The peninsular war, p.33
The Peninsular War, page 33
Moving on to other matters, we come first to the question of Spain’s territorial organisation and governance. Though dealt with only tangentially in the Constitution of Bayonne, there could be little doubt as to the implications of this document. Initially, Joseph contented himself with working within the apparatus that he had inherited from the antiguo régimen whilst at the same time placing responsibility for local government in many provinces in the hands of a variety of royal commissioners. However, after much preparation and debate, on 2 July 1809 Spain was divided into thirty-eight new provinces, each of which was headed by an Intendent appointed by King Joseph, whilst on 17 April 1810 these intendencies were converted into French-style prefectures and sub-prefectures. Named after their chief towns rather than, as in France, after their dominant geographical features, the new territorial divisions, which were all more or less equal in size, bore little relation to historic units of any sort.* To take Navarre as an example, part of it was joined with the Basque señorio of Guipúzcoa in a prefecture governed from Pamplona, and the rest conjoined with west-central Aragón in another based at Zaragoza. If Aragón thereby gained eastern Navarre, it lost its eastern fringes to Catalan Tarragona, however, whilst the remainder was split between Teruel and Huesca. Each prefecture, meanwhile, was to have its own district court and constitute an independent diocese, whilst the new units were grouped together in units of between two and four to form new military districts, the result being that there would in turn have to be a massive restructuring of the judicial, ecclesiastical and military ordering of the state. In practice, little progress was made in these areas, but in much of southern and central Spain by 1812 the prefectural system, at least, was becoming a reality.
Implicit in the Decree of 17 April 1810, there was, as can be observed, a direct threat to the foral provinces, which had hitherto been allowed to retain their traditional structures and generally treated in a lenient fashion. Thus, if Guipúzcoa was absorbed into a rump of Navarre, Vizcaya and Alava were joined in the prefecture of Vitoria. The issue of the fueros is one to which we shall return, but for the moment let us concentrate upon the general revolution in government of which the creation of the prefectures was a part. Beginning with the central authorities, on 18 August 1809 the bitter struggle that had for many years raged between new-fangled ministry on the one hand and traditional council on the other was resolved in favour of the former. Thus, the Councils of War, the Indies, the Treasury and the Military Orders were abolished and the Council of Castile was restricted to the functions of a supreme court of appeal, whilst the number of ministries was expanded from five to nine – Finance, Interior, Justice, Foreign Affairs, War, Police, Marine, Indies and Ecclesiastical Affairs. Equally, on 4 September 1809 all Spain’s ayuntamientos were dismissed, the provincial authorities being ordered to proceed to the formation of new bodies chosen by election. Initially, the vote was restricted to property-owners noted for their enthusiasm for the French cause, but even so the old system of hereditary tenure had been completely overthrown and the number of councillors linked to the size of the population. With the Decree of 17 April 1810, meanwhile, the French model was introduced in full with councils at municipal, sub-prefectural and prefectural levels; mayors in every town; and very limited powers of election (as in France, only the smallest places could choose their councils themselves, larger ones having to submit a list of candidates for approval by higher authority). As for the administration of justice, the alcaldes mayores, or local magistrates, were deprived of the seats they had generally enjoyed in the municipalities, and, as laid down at Bayonne, integrated in a uniform system of courts. Also worth noting here is the abolition of torture and the substitution of the noose by the supposedly more humane garrotte.
More specifically covered in the Constitution of Bayonne than the question of territorial organisation was that of legal and fiscal unification. Spain had been promised common civil, criminal and commercial codes, a unified judiciary and a uniform system of taxation. In so far as the legal codes were concerned, the original plan had been simply to impose the models that had been introduced in France since 1799, but on this point the emperor had given way, leaving the new régime to elaborate the documents that it needed by itself. To carry out the work required, in December 1809 a permanent sub-committee was established within the Council of State, and this eventually produced a document based on the Code Napoléon that accepted most of its principles whilst at the same time eliminating such contentious rights as that of divorce. Pressure of business prevented the new code’s discussion, however, with the result that it was never introduced, josefino Spain therefore having to continue to rely on the Bourbon Novísima Recopilación. In the matter of taxation, meanwhile, matters were much the same. In the course of 1809 the Minister of Finance, Francisco Cabarrús, sketched out a new scheme that would have suppressed the multitude of existing levies, many of which applied only to part of the country, in favour of three new taxes levied on property, occupation and income, all of which would have applied to the whole of Spain. However, not until October 1810 did the first part of this scheme appear in the form of an annual impost of ten per cent of all rental income, whilst it was another year before there appeared the patente industrial, which was essentially an annual licence that had to be paid by all those involved in any sort of craft or business. Spain also being given a single tax and customs frontier – the Basque provinces and Navarre were effectively stripped of their immunity by a decree of 16 October 1809 – the principles of the Napoleonic empire were slowly entrenching themselves beyond the Pyrenees.
In addition to proposing new systems of law and taxation, the Constitution of Bayonne also promised a reorganisation of the exhorbitant national debt that had built up under Carlos IV. Amounting to almost 6,500,000,000 reales by 1808, this was guaranteed by the new régime, but that did not mean that the latter was prepared to take it on on the terms bequeathed to it by the Bourbons. As a leading financial expert, Cabarrús was particularly eager to do something about the problem, the result being the issue on 9 June 1809 of orders for all titles to the national debt to be surrendered in exchange for cédulas de crédito. These in turn could be used either to buy bienes nacionales – property seized from enemies of the régime and, above all, the Church – or to generate a dividend of four per cent per annum. On the same day, meanwhile, there also appeared a decree that both authorised the sale of the property seized by the government and laid down the rules for the manner in which this was to be carried out. Matters were complicated by the issue of fresh cédulas as rewards for those who had served the josefino régime, but, with much of the Bourbon debt effectively cancelled and plentiful amounts of property up for sale, on the surface it looked as if matters had genuinely been put on a new footing.
Reform of this sort was not the only activity in which the régime engaged. Joseph, for example, was eager to promote economic revival, and therefore introduced a number of measures that tied in closely with classic liberal theory. In addition to the internal customs barriers got rid of by the decree of 16 October 1809, various monopolies were abolished, whilst the régime also rid itself of the series of industrial enterprises, none of them very successful, that had been bequeathed to it by the étatist Bourbons. At the same time, a new stock exchange was set up in Madrid; Spain’s primitive national bank, the Banco de San Carlos, was overhauled; the cultivation of such crops as potatoes, cotton and rice was encouraged; generous concessions were offered to all those willing to establish industrial concerns; a Conservatorio de Artes y Oficios was set up in Madrid as a repository of information relating to machines, tools and industrial processes; and the Reales Sociedades de Amigos del País – the learned societies established by Carlos III in order to promote innovation and the spread of modern science – given every encouragement.
Last but not least, recognition should also be given to Joseph’s efforts to celebrate Spain’s cultural heritage, and improve the environment in which her inhabitants lived. As interested as any of its counterparts elsewhere in the spread of education, on 6 September 1809 the régime ordered that state primary schools should be established in place of those run by teaching orders, whilst a further decree of 26 October laid down that each provincial capital should have a French-style lycée. More generous than his brother in the matter of female education, Joseph also set up a school for 150 girls in Madrid and decreed that similar institutions should be founded in the provinces, the administration of all these plans being placed in the hands of a new Committee of Public Instruction. Alongside this, meanwhile, there appeared an academy modelled on Napoleon’s Institut de France in the shape of the National Institute for Arts and Sciences.
It is not, however, for his educational policy that Joseph Bonaparte is most remembered in the field of culture. It was Joseph who was responsible for the foundation (if not the idea) of the Museo del Prado and the first attempts at the official preservation and investigation of the remains of such sites as Roman Italica, whilst it was also Joseph who first laid out Madrid’s botanical gardens and established Spain’s first natural history museum. To him, too, Madrid owes a number of squares, not least the Plaza de Oriente in front of the royal palace, which were created in an attempt both to beautify the city and to provide work for the city’s poor, just as it was in his reign that the inhabitants were for the first time given access to the palace gardens that were eventually to become the Retiro park. Implicit in these schemes, of course, was a concern for living standards that is, in the circumstances, laughable in its sincerity. Thus, the focus of a bloody war that caused untold miseries to the populace, Joseph genuinely wished them to enjoy open spaces, clean air and better health; hence the new parks and squares, and hence, too, the efforts that were expended on such matters as vaccination – ordered by Joseph Bonaparte in Madrid as early as July 1808 – street cleaning, waste disposal and funerals (like the Bourbons before him, Joseph was especially keen to put an end to the practice of church burials).
As may be observed, then, josefino Spain was characterised by a genuinely reformist impulse that was as marked as anything found in other parts of the Napoleonic empire. Indeed, further impetus was lent to the process by the fact that in many parts of Spain the administration was for much of the time not in the hands of King Joseph. For the latter there was often good reason at the very least to make haste slowly, or even to tone down certain measures of reform. On the ground, however, power was in the hands of Intendents, royal commissioners, and, ultimately, prefects who were often for various reasons less inclined to be circumspect than the king (a good example is Francisco de Amorós, an army officer and friend of Godoy who responded to the overthrow of the favourite with a one-man crusade against the antiguo régimen). At the same time, even in the early days so much influence was possessed by the local military commanders that Joseph’s agents were able to exercise no power whatsoever, whilst consideration must also be given to the impact of territorial alienation. On 8 February 1810, growing irritation with his brother led Napoleon to order that the Basque provinces, Navarre, Aragón and Catalonia should be turned into military ‘governments’ whose authorities would be entirely independent of those appointed by King Joseph. Two months later, two more such units were created out of Burgos on the one hand and Valladolid, Toro, Palencia and, albeit temporarily, Avila on the other, whilst on 14 July Napoleon took the whole of Andalucía out of Joseph’s hands and gave it to Soult, who was at the same time given the command of almost all the troops that had taken part in the offensive of January 1810. And, finally, mooted as early as October 1810 in an attempt to frighten Joseph into greater ferocity, in February 1812 Catalonia was to all intents and purposes annexed to the French empire (the decree concerned did not actually use the term ‘annexation’, but its provisions were such as to leave no doubt as to its implications). In all these cases, the result was the intensification of reform, the French commanders being not only convinced that the privileged orders were the motor of popular resistance, but, in the trans-ebrine regions at least, under orders from Napoleon to prepare the way for annexation.
Reform, then, cannot be analysed just from a consideration of the decrees that emanated from King Joseph’s Council of State. In the Basque señorios and Navarre, the establishment of military ‘governments’ led to a full-scale assault on the fueros. A hard-liner with little respect for local sensibilities, the governor of the Basque provinces, General Thouvenot, immediately swept away the three señorios’ traditional forms of self-government and gave each of them a small appointed council modelled on that of a French département. Still worse, their fiscal privileges were also abrogated, Thouvenot immediately imposing a series of unprecedented taxes that had within eighteen months raised 40,000,000 reales. In institutional terms, however, Navarre fared rather better – briefly abolished, her foral institutions were quickly re-established in an attempt to conciliate the local notables – but there, too, the diputación was appointed rather than elected, and executive power placed in the hands of a new police commission. In Catalonia the role of eminence grise to the occupation authorities fell into the hands of an afrancesado so pro-French in sympathy that he not only pressed for the introduction of the Code Napoléon in full, but advocated the introduction of conscription and complete annexation by France. Thanks to the support of the then commander of the French garrison, Marshal Augereau, a cidevant Jacobin and common soldier much inclined to nurse delusions that the people had only to be freed from their chains to rally to the French cause, the result was a series of measures designed to refashion Catalonia on the French model. Last but not least, it should be noted that throughout the areas subjected to direct imperial control there appeared considerable numbers of French administrative personnel, giving the process of transformation still greater impetus.
French personnel or no French personnel, in Spain as elsewhere the implementation of reform rested on a substantial degree of collaboration on the part of the indigenous élites, for Napoleon never had sufficient trained administrators to supply more than a handful of the large numbers required. Matters should have been eased by the presence in the country of a sizeable French community prior to 1808, but surprisingly little assistance was derived from this source (the most prominent example is Cabarrús, a Frenchman who had come to Spain to pursue a fortune in commerce in the 1770s), whilst Joseph was in any case very eager both to make his monarchy a genuinely Spanish institution and to win the support of the propertied classes. In theory the josefino state was characterised by the career open to talents, but in practice there was more continuity than change. The court was filled with leading grandees; the government and administration with Bourbon statesmen and officials; the officer corps with Bourbon army officers; and provincial and municipal government with representatives of the old local oligarchy. As witness the creation in October 1809 of the corps of asistentes – young men taken on as interns to learn the business of administration – even Napoleonic innovation made little difference, recruitment being restricted to those whose families could afford to pay a subvention of 24,000 reales a year.
If great care was taken not to threaten the position of the propertied classes, just as much effort was put into ensuring that service in the bureaucracy brought with it high rewards: Councillors of State, for example, were officially entitled to a salary of 100,000 reales a year, whilst even asistentes received 12,000. Nor were the prizes on offer solely financial: having abolished all Spain’s existing orders of nobility, on 20 October 1809 Joseph created a new Spanish Royal Order, which was eventually awarded to over 600 churchmen, nobles, army officers and officials and carried with it a substantial pension, whilst there was even the possibility of a title (Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1811 to 1813, for example, Miguel José de Azanza became the Duque de Santa Fé).
Collaboration, then, offered financial gain and social advancement, whilst the French could also be relied upon to hang bandits, suppress rioters and back señores against agrarian disorder: sights such as the three gallows that Dorsenne kept permanently filled outside Burgos were in this sense as much a reassurance as they were a menace. Meanwhile, having obtained control, the invaders were in a position to use every means at their disposal to project a positive image of Napoleonic rule and manipulate society in their own interests. It is instructive, for example, that no sooner had the French arrived in Madrid in December 1808 than they held a grand review:
With a view to appealing to the eyes of the populace as he had previously appealed to their reason, and hoping to dispose them to accept with pride an alliance with so rich and powerful a nation as the French, the emperor ordered that … all the troops should appear in their most gorgeous uniforms at the review he intended to hold on the Prado. We all got ourselves up in gala array so as to be worthy of the grand occasion.7
Needless to say, these displays of pomp and ceremony were reinforced by a sustained offensive in the press. All over occupied Spain official gazettes appeared giving the régime’s version of events and blackening the Patriot cause. Typical of one common theme was the Gazeta de Sevilla of 7 January 1812:
