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Updated: June 4, 2025
The emperor again summoning the Junta of Defence to spare the capital the horrors of a general assault, Thomas de Morla soon presented himself before him, in the name of the insurrectional government. The emperor's features clearly expressed his anger at the sight of the governor of Andalusia, who had recently retained the troops taken prisoners, in defiance of the capitulation of Baylen.
In the commencement of 1809, Reding the Swiss, who had, in 1808, chiefly contributed to the capture of the French army at Baylen, commanded the whole of the Spanish forces in Catalonia, consisting of forty thousand Spaniards and several thousand Swiss; but these guerilla troops, almost invincible in petty warfare, were totally unable to stand in open battle against the veterans of the French emperor, and Reding was completely routed by St.
That Prince had been proclaimed on the 8th of June; and on the 21st of the same month he made his entry into Madrid, but having received, ten days after, information of the disaster at Baylen, he was obliged to leave the Spanish capital.
By a chance which prudent minds might have anticipated, but which astonished and confounded the inexperience of the insurgent leaders, the national rising, which lately was universal, irresistible, and triumphant, lost all its power and energy immediately after the victory of Baylen.
On the 16th of July, Dupont was attacked at Baylen by Castaños, who knew from an intercepted despatch the extent of his enemy's distress: the French were beaten, and driven as far as Menjibar.
I believe he was originally in the French army, and when Dupont surrendered at Baylen he went over to the other side, and accepted a commission from the King of Spain." "Not a very good record, that." "And he is not a good man. He outvies even the Spaniards in cruelty. A very able general, though. He has given us a deal of trouble. Down with your head! Here comes some more."
But they proved to be members of the guardia civil, and therefore our protectors. The ruts and quagmires, made by the rain, retarded our progress, and it was dark when we reached Andujar, fourteen leagues from Cordova. To Baylen, where I was to quit the diligence, and take another coming down from Madrid to Granada, was four leagues further.
The only corps left exposed was that of Dupont, to whom reinforcements had been promptly despatched; but the Spaniards under Castaños caught his army, now twenty-five thousand strong, in the mountain pass of La Carolina, among the Sierra Moreña mountains, and on July twenty-first forced him to capitulate at Baylen, where his whole corps laid down their arms.
The food of the troops was bad and insufficient, and the sick were numerous; isolated in the midst of a country passionately hostile, without means of information as to the enemy's movements, without news of Madrid or the government, the French remained stationary, sad and depressed. General Vedel occupied Baylen, General Gobert La Carolina; thus they commanded the defiles of the mountain.
This accumulation of misfortunes defeat before Valencia, defeat before Saragossa, disaster and surrender at Baylen, disaster and disgrace at Vimeiro, retreat from Madrid, desertion of the Duero as a line of defense, exchange of the offensive for a weak defensive, and loss of the whole Iberian peninsula except the strip behind the Ebro all this was shameful and hard to bear.
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