quarter.
General Dupont, commanding the southern army, found himself nearly
surrounded at Baylen, and solicited an armistice, followed by a
convention, under which, "above eighteen thousand French soldiers laid
down their arms before a raw army incapable of resisting half that
number, if the latter had been led by an able man".[42] The convention,
signed on July 20, stipulated for the transport of the French troops to
France, but its stipulations were shamefully violated; some were
massacred, others were sent to sicken in the hulks at Cadiz, and
comparatively few lived to rejoin their colours. Meanwhile a so-called
"assembly of notables," summoned to Bayonne, consisting of ninety-one
persons, all nominees of Napoleon, assumed to act for the whole nation,
had accepted the nomination of Joseph Bonaparte as king, and proceeded
to adopt a constitution. On July 20, the very day of the capitulation of
Baylen, Joseph entered Madrid, and on the 24th was proclaimed King of
Spain and the Indies. But the military prestige of the grand army
received a fatal blow in the catastrophe, of which the immediate effect
was the retirement of Joseph behind the Ebro, and the ultimate effects
were felt in the later history of the war.

At this moment almost the whole of Portugal was in possession of the
French. In November, 1807, under peremptory orders from Napoleon, Junot
with a French army and an auxiliary force of Spaniards, but without
money or transport, had marched with extraordinary rapidity across the
mountains to Alcantara in the valley of the Tagus. He thence pressed
forward to Lisbon, hoping to anticipate the embarkation of the royal
family for Brazil, which, however, took place just before his arrival
and almost under his eyes. With his army terribly reduced by the
hardships and privations of his forced march, he overawed Lisbon and
issued a proclamation that "the house of Braganza had ceased to reign".
A fortnight later a Spanish division occupied Oporto, and meanwhile
another Spanish division established itself in the south-east of
Portugal, but, as the French stragglers came in and reinforcements
approached, Junot felt himself strong enough to cast off all disguise;
he suppressed the council of regency, took the government into his own
hands, and levied a heavy war contribution. During the early months of
1808 he was employed in reorganising his own forces, and the resources
of Lisbon, where an auxiliary Russian fleet of nine s