Chapter 12

Bleeding in Spain

In This Chapter

Closing off the Brits

Making Spain a family affair

Fighting a new kind of war

Draining needed resources

A s I show in previous chapters, for most of his career, Napoleon had great success against land armies. He fought against traditional armies using his new, improved Grande Armée,guerrilla warfare,war against insurgents.

Napoleon was in Spain and Portugal to try to close off the entire European continent to British trade. This economic embargo was called the Continental System, and I tell you all about it in Chapter 21.

In this chapter, I give you an introduction to Spanish politics and how Napoleon became involved in matters concerning the Spanish crown. I show you that being progressive is not always popular with the common people, and I explain why the French campaign in Spain soon became known as Napoleon’s Spanish Ulcer.

And oh, yes. In this chapter, we have our first introduction to a fellow named Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington.

Gaining Control of Portugal

Spain and France had an on again, off again relationship. Spain had been unhappy with the French Revolution and had not been all that thrilled with Napoleon. In 1807, Spain and France were again allies, but Napoleon was not very pleased with Spain’s lack of enthusiasm about that alliance. Still, Spain had been fairly cooperative. She had at least loosely tried to enforce the Continental System.

Portugal, on the other hand, had been unwilling to cooperate with France. So in 1807, Napoleon sent General Andoche Junot (see Figure 12-1) to occupy that small country on the western edge of the Iberian Peninsula. (Spain and Portugal share the Iberian Peninsula, and the conflict I describe in this chapter is usually called the Peninsular War or the Peninsular Campaign. )

Figure 12-1: This period painting on ivory in a gilt frame shows General Andoche Junot in his uniform.

Junot had little difficulty moving his troops through Spain. (Because Spain was an ally, she did not object.) They marched into Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. There they discovered that the Portuguese fleet and royal family had left for Brazil two days earlier. Junot was appointed governor, and Portugal was, for a time at least, under the control of France. This action closed the largest gap in the Continental System and was a major accomplishment for Napoleon’s strategic goals.

Taking Advantage of Spain’s Political Turmoil

Even with Portugal on board, Spain continued to be lax in its enforcement of the Continental System. Napoleon became determined to fix that situation once and for all. Turmoil in the Spanish court would give him his opportunity.

Sorting out Spanish court politics

Spain was run by a king named Charles (Carlos in Spanish) IV, a member of the Bourbon family that had once ruled France as well. (All those Louies were Bourbons.) Charles IV was nobody’s idea of an ideal monarch:

He was not very bright.

He may have been quite mentally unbalanced.

For good measure, he was a complete despot, ruling with an iron hand.

Being married to such a man was probably not much fun for Queen Maria Luisa, but she did what she could to cope. She coped by befriending a man who would become her notorious lover, Manuel de Godoy, whom she soon had installed as prime minister. Their behavior was flagrant, and the common people were outraged. The Spanish people were generally very conservative Catholics. They hated the French Revolution for its anticlerical actions, and they were none too fond of the impious actions of their queen and her lover.

The royal couple’s son, Ferdinand, was unhappy as well. Queen Maria Luisa and Godoy, who was actually given the title “prince of peace,” were running the country, and Ferdinand’s father was as ineffective as he was despotic. There were plots and counterplots, with Godoy siding with the king against his son. King Charles actually had Ferdinand arrested for treason, though little came of that.

Convincing the royals to abdicate

The situation became out of control, and both King Charles and Prince Ferdinand appealed to Napoleon for mediation. This gave Napoleon the opening he needed. He had been looking for an excuse to occupy Spain and gain control of not only the country but also all of her (presumably) wealthy overseas colonies. Napoleon quietly put his military in charge of Spanish forts along the border between Spain and France, in the Pyrenees Mountains. He also increased French military strength in Spain itself. He then sent Marshal Joachim Murat to occupy the Spanish capital of Madrid, which he did on March 24, 1808.

Napoleon convinced the royal family to become his “guests” in the French city of Bayonne, and they arrived there on April 30th. The idea was to mediate their differences, but it was soon clear that the real point was to remove all of them from power in Spain. Both Charles and Ferdinand abdicated their rights to the throne, and Godoy was removed from all further influence in Spain. (See Figure 12-2 for period images of Charles and Godoy.) Since none of them were really capable of leadership, at least some of the Spanish people were not particularly sad to see them gone.

Figure 12-2: Manuel de Godoy (A) and King Charles IV (B), from Godoy’s memoirs of 1823.

The Peasants Are Revolting (and So Are the Clergy)

At first, the Spanish peasants and especially the citizens of Madrid took kindly to Napoleon’s actions. They had been quite unhappy with the bickering between the king and his son, and they were disgusted with the relationship between the queen and her prime minister. But they quickly tired of French military occupation. Marshal Murat was determined to keep order, and most people don’t like soldiers on every street corner and seemingly quartered in every bed. Especially foreign soldiers. Nobody likes foreign troops stationed in their city for very long at all.

All may have been well if Murat had simply recognized Prince Ferdinand as the new ruler, with the French there to help in the transition. But Murat couldn’t do that, of course, as Napoleon had other plans. This didn’t sit well with the good citizens of Madrid, no matter how much they liked their French allies. French General Emmanuel Grouchy was installed as Madrid’s military governor, and while he was able to keep things reasonably quiet for a time, he soon ran into difficulty. A riot broke out on April 1st, but Grouchy was able to restore order quickly.

When word of the complete removal of the Spanish royal family from power, (and the pending arrest of royal family members still in Spain) reached Madrid, the people had had enough. Allies or not, the French had to go. Resentment of the French Revolution’s perceived destruction of the Catholic Church bubbled to the surface, and the clergy joined the general citizenry in their goal of sending the French packing.

On May 2, 1808, the citizens of Madrid rioted. Any French soldier caught alone or in a small group was likely to be hung from the nearest street lamp. French cavalry and artillery restored order after several hours, but the streets ran red with blood.

Marshal Murat (see Figure 12-3) then managed to make things worse. Rather than seeking a way to pacify at least some of the anti-French factions, he instead declared martial law and cracked down hard on the citizens of Madrid. He rounded up as many insurgents as he could and had many of them shot. This action is reflected in some of Francisco José de Goya’s paintings, notably his Dos de Mayo and Tres de Mayo (Second of May and Third of May). Goya would continue to paint scenes of the Spanish conflict with France, showing alleged scenes of French atrocities. His viewpoint was understandably partisan, not showing equally horrific scenes of Spanish atrocities against the French, but his paintings stand out as some of the most powerful of the period.

Figure 12-3: Marshal Joachim Murat, shown here in a period engraving, was one of the flashiest of all Napoleon’s marshals.

Keeping Control All in the Family

Having deposed the Spanish royal family, and with order somewhat restored in Madrid, Napoleon moved to place someone from his own family on the Spanish throne. This action was not as odd or inappropriate as you may think; kings did not always come from the country they ruled. King George III of England, for example, was from Hanover, and in a few years Sweden would choose French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte as its king.

Going from brother to brother

Napoleon first offered the Spanish throne to his brother Louis. When Louis declined the honor, he offered it to another brother, Jérôme. Both of these brothers were smart enough to turn it down. And who could blame them? Let’s see. Their brother had deposed the rightful rulers, Murat had caused anti-French rioting with substantial bloodshed in the capital, and the peasants and clergy really didn’t like France’s secular government anyway.

Napoleon was not to be denied, however, and turned next to his eldest brother, Joseph. Now, brother Joseph was quite content where he was, sitting on the relatively peaceful throne of Naples. He had a nice palace, beautiful beaches, and plenty of Roman ruins to visit. But Napoleon insisted, and when Napoleon insisted, one had little choice. On June 6th, Joseph was declared King Joseph (José in Spanish) of Spain. Napoleon then removed Murat from Madrid and made him the King of Naples. Murat had wanted to stay in Spain, but given his lack of local popularity, it was probably just as well that he left, which he did in July.

Meeting popular resistance

The people of Spain did not appreciate their new French monarch. Rioting became widespread, and organized resistance to the French occupation grew. Napoleon could not have completely understood it yet, but his efforts in Spain were doomed. Without the support of the people, it would be impossible for Joseph to be an effective ruler.

There is much irony in all of this. Joseph was a moderate and quite likeable person who wanted to be a good king. He brought with him the liberal reforms that had been so popular in France and elsewhere. The Spanish Catholic Church had been anything but progressive: This was, after all, the home of the Spanish Inquisition, where even the suspicion that you weren’t a good Catholic could get you tortured to death. The Church was extremely wealthy and corrupt, and it was very unpopular with the intelligentsia of the country. Those educated people supported Joseph and his reforms, and they hoped that the Church would lose its stranglehold on the populace.

Napoleon made the mistake of assuming that the intelligentsia, along with the merchant class that wanted increased trade with France, represented the population as a whole. Even in the area of religion, Napoleon thought the fact that he had established good relations with the Pope would stand him in good stead. (See Chapters 20 and 23 for more on Napoleon’s relations with the Pope.)

The enlightened reforms offered to the Spanish people by Napoleon through Joseph would have been a big improvement in their lives — Napoleon ended the Inquisition, for example — but the peasants were not interested. French clerical reforms, such as religious tolerance, divorce rights, and secular control of public policy, were of no interest to the conservative Catholics of Spain. Napoleon thought he’d be seen as a liberator. Instead, he was seen as a usurper of power and a threat to religion. Kind of hard to rule with that kind of image!

Battling the British

Joseph well understood what he was facing. He arrived in Madrid on July 20, 1808, and by the 24th he already had written to Napoleon that he, Joseph, had no support and that Napoleon’s “glory will be shipwrecked in Spain.” Joseph was all too correct. Things very quickly began to unravel. Pro-French provincial and city governors were assassinated, and some Spanish governors appealed to the British for help.

The British are coming

By mid-summer of 1808, the British government responded to Spain’s requests for help by sending an army into Portugal. This army was led by a general named Arthur Wellesley. If Spain were to kick the French out of their country, they would need all the British help they could get, as the regular Spanish army was not very effective. The British consolidated their position and then began to move toward French forces.

Before the Brits could do much, the Spanish insurgents claimed a big victory in southern Spain with the July 22nd defeat of the French at the Battle of Bailen. General Pierre Dupont’s corps of over 20,000 men surrendered. It was a stunning defeat, though the fact that Dupont’s men were raw recruits was a significant factor. When Joseph got wind of this development, he beat a hasty retreat, abandoning Madrid for the safety of secure French positions in the north.

On August 21st, General Junot’s army attacked the slightly larger force commanded by Wellesley in Portugal. The resulting action led to a decisive French defeat, and Junot was forced to surrender his entire command. Wellesley’s superiors insisted on cutting a quick deal, though, and the resulting Conven- tion of Cintra allowed Junot’s army to evacuate Portugal for France, keeping all its baggage and the plunder it had accumulated. The soldiers even sailed home on British ships! This kind of deal was unheard of, and the British government recalled the top three commanders, including Wellesley, leaving General Sir John Moore in command. Wellesley, cleared of any wrongdoing, returned in April 1809.

Napoleon is coming

Napoleon was quite displeased with the situation in Spain and its consequences to his overall position. While he was at peace on his eastern front with Austria and Russia (see Chapters 9 and 10), past experience had shown that he could not count on that peace to last. If it didn’t, and if Spain were still tying down a substantial part of his army, he would be fighting a two-front war, which is never a good idea. Napoleon had expected Spain to fall into place with no difficulty and had sent second-rate soldiers to do the job. They and their leaders (including Joseph) had failed him, so Napoleon would just have to do it himself.

After substantial preparation, Napoleon led his offensive into Spain in early November 1808. His forces numbered 100,000, including units commanded by some of his best marshals, such as Nicolas Soult, Michel Ney, and Jean Lannes. They met with considerable success (see Figure 12-4), and by early December, Napoleon was in Madrid. There, he managed to humiliate his brother, King Joseph, by pretty much ignoring him while taking complete charge of everything.

Figure 12-4: This period snuffbox celebrates Napoleon’s initial victories in the Pyrenees.

Napoleon meant well in Spain, but he still just didn’t get it. He undertook reforms that were much needed and were popular with the educated classes. He abolished the Inquisition and completely restructured the relationship between the Church and the government. As he had in France and elsewhere, he instated financial, social, and political reforms, attempting to modernize a nation that in many ways was still stuck in the Middle Ages. Actually, many common people approved of at least quite a few of these reforms, but they didn’t appreciate the way they were instituted. (Perhaps if their new King Joseph had been the one to announce them, they may have gone over better.)

The British are leaving

British forces under Sir John Moore’s command began to move from Portugal into Spain and threaten the French position there. Napoleon soon rushed forces to stop them and to drive them back into the sea from whence they came. Moore began to retreat, but the process kept French forces busy when they should have been dealing with more serious threats elsewhere.

Finally, on January 11, 1809, Moore’s forces were pinned against the ocean at Corunna, in northwestern Spain. A few days later, British transport ships arrived to remove the soldiers, and by the time Marshal Soult attacked, most of the Brits were gone. Though some people criticized Moore for not standing and fighting, his actions may have saved a significant part of the British forces, and they certainly distracted the French. Moore was not around to hear the criticism or receive any accolades, however, as he was killed by a French cannonball.

Napoleon is leaving

Madrid secure, his reforms in place, and the countryside now being pacified by some of his best marshals, Napoleon decided he could leave Spain and attend to matters back home. A couple things needed his immediate attention:

Austria was trying to take advantage of Napoleon’s absence, and that of so many of his soldiers and marshals, by threatening war. That war would come, as I discuss in Chapter 10, and Austria would regret her actions.

There were problems on the homefront as well. Joseph Fouché, Napoleon’s minister of police, and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Napoleon’s foreign minister, were invaluable to maintaining control over France and dealing with other European countries. However, these two men had not been exactly trustworthy over the years, and there was some evidence that they were hatching up a plot to relieve Napoleon of the burdens of empire by organizing a coup d’état (overthrow of the government). No specific plot was uncovered, so Napoleon just gave them what amounted to a slap on the wrist.

The Spanish Ulcer

Napoleon couldn’t be everywhere at once, and he was probably needed more elsewhere than in Spain. He planned to return but never did. Had he done so, the history of the Peninsular War may have been quite different. Napoleon left behind forces sufficient to pacify Spain and throw the British out of Iberia. But his forces failed to do either of those two things.

There were several problems:

Joseph was a weak leader who commanded very little respect from either his military leaders or the Spanish people.

Joseph was not a military commander and could not really take charge of the campaign.

The marshals Napoleon left behind had enormous egos and resented any restrictions on their commands, save from Napoleon himself. Their feuds with each other and disdain for Joseph did little to help them unify against the growing Spanish and British military threats.

Napoleon took with him many of his best soldiers.

The Spanish people had never been happy with what had happened to the Church in France and the mistreatment they felt Napoleon gave the Pope. The clergy regularly gave fiery sermons calling for the Spanish people to rise up against the French. Opposition to the French took on the nature of a religious crusade, a losing proposition for any occupying army.

The Spanish campaign was beginning to cost the French treasury a great deal. As a result, Napoleon began to demand that Spanish taxes be raised, which did nothing to improve the attitude of the Spanish people toward the French.

Making one last effort

Over the next several years, things went from bad to worse. When Napoleon was successful against Austria in 1809 (see Chapter 10), he could have returned to Spain to take personal charge of the campaign. Instead, he sent Marshal André Masséna to assume overall command, and he sent Marshal Louis Alexandre Berthier as his chief of staff. Along with them, Napoleon sent 80,000 good soldiers. Their goal was to drive the British out of Portugal and then deal with the Spanish.

At first, the French had some success, both against the British and against the regular Spanish army. General Wellesley (Wellington) retreated to strong positions in Portugal, with Masséna in pursuit and Marshal Michel Ney as second in command. In September 1810, the French reached the British defensive position known as the Lines of Torres Vedras. These were three defensive lines of walls and other fortified positions.

Both Masséna and Ney, who often agreed on very little, agreed that these positions were pretty much impregnable, and they wrote that analysis to Napoleon. The French lay siege for a month, but lack of supplies (his army was essentially starving) led Masséna to eventually withdraw in November to the town of Santarem to wait out the winter. The Lines of Torres Vedras stopped the French advance on the British position in Portugal and shifted the momentum to Wellesley and the British. Knowing that they could always retreat to this fortified position, the British were soon on the offensive.

Stopping the French momentum

It was all downhill for the French after Torres Vedras. The French army soon found itself fighting on three fronts:

The British, who provided the most disciplined and traditional army in opposition

The Spanish regular army

The Spanish guerrillas, or insurgents. These fighters captured the imagination of people on both sides of the conflict. Operating in bands ranging from a few dozen to several thousand, Spanish insurgents would harass French units and sometimes inflict great damage.

It’s easy to idealize the heroic nature of these insurgents, but the reality was often quite different. Many of these groups were in it for the loot as much as for any patriotic fervor, and they often did not trust each other. But what was especially bad about the conflict between the French army and the insurgents was the total lack of anything resembling the “rules of war.” Earlier in the chapter, I mention the French atrocities depicted in Goya’s paintings, and there is no doubt that the French were often guilty as charged. But many French atrocities were in reaction to similar actions on the part of the insurgents.

A more modern example of the idealizing of the insurgency campaign was the television series regarding one Richard Sharpe (played by Sean Bean), a soldier in Wellesley’s army. It’s wonderful entertainment (my wife, Barbara, can watch Sean Bean for hours), but it seems that the insurgents are always good and the French are always bad (as well as incompetent soldiers, which was hardly the case).

The fact is that neither side wanted to take prisoners, and neither side would be content, or safe, until the other was completely annihilated. It is impossible to say how many on either side were killed. I’ve seen estimates of as many as 50,000 French casualties from both guerrilla attacks and pitched battles, and there can be no disputing the fact that the French got the worst of it.

French armies would deal with insurgent actions on a large scale once again during their campaign in Russia in 1812, especially during their withdrawal (see Chapter 13). History really does repeat itself. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, we’ve seen major insurgency movements in Afghanistan against the Russians and in Vietnam and Iraq against the Americans, to name but three.

Pushing the French out of Spain

The French armies did have some successes in Spain. For example, their victory at Ocana in November 1809 halted a Spanish effort to move on Madrid. But their overall position became steadily weaker. With Masséna withdrawing from Portugal, Wellesley was able to turn his attention to other French positions in that country. He was in the process of forcing them out when, in late 1811, Napoleon ordered a new push to reestablish control of at least part of Spain. The push eventually stalled, however, especially when Napoleon withdrew some of the best troops for his 1812 campaign in Russia.

Fighting a two-front war was not going to be easy. Or successful, as it turned out.

Wellesley won a stunning victory at the Battle of Salamanca on July 22, 1812 against French forces led by Marshal Soult. That loss forced the French to retreat to the north, abandoning Madrid. Allied forces took that city without a fight on August 12, 1812.

As French forces moved northward, they were able to consolidate. Though frequently outflanked by Wellesley, King Joseph, who had assumed overall command, made a major stand at Vitoria on June 21, 1813. Joseph had 66,000 soldiers defending his positions, and they faced almost 80,000 allied forces. Wellesley’s forces attacked from several directions at once. Overwhelmed, Joseph and his army were forced to retreat, leaving behind artillery and other important supplies. French losses were about 8,000, compared with 5,000 for the allied forces. The large amount of loot that the French left behind sidetracked Wellesley’s soldiers such that pursuit was not possible, and the French managed to escape.

Vitoria was a major victory for Wellesley, who by now was a field marshal and had the title Arthur, Duke of Wellington. See Figure 12-5 for an engraving from the period showing Wellington. From now on, I call him Wellington, as he is generally known.

Defending France

The French were never again a major threat in Spain. Joseph returned to Paris, leaving the army in the command of Marshal Soult. In July 1813, Soult ordered a counterattack and won engagements in some of the mountain passes. But Wellington defeated him at Sorauren on July 30th, and Soult withdrew to the north. Defeated again at Vera and San Marcial on August 31st, Soult withdrew again, this time to prepare his defense of France against a British invasion.

Figure 12-5: This somewhat stylized engraving of Wellington was produced in 1815.

That invasion came in late 1813, and Soult would be pushed back, slowly but surely, until Napoleon’s abdication in 1814 (see Chapter 14) brought an end to action. The final action took place at the Battle of Toulouse (a city in southern France). There, Wellington defeated French forces led by Marshal Soult on April 10, 1814. The next night Soult withdrew his forces to the medieval city of Carcassonne. The two sides agreed to an armistice when word of Napoleon’s abdication arrived, thus ending the Peninsular Campaign.

The Peninsular Campaign had seemed to offer Napoleon an excellent opportunity to consolidate his position on the Continent. But Napoleon had not understood the nature of the Spanish people and had not anticipated the determination of the British to contribute to his defeat. As a result, the Peninsular Campaign was, in many ways, Napoleon’s worst defeat. It bled him dry for years, tied up his soldiers and marshals, ate away at his image (and pocketbook), and ultimately led to a British invasion of France herself. It is no wonder, then, that it is often considered Napoleon’s biggest mistake.