[Footnote 24: See Yorck: Napoleon als Feldherr. Correspondence of Napoleon, vols. 17 and 18. Ducasse: Les rois frères de Napoleon Ier. Krones: Geschichte Österreich im Zeitalter der französischen Kriege. Pelet: Mémoires sur la guerre de 1809 en Allemagne. Maxwell: Life of Wellington. Schlesier: Erinnerungen an W. von Humboldt. Arndt: Geist der Zeit. Fichte: Fichtes Leben.]
The New Rôle of Spain -- Guerrilla Warfare -- The French Cowed -- The Capitulation of Baylen -- The French Retreat from Spain and Portugal -- Complaints of King Joseph -- Napoleon's Exasperation -- Imperialist Sentiment in France -- The Emperor's Determination -- The Spirit of Prussia -- The Work of Stein -- The Revolution in Turkey -- Austria's Anxieties -- War Feeling at Vienna -- Napoleon Turns to the Czar -- Alexander's Hesitancy -- Napoleon's Misrepresentations -- Austria Warned -- Talleyrand and the Czar -- Napoleon's Allocution at St. Cloud.
Thus far in the history of Europe all politics had been in the main dynastic. The nations having been consolidated under powerful houses, it was the reigning family which seemed to constitute the national entity, not the common institutions, common speech, common faith, common territory, common aims, and common destiny of the people. Spain, like Italy, had a clearly marked national domain, and, in spite of some striking differences, a fairly homogeneous population. It was fitting and not entirely unnatural that the land of the Inquisition, the land of ignorance, the land of intolerance, the land, in short, which had sunk the lowest under absolutism, should begin the counterrevolution which, checking the excesses of Napoleon and the French Revolution in their disregard for nationality, ushered into the world's forum the nation and national sentiment as the strongest force of the nineteenth century.
This was exactly what happened in Spain. Napoleon's strategy had laughed at the military formation of Frederick the Great's system; the guerrillas of Spain laughed at the formations of regular warfare in any shape. They rose to fight, and dispersed for safety, leaving their smarting foe unable to strike for lack of a billet. The occasional successes of the Spanish regulars showed, moreover, that the generals were not entirely ignorant of Napoleon's own system. When Joseph entered Madrid the whole land was already in open rebellion, except where French force compelled a sullen acquiescence in French rule. The long inactive, sluggish ecclesiastics suddenly seemed to feel the vigor to resist and the power to lead. They joined the insurgents, and invoked the orthodoxy of the nation so as to inflame the passions of the masses against the persecutor of the Pope. Irregular and undefined as were the elements of the uprising, it was nevertheless essentially a popular movement; as Napoleon himself later admitted, it was the people themselves who refused to ratify his new institutions, and who declared for Ferdinand VII. The sequel furnished ample illustration of this fact: the mountaineers of Asturias rose in united rebellion; the inhabitants of Cartagena threw open their arsenals to the volunteers of the neighborhood; the citizens of Saragossa beat off their besiegers, while those of Valencia first massacred the French who took refuge in their citadel, and then repulsed Moncey in a desperate conflict. When the Spanish leaders ventured into an open battle-field they were defeated; on the other hand, when they kept the hills and fought like bandits they were victorious.