Leon, Placentia, Burgos, Guipusco, and Alava, issued general orders for putting the horses and mares of those districts, of a certain size, in requisition, and conducting them to their respective capitals. The left eyes of all the rest were ordered to be put out, so that they might be disabled from military service. *

It was a common stratagem of the French to appear in one place, where their presence was not necessary, and suddenly retire to those where it was, marching with great rapidity from place to place. It was intended by this manœuvre to frighten the people, and thus make them lay down their arms, under the persuasion that they should be certainly overwhelmed by numbers.

Of all the princes of the house of Bourbon at this time, 1810, the Duke of Orleans was by far the most active and enterprizing, and the most distinguished both by natural capacity and accom. plishments. At the battle of Jemappe, under General Dumourier, he gave decided proofs of personal valour, and, on a great many subsequent occasions, when wandering as a fugitive on the continent of Europe, sometimes in Switzerland, and sometimes in Scandinavia, even to the North Cape, in America, and in England, he shewed a readiness, and a fertility of resources in his own mind,

not often to be met with in persons of his rank. It was naturally imagined, that the presence of such a prince in Spain, would tend to heighten the enthusiasm of the Spaniards, and to detach some of the French from an usurper to a prince of the house of Bourbon. He had married a daughter of the King of Sicily, his kinswoman, and resided at the court of Palermo. He was invited by the Regency, on the 11th of March, to take the command of an army on the frontier of France. He landed from Sicily first at Malta, in the beginning of June; from thence he proceeded to Tarragona, in Catalonia; whither he was expected to return, after holding a conference with the Regency and the British commander at Cadiz. When the duke arrived in Catalonia, he published a proclamation declaring the purpose of his arrival, and inviting all true Frenchmen as well as Spaniards to join him in an effort to deliver themselves from the yoke of tyranny and usurpation. But the Cortes would not confirm this prince in the office of commander in chief in Catalonia, to which he had been appointed by the Council of Regency; and he was obliged to leave Cadiz, which he did on the 3d of October, and returned in a Spanish frigate to Sicily. It was said at the time, that the cause of the duke's disappointment and dismissal from Spain was, the ambition he discovered, and the intrigues he had begun to set on foot among the members of the

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

1

Cortes, for being appointed sole regent of Spain during the captivity and absence of Ferdinand VII. This report derives a degree of probability from the subsequent determination of the Cortes to

wards the close of 1811, that no person should be appointed to the regency of Spain, during the captivity of Ferdinand, who had any claims to the eventual succession to the crown.

CHAP.

CHAP. XIV.

Spanish Provinces of America. - Revolutions in. -Traced to their Causes. The Colonies divided into two grand Parties. - Civil War begun.

THE S

of Ame

HE Spanish provinces of Ar their geographical position and immense extent, seem destined by the hand of nature to form five great independent states: Mexico, Terra Firma, Paraguay, Peru, and Chili. It is not in nature, that regions so vast, and some of them so far distant from each other, should remain always under the same authority; much less that the whole, amidst the revolutions of states, the progress of knowledge, and the force of example, should continue for any great lapse of time, to be governed by a country situated in another hemisphere.

The Spanish Americans were an oppressed and insulted people. Their grievances were many and various. But the principal of them may be reduced to two heads: restrictions on commerce, and even on the free cultivation of the soil; † and an exclusion from all places of profit, trust, and power in the administration of the pro vinces. The monopolization of commerce was as detrimental to the inhabitants of Old Spain in general as to the colonists, and benefited only the merchants of

Cadiz, the emporium in which that trade centered. The commerce of the Spanish colonies in America was in a very languishing state, and threatened with total ruin. There was not an opening for the reception of their commodities in Spain, nor could Spain furnish shipping for transporting them to any other part of Europe. The colonies that suffered most from the monopolization of commerce were those of Caraccas, Buenos Ayres, and the, great island of Cuba; whose articles of commerce, being of a bulky nature, required a great deal of shipping, and were, farther, of so perishable a nature, that they were liable to be lost if kept on board for any great length of time.

The Central Junta, willing to unite all hands and hearts in support of the tottering and falling monarchy, declared the ultra marine possessions to be integral parts of the Spanish empire, and their rights to representation in the general congress. But all the provisory governments that succeeded each other, though they recognized their rights in theory,

* Comprehending, besides Terra Firma Proper, or Darien, Popayan, Quito, and New Grenada. † It is not, we believe, a hundred years since an order was sent from Madrid to cut down the vine, fig, and olive trees in certain of the provinces.

continued

continued to trample on them in practice. At no former period was there greater peculation in the American colonies of Spain, or greater despotism or insolence in all the political departments from the highest to the lowest-none in which men were in less danger of being called to account for acts of rapacity and oppression. Crowds of needy adventurers were sent to America, to repair their fortunes, ruined by the convulsions in the mother country. They filled all the public places, which the natives considered as their natural heritage. Nor had the injuctice and outrages which they had suffered theinselves, taught them moderation and equity in their own conduct towards others.

Such was the actual government, and such the condition of the people, when intelligence was received of the irruption of the French into Andalusia, and the dispersion of the Central Junta, loaded with the execrations and the contempt of the people. On the declaration of war by France against the mother country, the colonists manifested the greatest ardour in the common cause of the Spaniards, by their ready obedience to the provisory governments in Old Spain, and by the liberality of their contributions, But, when every ship that arrived from Europe was fraught with news of fresh defeats and disasters, and accusations of treason, they became more sparing of their contributions, and less and less disposed to place their confidence in the temporary authorities. They recollected that in the greater part of the Spanish provinces in Ame.

rica, and in those of Europe, without exception, it was not the nobility and prime gentry that first took the alarm, and set themselves to oppose and confound the designs of France, but the people. A general persuasion prevailed, that the persons in possession of the various departments of government, almost all of them natives of Spain, were more anxious to keep up their connections with the mother country, into whatsoever hands the supreme authority might pass, than to repel foreign aggression and usurpation. There seemed, however, to be at first a tacit agreement or understanding among all the Spanish provinces of America, that, for the sake of avoiding the horrors of anarchy, it would be prudent to recognize the authority of the metropolis, so long as there should be any appearance of a central government to rule the monarchy in the name of Ferdinand VII.

The authority of the Central Junta, and the Regency appointed at Cadiz, was first disowned in Terra Firma. On the news of the reduction of Seville, and the dispersion of the Junta, the minds of all classes were greatly agitated. The general alarm of the detested and dreaded domination of France was aggravated. But they who were distressed by the restrictions imposed by the mother country on trade, were not displeased at a conjuncture that might enable them to take the redress of their grievances into their own hands. The unpopular magistracy of Caraccas was deserted by the military, who fell in with the general voice of the people, and a provisory Junta was formed for

« PoprzedniaDalej »