The parliamentary debates of 1812 chiefly turned on Spanish affairs, the revocation of the orders in council, the subsequent rupture with the United States which had anticipated this great concession, and the wearisome cabinet intrigues which preceded the accession of Liverpool as prime minister. It is noteworthy that so conservative a house of commons should actually have pledged itself to consider the question of catholic emancipation in the next session, and should have passed an act relieving nonconformists from various disabilities. The next session of this parliament, however, never came, for an unexpected dissolution took place on September 29. This dissolution was attributed, with some reason, to a wish on the part of the government to profit by an abundant harvest, and to the restoration of comparative quiet both in England and in Ireland. A new parliament assembled at the end of November. The prince regent's speech in opening it, though it noticed the suppression of the Luddite disturbances, was inevitably devoted to the great events in Spain and Russia, the conclusion of a treaty with Russia, and the American declaration of war. After the Christmas recess, Castlereagh presented an argumentative message from the prince fully discussing the points at issue between Great Britain and the United States, upon which Canning, though out of office, delivered a vigorous speech in defence of the British position. Eldon, in the house of lords, went further, boldly justifying the right of search, and denying the American contention that original allegiance could be cancelled by naturalisation without the consent of the mother-country. The Princess of Wales, who had long been separated from the prince, was the cause of more parliamentary time being wasted by a complaint which she addressed to the speaker against the proceedings of the privy council. That body had approved restrictions which her husband had thought fit to place on her intercourse with her daughter, the Princess Charlotte. Parliament, however, took no action in the matter.
Perhaps the most important measure enacted in the session of 1813 was the so-called East India company's act. By this act the charter of the company was renewed with a confirmation of its administrative privileges and its monopoly of the China trade, but subject to material reservations: the India trade was thrown open from April 10, 1814, and the charter itself, thus restricted, was made terminable by three years' notice after April 10, 1831. In this year the naval and military armaments of Great Britain, considered as a whole, perhaps reached their maximum strength, and the national expenditure rose to its highest level, including, as it did, subsidies to foreign powers amounting to about £10,500,000. Of the aggregate expenditure, about two-thirds, £74,000,000, were provided by taxation, an enormous sum relatively to the population and wealth of the country at that period. Patiently as this burden was borne on the whole by the people of Great Britain, we cannot wonder that Vansittart, the chancellor of the exchequer, should have sought to lighten it in some degree by encroaching upon the sinking fund, as founded and regulated by Pitt. The debates on this complicated question, in which Huskisson and Tierney stoutly combated Vansittart's proposal, belong rather to financial history. What strikes a modern student of politics as strange is that Vansittart, tory as he was, should have advocated the relief of living and suffering taxpayers, upon the principle, then undefined, of leaving money "to fructify in the pockets of the people"; while the whig economists of the day stickled for the policy of piling up new debts, if need be, rather than break in upon an empirical scheme for the gradual extinction of old debts.
CHAPTER V.
THE PENINSULAR WAR
Reference has already been made to the conflict maintained for six years by Great Britain against France for the liberation of Spain and Portugal, which has since been known in history as the Peninsular war. It had its origin in two events which occurred during the autumn of 1807 and the spring of 1808. The first was the secret treaty of Fontainebleau concluded between France and Spain at the end of October, 1807; the second was the outbreak of revolutionary movements at Madrid, followed by the intervention of Napoleon in March, April, and May, 1808. The treaty of Fontainebleau was a sequel of the vast combination against Great Britain completed by the peace of Tilsit, under which the continental system was to be enforced over all Europe. Portugal, the ally of this country and an emporium of British commerce, was to be partitioned into principalities allotted by Napoleon, the house of Braganza was to be exiled, and its transmarine possessions were to be divided between France and Spain, then ruled by the worthless Godoy in the name of King Charles IV. Whether or not the subjugation of the whole peninsula was already designed by Napoleon, his troops, ostensibly despatched for the conquest of Portugal under the provisions of the treaty, had treacherously occupied commanding positions in Spain, when the populace of Madrid rose in revolt, and, thronging the little town of Aranjuez, where the court resided, frightened the king into abdication. His unprincipled son, Ferdinand, was proclaimed in March, 1808, but Murat, who now entered Madrid as commander-in-chief of the French troops in that city, secretly favoured the ex-King Charles. In the end, both he and Ferdinand were enticed into seeking the protection of Napoleon at Bayonne. Instead of mediating or deciding between them, Napoleon soon found means to get rid of both. They were induced or rather compelled to resign their rights, and retire into private life on large pensions; and Napoleon conferred the crown of Spain on his brother Joseph, whose former kingdom of Naples was bestowed on Murat.
In the meantime, sanguinary riots broke out afresh at Madrid, hundreds of French were massacred, and the insurrection, as it was called, though sternly put down by Murat, spread like wildfire into all parts of Spain. A violent explosion of patriotism, resulting in anarchy, followed throughout the whole country. Napoleon was taken by surprise, but the combinations which he matured at Bayonne for the conquest of Spain were as masterly as those by which he had well-nigh subdued the whole continent, except Russia. He established a base of operations in the centre of the country, and organised four campaigns in the north-west, north-east, south-east, and south. Savary, who had succeeded Murat at Madrid, was supposed to act as commander-in-chief, but was really little more than a medium for transmitting orders received from Napoleon at Bayonne. The campaign of Duhesme in Catalonia was facilitated by the treacherous seizure of the citadel of Barcelona in the previous February. It was not long, however, before effective aid was rendered on the coast by the British fleet under Collingwood, and especially by Lord Cochrane in the Impérieuse frigate; the undisciplined bands of Catalonian volunteers were reinforced by regular troops from Majorca and Minorca; the fortress of Gerona made an obstinate resistance; the siege of it was twice raised, and Barcelona, almost isolated, was now held with difficulty.
FRANCE OCCUPIES THE PENINSULA.
Marshal Moncey vainly besieged Valencia, while Generals Lefebvre-Desnoëttes and Verdier were equally unsuccessful before Zaragoza. In the plains of Leon, Marshal Bessières gained a decisive victory over a superior force of Spaniards under Cuesta and Blake, at Medina de Rio Seco, on July 14. Having thus secured the province of Leon, and the great route from Bayonne to Madrid, he was advancing on Galicia when his progress was arrested by disaster in another quarter. General Dupont, commanding the southern army, found himself nearly surrounded at Baylen, and solicited an armistice, followed by a convention, under which, "above eighteen thousand French soldiers laid down their arms before a raw army incapable of resisting half that number, if the latter had been led by an able man".42