persons, and glory for none,--such was this war, brought about by
princes who descended from Louis XIV., and conducted by generals who
issued from Napoleon. It had the sad fate of recalling neither the
great war nor the great policy.
Some engagements were serious. The passage of the Trocadero, for
instance, was a brilliant military achievement; but on the whole, we
repeat, the trumpets of that war have a cracked sound, the whole affair
was suspicious, and history agrees with France in the difficulty of
accepting this false triumph. It seemed evident that certain Spanish
officers ordered to resist, yielded too easily, and the idea of
corruption was evolved from the victory; it seemed as if generals
rather than battles had been gained, and the victorious soldier
returned home humiliated. It was, in truth, a diminishing war, and
the words "Bank of France" could be read in the folds of the flag.
The soldiers of the war of 1808, on whom the ruins of Saragossa fell
so formidably, frowned in 1823 at the easy opening of citadel gates,
and began regretting Palafox. It is the humor of France to prefer a
Rostopchin before her rather than a Ballesteros. From a more serious
point of view, on which it is right to dwell here, this war, which
offended the military spirit in France, humiliated the democratic
spirit. It was undertaken on behalf of serfdom; in this campaign the
object of the French soldier, who was the son of democracy, was to bow
others under the yoke. This was a hideous mistake, for France has the
mission of arousing the soul of nations, and not stifling it. Since
1792 all the revolutions of Europe have been the French Revolution, and
liberty radiates from France. He must be blind who does not recognize
this. It was Bonaparte who said so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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