Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/610

 466 General History of Europe Portugal was too friendly to the English, and Spain, owing to serious dissensions in the royal family, seemed an easy prey. In the spring of 1 808 Napoleon induced -both the king and the crown prince of Spain to meet him at Bayonne. Here he was able to per- suade or force both cf them to surrender their rights to the throne, and on June 6 he appointed his brother Joseph king of Spain. The Spanish, how- ever, rebelled against this arrangement and with the help of English troops under Wellington, who had landed in Portugal, defeated the French armies. In November the French emperor himself led a mag- nificent army into Spain, no less than two hundred thou- sand strong. The Spanish troops, perhaps one hundred thousand in number, were, on the other hand, ill clad and inadequately equipped; what was worse, they were overconfident in view of their late victory. They were of course defeated, and Madrid surrendered on December 4. Napoleon immediately abol- ished the Inquisition, the feudal dues, the internal customs lines, and two thirds of the cloisters. This is typical of the way in which the French Revolution went forth in arms to spread its principles throughout western Europe. 823. The Peninsular War. The next month Napoleon was back in Paris, as he saw that he had another war with Austria on his hands. He left Joseph on his insecure throne, after assur- ing the Spanish that God had given the French emperor the power and the will to overcome all obstacles. He was soon to discover, however, that these very Spaniards could maintain a guerrilla war- fare against which his best troops and most distinguished generals DUKE OF WELLINGTON