History of the Peninsular War, Volume 1 (of 6)Southey, Robert
History
History of the Peninsular War, Volume 1 (of 6)
Southey, Robert
Peninsular War, 1807-1814
If these dispatches had been written for the purpose of deceiving those
into whose hands they fell, they could not have been better adapted to
that intent. Under Godoy the foreign minister knew as little concerning
the state of foreign negotiations, as the minister at war knew of
the state of the army; and when the bearer of these papers, finding
the favourite in prison, delivered them to the new ministers, they
thought they had now obtained an insight into the real cause of all the
alarming movements of the French. Well might France think that demands
so extravagant as these could only be obtained by force; and this would
explain the seizure of the fortresses, and the advance of an army to
Madrid. To men who had feared the whole evil which was intended, it
was a relief to imagine that Buonaparte designed to take only the
provinces beyond the Ebro, or perhaps only Navarre; propositions which
would have roused the nation to arms, were yet so far short of the
danger they apprehended, that they contemplated the required cessions
with something like complacency, and flattered themselves, that by a
constant friendship toward France, and the feeling which the marriage
would produce between the two courts, the terms might possibly be
mitigated; ... at all events, that by yielding for the present they
should obtain the restitution of Barcelona and the other fortresses;
and that what with the war which ere long must be renewed in the north,
and the thousand chances to which the game of politics is subject, they
should find opportunity when they had recovered strength, to throw off
this temporary yoke.
♦ARRIVAL OF GENERAL SAVARY AT MADRID.♦
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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