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Updated: June 4, 2025
It mattered not to him that this was untrue; the end was gained, and the real significance of Baylen was thereby largely concealed from the Czar, or at least the impression made on him by the news was weakened.
Bessières in the north gained a success at Medina de Rio Seco; but a signal disaster in the south ruined the whole campaign. The news that a French army had laid down its arms caused an immense sensation in an age when Napoleon's troops were held to be invincible. Baylen was hailed everywhere by despairing patriots as the dawn of a new era. And such it was to be.
Bessières in the north gained a success at Medina de Rio Seco; but a signal disaster in the south ruined the whole campaign. The news that a French army had laid down its arms caused an immense sensation in an age when Napoleon's troops were held to be invincible. Baylen was hailed everywhere by despairing patriots as the dawn of a new era. And such it was to be.
Napoleon received him with anger, and rebuked him for the violation of the capitulation at Baylen. "Injustice and bad faith," said he, "always recoil on those who are guilty of them." Many an honester Spaniard was obliged to listen in silence to such words from the negotiator of Fontainebleau and Bayonne. Morla was a coward, and there is no doubt a traitor also.
While Alexander was hastening the preparations for his sister's marriage, Napoleon was hurrying toward Spain, whither, too, the legions of the grand army, released by the evacuation of Prussia, had already been ordered. Baylen and Cintra must be retrieved at any cost. As the splendid array of soldiers passed through France they were received like men who had already conquered.
Even amid the exhausting labors of Bayonne, Napoleon remembered this, and thought of the East, reorganizing his fleet in preparation for coöperation with that of Russia, and commanding reports to be made on the geography and military history of Persia. After the loss of Baylen, of which he learned in the first days of August, his ingenuity did not desert him, in spite of his heavy heart.
The English government meanwhile had begun their preparations for interfering effectually in the affairs of the Peninsula. They had despatched one body of troops to the support of Castaños in Andalusia; but these did not reach the south of Spain until their assistance was rendered unnecessary by the surrender of Dupont at Baylen.
All the divisions of the army of Andalusia, engaged or not in the battle of Baylen, were to be comprised in the capitulation. The conditions were about to be signed, the French troops were authorized to retreat on Madrid; the Barbou division alone commanded by General Dupont, was to be disarmed.
After the unhappy capitulation of Baylen and its shameful violation, our unfortunate soldiers, victims of this piece of weakness and disloyalty, were cast upon an island called Cabrera, a bare and desert spot, where most of them died of hunger, abandoned and forgotten by the whole world.
The division began its march at five o'clock, at eleven it had only advanced half-way; the men left their ranks at every moment to seek a drop of water in the rocks. The cannon was heard more faintly; at noon it was heard no more. It was five o'clock when, in the midst of silence, the corps which had been so impatiently expected debouched above Baylen.
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