The Central Junta, upon the deliverance of Galicia, addressed one of their animated proclamations to the inhabitants. “People of Galicia,” they said, “upon seeing you fall into the power of the enemy without resistance, your naval ports and arsenals occupied by them, and so powerful and important a province subjected from sea to sea, indignation and grief made your country break out in cries of malediction and reproach, like a mother who complains to heaven and earth of the degradation of a daughter in whom alone she had confided. At that time reverses followed each other, as successes had done before. After the battles of Espinosa, and Burgos, and Tudela, came the passage of the Somosierra, the capture of Madrid, and the rout at Ucles, and then, to afflict the heart of the country, the ruin of Zaragoza, the defeat in Catalonia, and at Medellin. In all these memorable events, though fortune failed, our reputation was not lost, and Spain, suffering as she did, retained her confidence. But Galicia ... Galicia, entered without resistance, subdued without opposition, and bearing tranquilly the yoke of servitude, ... Galicia deranged all calculations of prudence, and was destroying the country by destroying hope. Who then in that night of misfortunes would have looked to Galicia for the first day-spring of joy? More glorious in your rise, than you had seemed weak in your fall, magnanimous Galicians! despair itself made you feel the strength of which you had not before been conscious. The cry of independence and vengeance was heard in your highways, your villages, your towns; the conquerors in their turn began to fear they should be conquered, and retired into their strong places; there they were pursued, and assaulted, and taken. Vigo delivered itself up with its oppressors, and Galicia, sending these prisoners to the other side of the sea, gave a proof as authentic as it was great, that the Spaniards had not wholly forgotten the art of subduing and binding the French. This was the first day of good fortune that rose on Spain after five months of disasters, ... others followed. In vain did Soult, hardly escaping from our allies at Porto, come with the relics of his beaten division to succour the weakened Ney. Harassed in their marches, decimated in their parties, cut off in their communications, and baffled in their hope of fighting great actions, these arrogant Generals despair of conquest, and execrate a war in which their men are consumed without glory. Weary of struggling against a physical force which every day strengthened, and a moral resistance which had made itself invincible, they fled at last from your soil in a state of miserable exhaustion, giving to Castille a new and great example that it is not possible to force the yoke upon a people who are unanimous in resisting it.