April following, there is no allusion in this correspondence.

By a decree of Napoleon's, of the 8th of February, 1810, Čatalonia, Aragon, Navarre, Biscay, Burgos, and Valladolid, with Placencia and Toros-thus including the whole north of Spain, all of it, indeed, except the district round Madrid, of which the French had possession-were created into as many governments, under the absolute control, civil as well as military, of six French generals who corresponded directly with Napoleon, and were virtually independent of Joseph.

In Napoleon's letter to Berthier, directing this decree to be communicated to Joseph, he says:

"I intend the administration of the conquered provinces to be in future in the hands of the military commandants, in order that all their resources may be applied to the maintenance of the army. In future I shall be able to send only two millions a month to pay the troops which surround Madrid, and which form the nucleus of the army."

Soult, the commander of that army, had on foot an expedition against Andalusia, with the view of besieging and taking Cadiz, while Massena, placed soon after at the head of the army of Portugal, gradually drove back Wellington, and finally compelled him to retire behind the famous lines of Torres Vedras, near Lisbon.

Of the orders given to these independent commanders, the following letter from Berthier to Suchet, who commanded in Aragon, may serve as a specimen. Some care is taken to avoid touching Joseph's pride unnecessarily, but the orders are peremptory.

"Rambouillet, Feb. 224, 1810. The emperor wishes that Aragon, which is placed in a state of siege, should communicate as little as possible with Madrid. Placing this province in a state of siege gives you absolute authority, and it is your duty to apply all its resources to the pay, the food, and the clothing of your army. If the king (Joseph), as commander-inchief of the armies of Spain. should give you any orders affecting your administration, then and then only you will declare, that, as Aragon has been placed in a state of siege, your army receives its orders only from the emperor. You must feel, M. le Comte, that this declara tion is to be made only in the case of absolute necessity; his majesty relies on your prudence, on your devotion to his person, and on your attachment to the French empire. This communication, M. le Comte, is between you and

me alone."

These flimsy and transparent precautions could not, however, prevent the sensitive Joseph from understanding VOL. VII.-40

his position; and he thus expressed himself on the subject, in a letter to his wife, who remained at Paris with their two daughters. In a former letter to Napoleon he had scorned the idea of having an advocate with him; but since his direct business correspondence with his brother was interrupted, he appears to have employed in that character Julie, always a favorite with Napoleon.

"Cordova. April 12th, 1810. Ma chere amie--M. Deslandes will explain to you my position, and will tell you how necessary it is that it should end, and that I should know what are the real feelings of the emperor towards me. As far as I can judge from the facts, they are unfavorable, and yet I cannot account for them. What does he want with Spain and with me? Let him once announce to me his will, and I should no longer be placed between what I appear to be and what I really am, in a country in which unresisting provinces are given up to the discretion of the generals, who tax them as they like, and are ordered not to attend to me. If the emperor wishes to disgust me with Spain, I wish for nothing but to retire immediately. I am satisfied with having twice tried the experiment of being a king, I do not wish to continue it. I wish either to buy an estate in France far from Paris and to live there quietly, or to be treated as a king and a brother.

"If the emperor has been irritated against me by mischief-makers, by the persons who calumniated me to the Spanish people (and thus, indeed, did me good when I became known), and if you cannot make him see the truth. I repeat that I must retire. I beg you, therefore, to prepare for me the means of liv ing independently in retirement and of being just to those who serve me well. I embrace you and Zenaide and Charlotte."

It does not appear that Julie was able to obtain any explanations; while the letters that follow from Napoleon, concerning the orders to be sent to Spain, abound with sharp censures upon Joseph for presuming to intermeddle with the disposal of the British goods seized and confiscated in Andalusia, which Napoleon required to go exclusively to the pay of his soldiers; for persisting in the policy which he had adopted at Naples, of enlisting native regiments; for paying civilians in preference to soldiers; and for not levying contributions on Seville, Malaga, and "all those fine countries," for the pay of the army employed in the siege of Cadiz, which had fallen nine months in arrear. To pay this army, Napoleon sent on three millions under a special escort, with express orders to carry it untouched to its destination; no money to be subtracted from it, not even at Madrid.

The rumors which reached Joseph that Soult was to be appointed to a

command in Andainsia, similar to that enjoyed by the independent commasiers of the north, drew from him a letter to Napoleon, dated Madr1. Aug. 9th. 1814, in which be talked about reguesting to be allowed to join his family, from which he had been separated for six years, and to find in obscurity and domestic affections a peace of which the throne had robbed Lin.

- If your majesty deprives me of the command of the army of Andalusia, and devices the TETESA of the provine FI INtely to the army I have working to do but to the up the game: in an doing I should be anamer a free agent. In the present state of affairs in Spain, the comma in tef in a province is its king. All its resoumes becnese inade quate, because what are rated the warn of the army are indefinite, and be general inerases them as he sees the means of supplying Thas the provizen, commanded by generals who are not under my codem, are nothing to me. In Andalusia I hoped to find a few resources, after having weighed to the amy wiet was expposed to be friest, if your majesty eritize to send two mine every month. But to give the command of the troops to a general win does not reeverize my authority, is to give him the adın inistration and governinent of the entry. It is to take from me the only province in which I could hope to Live; it is to confine me to Madrid. which gives me only eight hundred thousand france per month, wille my inispensable expensa exceed far more per moc'h. I am Lere surrounded by the raink of a great nation. I have a guard. I have dept. I have hope tais. & garrison, a botrebold, a ministry, a privy council, refugees from the other pr vinces, etc, etc. Even my bosor, if the sentiment of what is due to me, allowed me to maintain so humillating a position, this state of things could not last two months. For, in fact, if the army of Andalusia la taken from me, what shall ĺ be? The porter of the hospitals of Mairid and of the depots of the army, and the jar of the prisoners.

**Sire. I am your brother. You presented me to bpain as a second seif I feel the exaggeration of this praise as respects my talents, but I shall not fall below it as respects the faithfulness of my character, the magnanimity of my feelings, and the tenderness of my love for my brother.

"I always hoped that your majesty would come to Spain. There are several indications in these letters that Napoleon had really in ended to do so; but he was now fally engaged in enforcing his famous continental system; and, seeing how matters were going on in the Peninsula, be preferred advising and criticising be marshals from a distance, to again taking the command in person. The Spaulards were a sort of enemy be was not accustomed to, and did not like. They did not know when they were beat; With this expectation I bore up against everything: but this hope recodes, and

circumstances press on me."

Joseph then proceeds to express his opinion that the only way to serve Spain, was to give everything up to his

eratrol and to anticipate most disas trons or usequencES, I should be with draw. The letter closes as follows:

- I implore your majesty to see is this letter vely what I tive endiaried to rat inte the simple truth, dictated by the fraternal friendly wil attached me to you in your mie, úd, vierever may beppen, wil acexmpany me to my tomb." (in the ectics w I feel a the been, and wild lenen repte my wring be caused by personal feel ing or by selfish regret! No, site, it à not I weep over the weakness of human nsture, over the dispersion of a family vore so Esited over the change in the beat of my besther, one the gradual diminution of an immense d'ury, bleek would have been better preserved by generaty and heroism, than by 257 erecens of power.

Sre, if the elastasin of my letter does Dot recall to me the tender and valsed friend of your infaiky: If it does not tell you that I am to you what no other man can be, I have nothing to do but retire."

No doubt Joseph intended this fraternal pathos to be quite overwhelming, and, no doubt, be sealed up and dispatched his letter in the full conviction that it would be so. But Napoleon. who took no notice of this letter, knew his brother Joseph perfectly well.

He often took leave, but was both to depart."

The younger brother, Louis, unwilling longer to be made the tool of Napoleon's cruelties in forcing the contiental system on the unfortunate people of Holland, had resigned his crown and retired to private Efe. Joseph, for aught that appears, might readily have done the same if he would: but though be taiked perpetually about resigning. it was all for effect; and for three years longer, amid increased mortifications and constant forebodings of what was to happen, he clung convulsively to his nominal sovereignty, till he was fairly pushed out of Spain at the point of the English bayonets. In spite of his remonstrances, Andalusia passed under the authority of Soult, but Joseph was consoled by being placed at the head of a new army of the centre, of which the headquarters was to be at Madrid, to be kept in readiness as a reserve to extend succor to such points as might need it most. For this army of the centre. Napoleon appointed as chief of the staff, General Beliard, who had held hitherto, also, by Napoleon's appointment. the place of governor of Madrid. Joseph hastened to take advantage of his new appointment, to supersede him in his old office, to which he appointed General Blaniac of his

own Spanish army-a body of troops for which Napoleon, on all occasions, expressed as much contempt and distrust as he had been accustomed to do for Joseph's Neapolitan army. But this attempt of Joseph, to select his own governor of Madrid, only subjected him to a new mortification, since it drew from Napoleon the following letter addressed to Berthier, then minister of war:

"Paris. Jan. 17th, 1811. My cousin: Let the king of Spain know, that having giving the government of Madrid to General Belliard,

who has continued to serve me well, I do not choose that it should be taken from him, nor. above all, that it should be given to an officer who is not in the service of France; that if it be true that the king has deprived General Belliard of the government of Madrid, he inust restore it to him without delay; that this is my formal order; that, generally speaking, I do not intend any French troops to be under the command of officers in the Spanish service."

Joseph's obsequiousness, in spite of occasional remonstrances, to every wish of his brother, was soon after rewarded by the following gracious epistles:

"Paris, March 20th, 1811. Monsieur mon frère: I hasten to announce to your majesty that the empress, my dear wife, has just been safely delivered of a prince, who, at his birth, received the title of king of Rome; your majesty's constant affection towards me, convinces me that you will share in the satisfaction which I feel at an event of such importance to my family, and to the welfare of my subjects.

This conviction is very agreeable to me. Your majesty is aware of my attachments, and cannot doubt the pleasure with which I seize his opportunity of repeating the assur

ances of the sincere esteein and friendship

with which I am. etc., etc."

"March 20th, 1811. [This letter commences with some details as to the birth of the child which the English editor is too modest to translate, but which the French editor gives as affording a proof of the friendly intimacy between the brothers] This evening, at eight o'clock, the child is to be privately baptized. is I do not intend the public christening to take place for the next six weeks, I shall entrust General Defrance, my equerry, who will be the bearer of this letter, with another, in which I shall ask you to stand godfather to your nephew."

Joseph, accordingly, visited Paris on the occasion of the christening, where -if we are to believe a statement of Napoleon's, to be presently quoted-his brother was anxious to have him remain. Joseph is represented in his memoirs as having been induced to go back by promises of money and of an extension of his military authority, neither of which promises was kept. However, when

Napoleon, a year afterwards, was about setting out on his fatal campaign against Russia, from the necessity of having some head to the operations in Spain, he restored, on the 15th of March, 1812, the command in chief to Joseph, with whom, as well as with the French minister of war, the commanding generals were directed to correspond, and who was required to take into his military councils Marshal Jourdan, in retirement since the defeat of Talavera, but now appointed chief of the staff. The marshals, however, were little disposed to give up their independent authority; and as Napoleon, far advanced into Russia, was preparing for the battle of Borodino, news reached him of a defeat at Salamanca, on the 23d of July, 1812, which he ascribed to a spirit of insubordination on the part of Marmont, who had succeeded to Massena's command. Marmont had been obliged to retire before Wellington, now again advancing from Portugal, but instead of waiting to be joined by Joseph, who was marching with the army of the centre to his assistance, and anxious to engross to himself the glory of beating the English-at least, such was the construction which Napoleon put on his conduct-he gave battle and suffered a defeat, of which the consequences were very disastrous. was obliged to abandon the siege of Cadiz, and to withdraw his army from the south of Spain, while Joseph, driven from Madrid, retired to Valencia, then whom Napoleon had confided the comrecently taken and held by Suchet, to mand of the three eastern provinces of Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia.

Soult

Again Joseph came to the conclusion that his kingdom of Spain was a hopeless affair, and that he ought to retire; but, instead of doing so, he dispatched an aide-de-camp to Napoleon, with apologies for himself in relation to the battle of Salamanca and the subsequent events, and with a complaint against Soult, who, it seems, had written a letter, which somehow had fallen into Joseph's hands, expressing suspicions that Joseph was betraying the French cause in the hope of pleasing the Spaniards. getting rid of the French, and retaining his throne with the consent of the English. Joseph, on the other hand, charged Soult with treasonable projects, and insisted on his removal.

The aide-de-camp, sent on this mis

sion, reached Moscow on the 13th of October, just as Napoleon was commencing his disastrous retreat, and in a very curious letter, written from Paris on the 3d of January, 1913, and published in this collection, he gives an account of his interview with Napoleon, and of the subsequent ruin of the grand army, of which he was an eye-witness. As to Soult's suspicions, and what Napoleon said on that subject, the aide-decamp writes as follows:

"The emperor then proceeded to the duke of Dalmatia's Soults] letter; he told me that it had already reached him through another channel, but that he had attached no import

ance to it; that Marshal Soult was in error,

that he Napoleon) could not attend to such trifles while he was at the head of half a mil lion of men, and engaged in enormous undertakings these were his expressions; that, however, the duke of Dalmatia's suspicions did not much surprise him; that they are shared by many generals belonging to the army of Spain, who think that your majesty prefers Spain to France; that he was convinced that you had a French heart, but that those who judged you by your public speeches might think otherwise. He added, that Marshal Soult's was the only military head in Spain; that he could not withdraw him without endangering the ariny; that, on the other hand, he was perfectly easy as to Marshal Soult's intentions, as he had just learned, from the English newspapers, that the marshal was evacuating Andalusia and joining the armies of the centre and of Aragon; that this junction will make them strong enough to take up the offensive; that he had no orders to send; that it was impossible to give orders from such a distance; that he did not disguise from himself the extent of the evil: and that he more than ever regretted that your majesty had not followed his advice not to return to Spain."

Joseph, as we have seen, had been in Paris in the spring of 1811, to attend the christening of the King of Rome, and it was, doubtless, then that this advice was given, from which it seems clear that Joseph had nobody to blame but himself and his own hankerings after royalty, for having continued, at least after that period, mixed up with Spanish affairs.

Thus driven from his capital, and reduced to follow the retreating French army, Joseph continued for near a year longer to squabble with the marshals, and to call himself King of Spain. But every day the French became more and more restricted to a narrower line of operations, and even the communications with France were greatly interrupted. Napoleon, whose grand army had perished in the retreat from Moscow, and who had drawn down an avalanche on himself, was no longer able to afford any assistance. The battle of Vittoria, fought on the 20th of June, 1813, in which Joseph's carriage was taken, he himself escaping with difficulty, drove him and the French army out of Spain. A letter to his wife, dated Yrursun, June 234, 1813, after a short account of that battle, concludes as follows:

"If the emperor has returned, tell him, as soon as I have placed my army on the frontier, and united it to those of the north and of Aragon, I shall repair to Mortefontaine, as I told you at the time that I ought to have done after Salamanca. Let me have the emperor s answer. Whatever it be. I shall go home. I can do no good here. Tell Clary [the banker, his wife's brother] to transmit, through James and Brocq, a hundred thousand francs to my secretary, M. Presle. Among the killed were M. Thibaud, defending my treasure, and poor Alphonse, whom I loved though I scolded him. [Alphonse was wounded and taken prisHe afterwards joined Joseph in America.] Send me back the courier. I shall not stop at Paris, but at Mortefontaine, whether you are there or at a watering place. Kisses to you and to the children."

oner.

This time, being no longer able to help himself, Joseph carried out his threats of retirement. Here ended his unlucky experiments of royalty; and here, too, we must end for the present, reserving, for a concluding article, the history of Napoleon's family relations as developed in the closing part of this correspondence, which, in many points of view, relating as it does to the period of Napoleon's downfall, is the most interesting portion of it.