GENERAL INSURRECTION. PROCEEDINGS IN ASTURIAS AND GALLICIA. JUNTAS FORMED IN THE PROVINCES. JUNTA OF SEVILLE. MURDER OF SOLANO AT CADIZ; CAPTURE OF THE FRENCH SQUADRON IN THAT HARBOUR. MASSACRE OF THE FRENCH AT VALENCIA. PROCLAMATIONS OF THE PATRIOTS. MOVEMENTS OF THE FRENCH AGAINST THEM. ♦1808. MAY. GENERAL INSURRECTION.♦ The seizure of the fortresses, and the advance of the French troops, had roused the spirit of the Spaniards; their hopes had been excited to the highest pitch by the downfal of Godoy and the elevation of Ferdinand; and in that state of public feeling, the slaughter at Madrid, and the transactions at Bayonne, were no sooner known, than the people, as if by an instantaneous impulse over the whole kingdom, manifested a determination to resist the insolent usurpation. Abandoned as they were by one part of the Royal Family, deprived of the rest; forsaken too by those nobles and statesmen, whose names carried authority, and on whose talents and patriotism they had hitherto relied; ... betrayed by their government, and now exhorted to submission by all the constituted authorities civil and religious which they had been accustomed to revere and to obey; ... their strong places and frontier passes in possession of the enemy; the flower of their own troops some in Italy, others in the north of Europe; and a numerous army of the French, accustomed to victory, and now flushed with Spanish slaughter, in their capital and in the heart of the country; under these complicated disadvantages and dangers, they rose in general and simultaneous insurrection against the mightiest military power which had ever till that time existed; a force not more tremendous for its magnitude than for its perfect organization, wielded always with consummate skill, and directed with consummate wickedness. A spirit of patriotism burst forth which astonished Europe, and equalled the warmest hopes of those who were best acquainted with the Spanish nation: for those persons who knew the character of that noble people, ... who were familiar with their past history, and their present state; who had heard the peasantry talk of their old heroes, of Hernan Cortes and of the Cid; ... who had witnessed the passionate transfiguration which a Spaniard underwent when recurring from the remembrance of those times to his own; ... his brave impatience, his generous sense of humiliation, and the feeling with which his soul seemed to shake off the yoke of these inglorious days, and take sanctuary among the tombs of his ancestors, ... they knew that the spirit of Spain was still alive, and had looked on to this resurrection of the dry bones. As no foresight could have apprehended the kind of injury with which the nation had been outraged, nor have provided against the magnitude of the danger, so by no possible concert could so wide and unanimous a movement have been effected. The holiest and