TWO:Another council was immediately summoned to determine on the choice of a new Empress. All had been arranged before between the House of Austria and Napoleon, and the cue was given to the council to suggest accordingly. Eugene Beauharnais was again strangely appointed to propose to Prince Schwarzenberg for the hand of the archduchess, and, having his instructions, his proposal was accepted, and the whole of this formality was concluded in four-and-twenty hours. Josephine set out for her new estate in Navarre, and Marshal Berthier was appointed to act as proxy for his master in the espousals of the bride at Vienna. There were difficulties in the case which, strictly Catholic as the Hapsburg family is, it is surprising that they could be so easily got over, and which show how much that Imperial family was under the control of "the Upstart," as they familiarly styled him amongst themselves. The Pope had been too grievously insulted and persecuted by Buonaparte for it to be possible for him to pronounce the former marriage invalid; had it not been also contrary to the canons of the Church to abrogate marriage, which it regards as an entirely sacred and indissoluble ceremony. To remove this difficulty, it was stated to the Austrian family that Buonaparte's marriage with Josephine had been merely a revolutionary marriage before a magistrate, and therefore no marriage at all��the fact being originally true, but it had ceased to be so some days previous to Buonaparte's coronation, when, to remove the Pope's objection, they had been privately married by Buonaparte's uncle, Cardinal Fesch. The wedding took place at Vienna, on the 11th of March, 1810, and a few days afterwards the young Empress set out for France, accompanied by the Queen of Naples. Buonaparte, who maintained the strictest etiquette at his Court, had had all the ceremonies which were to attend his marriage in Paris arranged with the most minute exactness. He then set out himself to meet his Austrian bride, very much in the manner that he had gone to meet the Pope. Near Soissons��riding alone, and in an ordinary dress��Buonaparte met the carriage of his new wife, got in, and went on with her to Soissons and thence to the old chateau of Compi��gne.Towards the end of May Wellesley commenced his march over the Spanish frontiers; his force being about twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry. He fell in with the old Spanish general, Cuesta, at Oropesa, on the 20th of July, who was at the head of thirty thousand men, but miserably equipped, discouraged by repeated defeats, and nearly famished. Sir Arthur was woefully disappointed by this first view of a Spanish army in the field, and here, indeed, all his difficulties began. The general was a regular Spanish hidalgo��proud, ignorant, and pig-headed. He received Wellesley with immense stiffness and ceremony, as if somebody immeasurably his inferior; and though he knew no English, nor Sir Arthur any Spanish, he would not condescend to speak French with him. His army collected supplies from all the country round; and though the British were come to fight for them, the Spaniards expected them to provide for themselves, and there was the greatest difficulty in inducing the people to sell the British anything except for fabulous prices. Still worse, Sir Arthur found it impossible to get Cuesta to co-operate in anything. He fancied that he knew a great deal more about military affairs than the "Sepoy general," as Wellesley was termed, and that he ought to direct in everything, though he had done nothing but get well beaten on every occasion. And yet, if we take a glance at the French forces now in Spain, against whom they had to make head, the utmost harmony and co-operation was necessary.
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