A434 SWABEY DIARY. 
everyone of the slightest hope that the Spaniards will ever do anything 
to help themselves. The trial was fairly made during our possession 
of Madrid. The imbecility of their government, but more than all 
their national arrogance, blinded them to the necessity of active and 
efficient measures, and rendered the opportunity useless. The moment of 
action whilst the country was in possession of their government was lost. 
They were then too short-sighted to fancy anything farther necessary, 
they failed in their engagements to Lord Wellington, and lost their 
independence for ever. I should be far from taxing them with a want 
of patriotism ; they gave the most unequivocal proofs of their loyalty 
and even of their friendship for the English, by following them with 
vivas to the very gates of Madrid. 
In stating an opinion of the regular Spanish troops already in the 
field, it may be said that the same causes render them collectively 
useless. They will not face the enemy, and, excepting at Saragossa 
and Gerona,! they never have done so. They are deficient in officers, 
and the leading feature in those they have is presumption. So great 
is this national fault that it extends to all ranks; it prevents the 
general from taking up a good military position, and induces the 
soldier to despise with his tongue an enemy, at the first rumour of 
whose approach he is ready to run away. For want of co-operation 
with the civil authorities, a large army of Spaniards cannot be supplied 
without plundering or distressing the inhabitants; this is carried on 
without regard to humanity, and starvation is not the only evil 
accruing from it.” 
To return to the immediate causes that obliged our retreat. At the 
head of them I must place the failure before Burgos, and, in justice to 
my profession I must censure, though unwillingly, the conduct of Lord 
Wellington. Though frequently warned that the means were totally 
inadequate to success, and while confessing that the fate of the place 
was not of importance, he would not, after once sitting down before it, 
raise the siege till Soult was encouraged to advance, and Masséna* had 
arrived with a superior force in his front. Some think General Hill 
i The sieges in which the Spaniards distinguished themselves were :— 
Saragossa besieged twice in 1808. ‘The first siege was raised in August in consequence of the 
surrender in July of General Dupont at Baylen to General Custafios. The place was again 
invested December 20th by the troops under Marshals Moncey and Mortier; on January 22nd 
Marshal Lannes assumed the command. The Spanish defence was prolonged, and most heroic by 
the civil population as well as by the garrison. But they were forced to capitulate February 21st, 
1809. See Napier, Vol. I[., p. 25, e€ seq. 
In the lately published memoirs of General Marbot, aide-de-camp to Marshal Lannes, are some 
interesting details of the operations. 
The French twice besieged the city of Gerona in 1808. On June 4th, 1809, it was invested for 
the third time by General Verdier. Marshal Augereau assumed the chief command on October 
12th. But the defence under the brave Governor, Mariano Alvarez, was so determined and gallant 
that the city held out till December 10th, when after a period of six months of opened trenches it 
surrendered : a defence which eclipsed the glory of Saragossa. See Napier, Vol. III., p. 22, et seq. 
2 The Spaniards, now in the fifth year of the war, were still in the state described by Sir John 
Moore, “without an army, without a government, without a general.” Napier, Vol. V., p. 253. 
3 Masséna after the battle of Fuentes de Honor, in May, 18i1, resigned his command and 
returned to France. He was succeeded by Marshal Marmont; upon his being wounded and the 
French army defeated at Salamanca, in July 1812, Masséna who had been given a command in 
Provence, was again nominally put in command of the army of Portugal and of the north of Spain 
(see Wellington Despatches, Vol. IX., p. 44), he did not however take the field, though likely 
enough reported in the allied army to have done so. At Burgos the French army was commanded 
by General Souham. 
