The Scranton Tribune

The Spanish Heroes of 1808.

Our fight with Bonaparte for independence can hardly be equaled in the future. The most depressed of the nations of that time, without treasure, without an army or a navy; sold and betrayed by her kings; her doors wide open to the invader, in whom she believed she would find a brother, but in whom she found only an enemy; her fortresses occupied by treason and perfidy; her capital held by a garrison of invaders; confronted by the greatest captain the ages had ever known, and having nothing with which to oppose him but fragile houses, naked breasts, women's curses, pikes cut from trees, flames from the hearth, stones from the roads, and what was left of a decimated population.

Spain nevertheless succeeded in terrifying Murat at Madrid, in driving back Moncey from Valencia, in defeating Dupont at Bailen, in disarming Lefebvre at Balmaceda, in disconcerting Napoleon himself in Chamartin, in stopping Ney at San Payo, in expelling Soult from Galicia, in compelling Massena to leave Salamanca, in eclipsing the marshals called by Europe the planets of the sun of battles, in sustaining sieges like those of Saragossa and Gerona, in holding mountain passes resembling that of Thermopylae, in improving armed corps like those raised by Mina and Merino, which would have astonished Leonidas, in supplementing the most scientific tactics by a popular warfare whose successes were incomprehensible to the very men who employed it, because they were due to sudden inspirations of genius.

Seeing all this, we believe that there is nothing that the will of a people cannot accomplish when it resolves to sacrifice everything for liberty and native land.—Emilio Castelar in Forum.