Napoleon during this year (1808) was not having the success in Spain that he had expected. A patriot party had arisen there, aided by English troops and gold, and had driven Joseph Bonaparte from his ill-gotten throne. Arthur Wellesley had landed, and at the battle of Vimiera, on August 21st, had defeated Junot, who at Cintra consented to evacuate Portugal on the consideration that his army of twenty-two thousand men should be conveyed by sea to France. In August, also, news came to the emperor that General Dupont's army had been captured by the Spaniards, and eighty thousand French troops were thrown back on the Pyrenees. Napoleon was stung {113} to anger at this ill-success, and in September sent a fresh army of two hundred and fifty thousand men across the mountains, and announced that he himself was departing in a few days in order to crown Joseph as king of Spain in Madrid, and to plant his eagles on the fort of Lisbon. It was not the probable loss of Spain and Portugal that he cared for then, but the loss of their fleets that were to have given France the supremacy of the ocean. Napoleon left Paris October 29th, 1808, and in November began his campaign. He occupied Madrid on December 4th, and learned that Sir John Moore had marched from Portugal to the north of Spain. He then hurried over the mountains to cut off his retreat, but was out-generalled. Moore escaped to his fleet, and Napoleon, in January, 1809, leaving Soult to march to Corunna, abandoned Spain forever. [Sidenote: The repeal of embargo] England at this time was defiant, and fondly hoped that the power of the devastator of Europe was on the wane. She passed a new order-in-council in December, doing away with export duties on foreign articles passing through England. It was her object now to encourage Americans to evade the embargo by running produce to the West Indies or South America. England had to feed her own armies in Spain, and the Spanish patriots also, and did not want to tax American wheat or salt pork on their way there. By the end of 1808 the embargo was so unpopular in America {114} that its repeal was decided on. Jefferson wished to be spared the humiliation of signing the repeal, and hoped that it would continue in force until June, 1809, when the new president, James Madison, would be in power, but public opinion was too strong, and its withdrawal was signed as the last act of his administration. {115} CHAPTER X POLITICS IN QUEBEC