and the lord of 900,000 warriors.  Swiftly Galicia and Leon in the north repeated the challenge; while in the south, the fertile lands of Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia flashed back from their mountains the beacon lights of a national war.  The former dislike of England was forgotten.  The Juntas of Asturias, Galicia, and Andalusia sent appeals to us for help, to which Canning generously responded; and, on July 4th, we passed at a single bound from war with the Spanish Bourbons to an informal alliance with the people of Spain.

Napoleon now began to see the magnitude of his error.  Instead of gaining control over Spain and the Indies, he had changed long-suffering allies into irreconcilable foes.  He prepared to conquer Spain.  While Joseph was escorted to his new capital by a small army, Napoleon from Bayonne directed the operations of his generals.  Holding the northern road from Bayonne to Burgos and Madrid, they were to send out cautious feelers against the bands of insurgents; for, as Napoleon wrote to Savary (July 13th):  “In civil wars it is the important posts that must be held:  one ought not to go everywhere.”  Weighty words, which his lieutenants in Spain were often to disregard!  Bessieres in the north gained a success at Medina de Rio Seco; but a signal disaster in the south ruined the whole campaign.  Dupont, after beating the levies of Andalusia, penetrated into the heart of that great province, and, when cumbered with plunder, his divided forces were surrounded, cut off from their supplies, and forced to surrender at Baylen—­in all about 20,000 men (July 19th).  The news that a French army had laid down its arms caused an immense sensation in an age when Napoleon’s troops were held to be invincible.  Baylen was hailed everywhere by despairing patriots as the dawn of a new era.  And such it was to be.  If Valmy proclaimed the advent of militant democracy, the victory of Spaniards over one of the bravest of Napoleon’s generals was felt to be an even greater portent.  It ushered in the epoch of national resistance to the overweening claims of the Emperor of the West.

That truth he seems dimly to have surmised.  His rage on hearing of the capitulation was at first too deep for words.  Then he burst out:  “Could I have expected that from Dupont, a man whom I loved, and was rearing up to become a Marshal?  They say he had no other way to save the lives of his soldiers.  Better, far better, to have died with arms in their hands.  Their death would have been glorious:  we should have avenged them.  You can always supply the place of soldiers.  Honour alone, when once lost, can never be regained.”

Moreover, the material consequences were considerable.  The Spaniards speedily threatened Madrid; and, on the advice of Savary, Joseph withdrew from his capital after a week’s sojourn, and fell back hurriedly on the line of the Upper Ebro, where the French rallied for a second advance.