| Show VAIN blustering some ot of the spanish papers are reported to be indulging An in a great deal of braggadocio about how we defeated napoleon and drove the french out of spain etc those editors and doubtless their readers also seem to have a decided proneness to revising history and making things appear as they think they ought to have been not as they actually were that they stop short of claiming that the corsican met his waterloo at the hands of the spanish instead of in belgium by the british and prussians is in under the circumstances to be bb wondered at the papers pers referred to manage to weave mousa truth into their faba wt y mall i t rice to give them a plausible appearance but birt this kind of thing la is sometimes worse than going the whole figure on false statements because more likely to deceive there was a popular uprising in spain in 1808 that was the inception of the revolution against napoleon this eventually spread all over europe and led to his ultimate overthrow but it is not the case that the spanish de feared him or drove him from that country wellington made three unsuccessful attempts to accomplish that ob eject and succeeded on the fourth one after having been on the peninsula five years but he was assisted so little by the spaniards that their aid was practically of no avail at all going back through this scrap of history the minneapolis journal finds that in the first popular revolt a spanish army under castanos besieged gen dupont with men at baylen and finally starved him into surrender but punishment for this defiance of the emperor was sudden and awful napoleon himself entered spain in 1808 and made short work of the eng lish and spanish in four days mar lefevre dispersed blakes army and lannes overwhelmingly defeated castanos at tudela on december 2 napoleon Nap oledn appeared before madrid in person and on the ath the city surrendered the emperor forthwith abolished feudalism and swept the hoary inquisition out of existence the were soon crushed ex capt for guerilla bands and sir john moore before the combined advance of napoleon and soult fell back into portugal and embarked his troops los 1 ing his own life in the stubborn battle of corunna coranna Cor unna compelled to leave spain by the menacing attitude of austria was preparing itself for another whipping napoleon left soult and victor to preserve order in spain and they did for the most part until wel ling tons victory at vittoria in 1813 1818 gave him control of the peninsula that is the way we whipped napoleon it is more than probable that but for wellington and his englishmen spain would not have been left among the nations at all napoleon would have made her politically what she bhe comes very near being naturally a part of france it would have been a great thing for the united states it he had |
