Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XXII

Viewed from a military standpoint, the French warfare in Spain appeared utterly disastrous.[37] Regiments melted away like ice before an April sun; desertions became ominously numerous, and disease laid thousands low. Guerrilla warfare demoralized the regular forces. The new conscripts at first showed a noisy zeal, but they had been torn too young from their home nurture, and had neither strength nor power of resistance. The troops from vassal kingdoms and newly annexed territories were dismayed by the sufferings they had to endure, and beheld with interest the national uprising of the Spaniards, which, in spite of local jealousies, of rabid and radical doctrines that could lead to nothing but anarchy, of disastrous failure in government, of feebleness and falsehood in the temporary rulers, seemed likely to render of no avail the efforts and successes of a great empire.