genuinely thought that Napoleon was the bringer of reform and
enlightenment. Others take a more jaundiced view of the afrancesados as
opportunists who, at least until r8r2, thought that Napoleon was
invincible or see them as a mixture of cynicism and inertia, wedded to a
simple desire for salaries, places and privilege. In many cases, the
question of to be or not to be a French collaborator was settled by
geography, almost on the old principal of cuius regio, eius religio - yet
another link between r8o8 and the Civil War of 1936.
There is some evidence that Napoleon occasionally tried to pull out of
the Spanish maelstrom, but each time he took a faltering step
circumstances worked against him. By the end of r8o9 he seemed to have
become convinced that installing Joseph as King of Spain had been a
mistake and that the best strategy was restoration of Ferdinand, provided
he would agree to make common cause against England. While Joseph
fortified himself with the illusion that he could conciliate the Spanish by
reforms, a gentle forbearing rule and a show of independence from the
Emperor, Napoleon decided to apply pressure on him.
An imperial decree of 8 February r8ro seemed like the prelude to yet
another annexation. By the decree Napoleon lopped off a huge area of
northern Spain from Joseph's domains and organized four independent
military governments - Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre and Guipuzcoa -
under direct French control. Naturally piqued, Joseph talked of
abdication - which is exactly what his brother wanted. But in the end he
decided not to abdicate, leaving Napoleon with the straight choice of
dismissing him or sustaining him. The only way the Emperor could have
winkled the firstborn of the Bonapartes out of Spain was by allowing him
to return to his old kingdom in Naples, but this was politically impossible
as it would mean ousting the Murats.
In April r8ro Napoleon gave the command of the Army of Portugal to
Massena but it was September that year before the marshal commenced a
tortuous march on Lisbon with a 70,000-strong army. By this time
Wellington had an army of so,ooo, even though he could normally put
only about two-thirds of this in the field because of garrison and other
duties. But he had used the lull in fighting to good effect by planning and
constructing the lines of Torres Vedras- a set of fortifications from the
Atlantic to the Tagus, straddling the neck of land around Lisbon.
Beginning in late r 809 Wellington built two fortified lines to defend
Lisbon; the work was completed in the summer of r8ro. The first line
was twenty-nine miles long and ran from the coast to the Tagus at
Alhandra; the second, six miles to the south and supposedly impregnable,
stretched twenty-two miles from the coast to the Tagus, roughly parallel
marcin
(Marcin)
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