The jarring interests which agitated the northern provinces were not even subdued by the near approach of danger. The result of the battle of Rio Seco rather inflamed than allayed the violence of party feeling. If Bessieres had not been checked in his operations by the disaster of Dupont, he would have encountered few obstacles in establishing Joseph’s authority in Gallicia and Old Castile. The enthusiasm of those provinces never rose to a great pitch; Bessieres was prepared to use address as well as force, and among the factions he must doubtless have found support. The reinforcements continually arriving from France would have enabled him to maintain his acquisition, and then the ability of the emperor’s dispositions would have become apparent; for while Bessieres held Gallicia, and Dupont hung on the southern frontier of Portugal with twenty-five thousand men, Junot could have securely concentrated his army in the neighbourhood of Lisbon, and have rendered an English disembarkation on the coast nearly impracticable. [Sidenote: Azanza and O’Farril, Mem.] The whole of the French monarch’s combinations were overturned by the disgraceful capitulation of Baylen, and when Joseph evacuated Madrid a fresh impulse was given to the spirit of the people; but, unfortunately for Spain, as a wider scope for ambition was obtained, the workings of self-interest increased, fresh parties sprung up, and new follies and greater absurdities stifled the virtue of the country, and produced irremediable confusion, ending in ruin. The fact of Dupont’s capitulation was made known to the council of Castile before king Joseph was informed of it, and the council, foreseeing all the consequences of such an event, immediately refused, as I have already related, to promulgate officially his accession to the throne. Joseph permitted this act of obedience to pass without much notice. He was naturally averse to violence, and neither he, nor his brother Napoleon, did at any period of the contest for Spain constrain a Spaniard to accept or retain office under the intrusive government. Joseph went further; before he abandoned Madrid, he released his ministers from their voluntary oath of allegiance to himself, and left them free to choose their party once more. Don Pedro Cevallos and the marquis of Pinuelo changed with, what appeared to them, changing fortune; but five others remained steadfast, preferring an ameliorated government under a foreign prince to what they believed to be a hopeless struggle, but which, if successful, they knew must end in a degrading native despotism; perhaps, also, a little swayed by their dislike to England, and by the impossibility of obtaining that influence among their countrymen which, under other circumstances, their talents and character would have ensured. [Sidenote: Sir H. Dalrymple’s Papers. Coxe’s Correspondence.]