by Tom Anderson
Boulanger put forward his military conclusions to Lisieux and the Boulangerie, as well as a few members of the now largely symbolic National Legislative Assembly. He said that trying to force the Pyrenean passes would be unlikely to succeed. The Spanish were well entrenched, the passes were defended, and the terrain was difficult. Lisieux asked for the alternative, and Boulanger replied with Lisieux’s own maxim that to hold the heart – the capital – of a nation is to hold the whole nation. It did not matter how that heart was approached, only that it was held, and then everything else would collapse.
The Marshal outlined another strategy, pointing out the fact that the French held Llançà. Troops could be slowly moved down there to support the attack, he added. It did not matter that the Spanish held the Pyrenees if Madrid was conquered.
Georges Besoin, a member of the NLA, objected that to try and conquer Spain while Spanish forces still occupied French soil was the heart of foolhardiness. Lisieux did not uphold his point, recognising Boulanger’s argument that anything else Spain did would be irrelevant if Madrid was held. But Lisieux did argue that the Spanish were not fools, and that they would surely be shifting their own troops to drive the French out of Llançà. Boulanger agreed: his agents confirmed that the Spanish had moved an army under General Fernando Ballesteros to take back Llançà in the spring, an army that outnumbered the French occupiers three to one.
But that was all part of Boulanger’s strategy.
Drawing frantically on a blackboard, Boulanger explained that he would assemble the bulk of his army in Leucate, then bring in a fleet from Toulon to transport them down to Spain. They would land in the Catalan town of Roses, on the southern side of the Cap de Creus, and thus trap Ballesteros’ army between two French forces, crushing it.
Quite understandably, Besoin was sceptical. “And what precisely is the Spanish Mediterranean Fleet, which thanks to d’Estaing’s treachery is several times the size of our own, doing in all this?” he asked sarcastically.
Boulanger smiled, and replied: “Lying in port, of course, for it shall be a windless day.”
Lisieux was the first to realise what Boulanger meant. Seeing an immediate application for one of his pet projects, he almost immediately approved the offensive, with one proviso. Boulanger wanted to make only desultory attacks against Cuesta and Blake’s armies in the Pyrenees, just sufficient to stop the Spanish shifting those troops away. Lisieux wanted a stronger attack, commanded by General Philippe Eustache and made up largely of Sans-Culotte levies. Eustache was himself of suspected loyalty, being a Jacobin fire-breather much like Lascelles in Bavaria, and a vocal supporter of Robespierre. But unlike Robespierre himself, Lisieux would not simply have him plucked from his command and phlogisticated. Every man that France had must be used to further her cause, though the means might vary…
The two offensives were termed Assaut-du-Sud and Tire-Bouchon (Southern Onslaught and Corkscrew) ; Lisieux’s military policies tended to increase paperwork and counter-espionage, hence the explosion of the use of code names. Assaut-du-Sud was launched under Eustache in March, taking back Tarbe and Montrejou before stalling. Eustache himself was killed by a Spanish counterattack from Lourdes, led by the vigorous Irish exile Joaquin Blake, who successfully took back Tarbes shortly afterwards and threatened Pau. However, this only worked to the advantage of Boulanger’s broader strategy. The Spanish government, led erratically by Saavedra, was convinced that the French hammer blows would come in the west, and while they left Ballesteros’ army to threaten Llançà, it was not reinforced. At the same time, the French moved down sufficient forces overland until the French army in Llançà almost equalled Ballesteros’, and it was placed under the command of Drouet.
In May, Ballesteros assaulted Llançà and pushed Drouet out, who then shifted his army to the west. Ballesteros pursued, leaving his army somewhat strung out behind him. On the 16th-19th, the calm days that they had been awaiting, Counter-Admiral Lepelley’s men struck. The nascent Chappe semaphore towers (q.v.) alerted the fleet of the weather even as it was detected by stations elsewhere in France, allowing them time to prepare.
Just as Boulanger had planned, Surcouf and Cugnot’s ‘little toys’ pulled out of their port at Toulon and steamed southwards to Leucate, where Devilliers and Bourcier were waiting with the bulk of the army (including Cugnot fardiers and other innovations). The French fleet was impressive in its novelty and in its numbers. The transports tended to be merchant craft or converted warships pulled by steam tugs, their useless masts torn out to provide more deck space. Surrounding them were Cugnot’s steam-galleys, some equipped with paddlewheels, others with screws – the argument over which method was more powerful had become heated enough down at the manufactory in Toulon to result in several yeux noirs. Also accompanying the French fleet were a number of conventional galleys, some dating from the pre-Revolutionary fleet, others purchased from the Kingdom of Denmark after the conclusion of the Great Baltic War. French use of galleys had lapsed during Robespierre’s consulship thanks to the abolition of slavery, but Lisieux’s policies provided plenty of political prisoners to replace the former galley-slaves. Why simply execute such mentally suspect men, when their bodies could still serve their country…?
The French fleet was large enough to discourage casual attacks, but it was nonetheless met by a force of six startled Spanish galleys out of Cadaqués on the 18th. Although outnumbered, the Spanish were not struggling with the problems of new technology and inexperience as the French were, and managed to sink eight French ships and damage three others before succumbing to the French steam-galleys’ powerful bow chasers. Fortunately for the French, the Spanish galleys were prevented from drawing close enough to the converted transports to damage them and drown any troops – all the French losses were of their own galleys, steam or conventional.
Lepelley dispatched one transport and escorts, under Bourcier, to take Cadaqués after the defeat of the enemy galleys. Bourcier stormed the town and captured the two Spanish frigates and brig that had been stationed there, helpless without wind. However, there was also an eighth galley, which made a desperate and quixotic attack on the French transport’s steam tug, the Palmipède.[290] The galley’s bow chaser fired a badly-timed shot as the Palmipède rose up on a crashing wave as the tide came in, meaning the cannonball only struck a glancing blow off the Palmipède’s screw, she being one of the screw-based steamers in the mixed fleet. To everyone’s astonishment, as they learned after the battle, the damaged screw actually performed better than it had before the attack – by chance, the cannonball had created something similar in shape to a modern propeller. Once demonstrated to Cugnot and Jouffroy in Toulon, this spelt the end for an intriguing ‘what-if’ of history, the romantic-looking but inefficient paddlewheel-based steamship. Screws immediately became dominant.[291]
Meanwhile, the major force under Devilliers descended upon Roses and, as Boulanger had planned, Ballesteros’ army was crushed between the two French forces and forced to surrender. Immediately afterwards, Drouet attacked southward into Catalonia, using the Guerre d’éclair strategy pioneered by Boulanger and Leroux. Barcelona fell in August, the Spanish garrison there being surprised by the unexpected assault – Drouet had successfully outrun the news in pre-Optel Spain. All of Catalonia was in French hands by September, and Lisieux declared the annexation of the country to France – having been persuaded of the Catalans’ supposed French descent on linguistic grounds.
Madrid heard of the fall of Barcelona at about this time, but this was also the time when matters came to a head in Spain’s governmental crisis. Philip VI died on September 3rd, but by this point he had been driven insane by his disease, and his last words were a screaming declaration to disinherit his first son, Charles, Prince of Asturias. The King had become convinced that he had been poisoned by Charles’ favourite, the Duke of Aranda, and demanded Aranda’s execution before mercifully succumbing. The Kingdom was thus plunged into a constitutional crisis: Saavedra quickly issued
declarations in the King’s name claiming the legality of Philip’s last order, while Aranda and the horrified Charles responded with legal judgements claiming the King had been insane and thus his orders should not be carried out. Saavedra quickly made an alliance with the Infante Philip, Philip’s second son, and ordered that he be crowned King of the Spains in order to ensure a strong, united government in order to repel the French.
A virtual civil war erupted in Madrid between the Felipistas and Carlistas, sourly remembered by the Spanish writer Félix Ximinez as ‘pausing in a burning house to fight over who shall rescue the silver’. The royal palace, built forty years before to replace one that had burned down, was promptly subjected to the indignity of history repeating itself. The loss of such a potent royal symbol undermined the credibility of the winner in the dispute, no matter who it was. In the end, by the end of November, the Felipistas and Saavedra had triumphed—while Aranda and the Carlistas, including Charles himself, fled to the northwest, where he still enjoyed the most popularity. The Carlista army, commanded by General Javier Castaños, went with him. José de Palafox, then a young lieutenant, was also a part of the Carlista force…
By the time Saavedra had seized power and Philip had been crowned as Philip VII, the French had overran all of Aragon and forced three more Spanish armies to surrender. Belatedly, Madrid ordered the withdrawal of Cuesta and Blake from the south of France, bringing their armies back over the Pyrenees, piecemeal, to protect Castile. However, Devilliers successfully led a force west from Catalonia that managed to seize three of the major mountain passes, while Boulanger coordinated an attack by the remnants of Eustache’s Sans-Culottes to press the retreating army of Blake back against the mountains. A large Spanish Army was thus pounded to pieces a little at a time, the mountains meaning that it could not concentrate its forces against the French. Once more, the Republic’s Gribeauval artillery and the steam fardiers that pulled it served the Administrateur’s cause well. Cuesta’s army survived, but the bombastic Cuesta was by this point convinced that the ‘traitorous’ Carlistas were more of a threat than the French, ignored orders from Madrid and moved west to attack Asturias.
Thus it was that Spain was chronically underdefended in the campaign season of 1802. By this point Boulanger had moved almost the entire French army into Aragon. The French forces now swept westward along a broad front, with a single central spearhead aimed at Madrid. Although Spain retained some good generals fighting for Philip VII and Saavedra, she lacked the manpower to resist France’s giant conscript armies. There were moments of glory for Spain, such as the Felipista general Bernardo de Gálvez’s[292] epic victory at Granada, driving back a French force under Drouet that drastically outnumbered his own. But no matter how many songworthy individual actions the Spanish warriors accomplished, the march of the French columns westward was like an unstoppable tide. Madrid, damaged by years of civil war, was indefensible. Philip VII and Saavedra abandoned it for Córdoba, then Seville, and finally Cadiz as the French closed in towards the end of 1802. At the same time, Charles, Aranda and Castaños managed to defeat Cuesta, with the only real winner being the French. Navarre was finally swallowed up once more by the Republican armies, a fact that was celebrated with parades in Paris. Lisieux sensed the mood of euphoria and shifted his plans into high gear…
The scale of the Spanish defeat provoked alarm in many circles. The King of Naples and Sicily, Charles VIII and VI, was descended from Charles III of Spain and the struggles of his fellow Bourbons created further interest in the two Kingdoms. The Neapolitan navy and even army was currently being reformed by a British ex-Admiral with an axe to grind, a man named Horatio Nelson. British political circles mumbled confusedly over the impact of the French victory, the Foxites cheering on the forces of radicalism as they overthrew another fossilised absolutist state, some Tories joining them due to the defeat of an old British enemy, while the moderate Burkeans reacted with alarm at the spread of the Revolution.
But perhaps the most significant response was in Lisbon. The Portuguese court was understandably alarmed at the rapid downfall of Spain and the thought that they could be next. Portugal and Republican France were not at war, but this had not stopped the French advance through Germany cutting across many neutral states and often unilaterally executing their royal families. Although Portugal was no German statelet, and her army had undergone considerable reforms since the lessons of the First Platinean War with Spain, the prospect of a war with the whole might of France – and perhaps a co-opted Spain – was enough to make another Lisbon earthquake seem trivial by comparison.
But, of course, Portugal had King Peter IV, who did not let himself be daunted by such minor issues as the impending destruction of his country. He called his ministers and the Cortes, including his chief minister the Duke of Cadaval, to a meeting in January 1803 in order to discuss their response to the French invasion of Spain. There were several views expressed, including those who argued that the best response was to pursue a policy of highly visible neutrality and sign treaties with France, as Flanders had. Peter scoffed at that, calling those who held that view ‘tortoises’, who thought they were safe if they hid from the world inside their shells. No, the only solution was a pre-emptive attack.
The King’s ministers gaped at this, a piece of madness that seemed equal to anything his mother Maria had ever come out with. But Peter explained the method behind his shock pronouncement. If France co-opted Spain, they would have the same advantages that Spain always had in their wars with Portugal. But right now Spain was weak and reeling, struggling to respond. Now was the time for Portugal to occupy all the strongpoints first, and then hold them against any French attack, creating buffer zones against future attack.
Most of the King’s ministers still thought this was quite absurd, but a refinement to the plan by Cadaval convinced most of them. The Portuguese foreign ministry approached Charles, who was still hiding out in Asturias, and offered to recognise him as King of Spain if he would consent to giving Portugal free rein in Spain. After some agonising, Charles agreed. After the Portuguese envoy left, he turned to Aranda and started enthusiastically declaring his ideas for how they would retake Madrid with Portuguese help and drive out the French. Aranda shook his head sadly and said that it was impossible – Portugal would be crushed as easily as Spain had been, he said. No, Charles had done the right thing, undermined his brother, gained some legitimacy, but there was no victory to be had here. The only option was to flee the country, then return when the situation was different. The French had other enemies. They might withdraw their troops to the other end of Europe, and then it would be time to return in glory, just as King Sebastian of Portugal would according to the old legend.
Charles was doubtful of this, but his mind was changed in March 1803 when the French finally took Cadiz and Philip VII surrendered to them. To the surprise of some commentators, the French did not immediately execute Philip VII. Lisieux and Boulanger had already agreed that a Spanish Latin Republic was not likely at present, and would have to wait until later. Spain did not have many centralised institutions – remove the monarchy and it would fragment. It would no longer be the case that to hold the capital was to hold the nation.
The revolution could wait, then.
The peace was not, in fact, all that punishing—at least on paper. France annexed all of the Basque lands, Catalonia, and a wide strip of territory in between, resulting in definitive French domination of the Pyrenees. Andorra was also abolished and annexed to France. France took Minorca from Spain and turned it into a naval base for its new steam fleet. However, the deepest strictures of the peace were not formalised in writing. Philip VII was virtually reduced to a French puppet, Saavedra quietly met with a ‘Carlist assassin’ in the night, and it was French ‘advisors’ who really set Spanish policy.
In April, just after Saavedra’s assassination, Philip VII issued death warrants on all the other infantes of Spain, a clumsy French policy aimed at ensuring there were no othe
r claimants. The other four – Philip VI had produced six sons but no daughters – were already turning towards Charles after Philip VII’s humilitation, but now the Infantes Antonio, Ferdinand, John and Gabriel hastily high-tailed it for Asturias. By now, Charles recognised the truth of the Duke of Aranda’s argument, as French and Felipist armies formed up to invade the Carlist-held lands. With a heavy heart, he gave the order to leave the country.
Charles had nine ships of the Spanish Navy loyal to him waiting in Corunna. Portugal gave him several more in return for his blessing for their annexation of Galicia – not a policy he would have countenanced in any situation less desperate, of course. Sickened by the Portuguese taking advantage of his weak position, he later bitterly remarked ‘I am surprised Pedro did not ask for Tordesillas to be moved so that our rightful lands now extend from ten degrees west of Madrid to ten degrees east!’
It is the nine Spanish ships that are remembered, though. On them, they carried the last hope for a free Spain, the five Infantes, including the man who claimed to be King Charles IV of Spain. But each and every one of those five Infantes would one day be a King in his own right. For the fleet of Spain fled westwards from the ruin of their nation, westwards along the path that Columbus had traced more than three hundred years before, into the lands of the Indies…
Chapter 50: A Vision of the World
The South Seas—the last unexplored frontier. This, then, will be the voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Enterprize. Our three-year mission: to explore strange new lands, to seek out new peoples and new kingdoms…to tread, bravely, where no Englishman, where no American, has set foot.”