Relations of Napoleon with Spain--Treaty of Fontainebleau--Junot
marches to Portugal--Flight of the Braganzas to Brazil--French
troops proceed into Spain--Dissensions in the Court--Both parties
appeal to Napoleon--Murat occupies Madrid--Charles and Ferdinand
abdicate at Bayonne--Joseph Buonaparte crowned King of Spain.
After the ratification of the treaty of Tilsit, Napoleon, returning as
we have seen to Paris, devoted all his energies to the perfect
establishment of "the continental system." Something has already been
said as to the difficulties which this attempt involved: in truth it was
a contest between the despotic will of Buonaparte, and the interests and
habits, not only of every sovereign in his alliance, but of every
private individual on the continent; and it was therefore actually
impossible that the imperial policy should not be baffled. The Russian
government was never, probably, friendly to a system which, from the
nature of the national produce and resources, must, if persisted in for
any considerable time, have inflicted irreparable injury on the finances
of the landholders, reduced the public establishments, and sunk the
effective power of the state. In that quarter, therefore, Napoleon soon
found that, notwithstanding all the professions of personal devotion
which the young Czar continued, perhaps sincerely, to make, his
favourite scheme was systematically violated: but the distance and
strength of Russia prevented him from, for the present, pushing his
complaints to extremity. The Spanish peninsula lay nearer him, and the
vast extent to which the prohibited manufactures and colonial produce of
England found their way into every district of that country, and
especially of Portugal, and thence through the hands of whole legions of
audacious smugglers, into France itself, ere long fixed his attention
and resentment. In truth, a proclamation, issued at Madrid shortly
before the battle of Jena, and suddenly recalled on the intelligence of
that great victory, had prepared the Emperor to regard with keen
suspicion the conduct of the Spanish Court, and to trace every
violation of his system to its deliberate and hostile connivance.
The court presented in itself the lively image of a divided and degraded
nation. The King, old and almost incredibly imbecile, was ruled
absolutely by his Queen, a woman audaciously unprincipled, whose strong
and wicked passions again were entirely under the influence of Manuel
Godoy, "Prince of the Peace," raised, by her guilty love, from the
station of a private guardsman, to precedence above all the grandees of
Spain, a matrimonial connection with the royal house, and the supreme
conduct of affairs. She, her paramour, and the degraded King, were held
in contempt and hatred by a powerful party, at the head of whom were the
Canon Escoiquiz, the Duke del Infantado, and Ferdinand, Prince of
Asturias, heir of the throne. The scenes of dissension which filled the
palace and court were scandalous beyond all contemporary example: and,
the strength of the two parties vibrating in the scale, according as
corrupt calculators looked to the extent of Godoy's present power, or to
the probability of Ferdinand's accession, the eyes of both were turned
to the hazardous facility of striking a balance by calling in support
from the Tuileries. Napoleon, on his part, regarding the rival factions
with equal scorn, flattered himself that, in their common fears and
baseness, he should find the means of ultimately reducing the whole
Peninsula to complete submission under his own yoke.
The secret history of the intrigues of 1807, between the French Court
and the rival parties in Spain, has not yet been clearly exposed; nor is
it likely to be so while most of the chief agents survive. According to
Napoleon the first proposal for conquering Portugal by the united arms
of France and Spain, and dividing that monarchy into three separate
prizes, of which one should fall to the disposition of France, a second
to the Spanish King, and a third reward the personal exertions of Godoy,
came not from him, but from the Spanish minister. It was unlikely that
Napoleon should have given any other account of the matter. The
suggestion has been attributed, by every Spanish authority, to the
Emperor; and it is difficult to doubt that such was the fact. The
treaty, in which the unprincipled design took complete form, was
ratified at Fontainebleau on the 29th October, 1807, and accompanied by
a convention, which provided for the immediate invasion of Portugal by
a force of 28,000 French soldiers, under the orders of Junot, and of
27,000 Spaniards; while a reserve of 40,000 French troops were to be
assembled at Bayonne, ready to take the field by the end of November, in
case England should land an army for the defence of Portugal, or the
people of that devoted country presume to meet Junot by a national
insurrection.
Junot forthwith commenced his march through Spain, where the French
soldiery were received everywhere with coldness and suspicion, but
nowhere by any hostile movement of the people. He would have halted at
Salamanca to organise his army, which consisted mostly of young
conscripts, but Napoleon's policy outmarched his General's schemes, and
the troops were, in consequence of a peremptory order from Paris, poured
into Portugal in the latter part of November. Godoy's contingent of
Spaniards appeared there also, and placed themselves under Junot's
command. Their numbers overawed the population, and they advanced,
unopposed, towards the capital--Junot's most eager desire being to
secure the persons of the Prince Regent and the royal family. The feeble
government, meantime, having made, one by one, every degrading
submission which France dictated, having expelled the British factory
and the British minister, confiscated all English property, and shut the
ports against all English vessels, became convinced at length that no
measures of subserviency could avert the doom which Napoleon had
fulminated. A _Moniteur_, proclaiming that "the House of Braganza had
ceased to reign," reached Lisbon. The Prince Regent re-opened his
communication with the English admiral off the Tagus (Sir Sydney Smith)
and the lately expelled ambassador (Lord Strangford), and being assured
of their protection, embarked on the 27th of November, and sailed for
the Brazils on the 29th, only a few hours before Junot made his
appearance at the gates of Lisbon. The disgust with which the Portuguese
people regarded his flight, the cowardly termination, as they might not
unnaturally regard it, of a long course of meanness, was eminently
useful to the invader. With the exception of one trivial insurrection,
when the insolent conqueror took down the Portuguese arms and set up
those of Napoleon in their place, several months passed in apparent
tranquillity; and these were skilfully employed by the General in
perfecting the discipline of his conscripts, improving the
fortifications of the coast, and making such a disposal of his force as
might best guard the country from any military demonstration on the part
of England.
Napoleon thus saw Portugal in his grasp: but that he had all along
considered as a point of minor importance, and he had accordingly
availed himself of the utmost concessions of the treaty of
Fontainebleau, without waiting for any insurrection of the Portuguese,
or English debarkation on their territory. His army of reserve, in
number far exceeding the 40,000 men named in the treaty, had already
passed the Pyrenees, in two bodies, under Dupont and Moncey, and were
advancing slowly, but steadily, into the heart of Spain. Nay, without
even the pretext of being mentioned in the treaty, another French army
of 12,000, under Duhesme, had penetrated through the eastern Pyrenees,
and being received as friends among the unsuspecting garrisons, obtained
possession of Barcelona, Pampeluna, and St. Sebastian, and the other
fortified places in the north of Spain, by a succession of treacherous
artifices, to which the history of civilised nations presents no
parallel. The armies then pushed forwards, and the chief roads leading
from the French frontiers to Madrid were entirely in their possession.
It seems impossible that such daring movements should not have awakened
the darkest suspicions at Madrid; yet the royal family, overlooking the
common danger about to overwhelm them and their country, continued,
during three eventful months, to waste what energies they possessed in
petty conspiracies, domestic broils, and, incredible as the tale will
hereafter appear, in the meanest diplomatic intrigues with the court of
France. The Prince of Asturias solicited the honour of a wife from the
House of Napoleon. The old King, or rather Godoy, invoked anew the
assistance of the Emperor against the treasonable, nay (for to such
extremities went their mutual accusations), the parricidal plots of the
heir-apparent. Buonaparte listened to both parties, vouchsafed no direct
answer to either, and continued to direct the onward movement of those
stern arbiters, who were ere long to decide the question. A sudden panic
at length seized the King or his minister, and the court, then at
Aranjuez, prepared to retire to Seville, and, sailing from thence to
America, seek safety, after the example of the House of Braganza, in the
work of whose European ruin they had so lately been accomplices. The
servants of the Prince of Asturias, on perceiving the preparations for
this flight, commenced a tumult, in which the populace of Aranjuez
readily joined, and which was only pacified (for the moment) by a royal
declaration that no flight was contemplated. On the 18th of March, 1808,
the day following, a scene of like violence took place in the capital
itself. The house of Godoy in Madrid was sacked. The favourite himself
was assaulted at Aranjuez, on the 19th; with great difficulty saved his
life by the intervention of the royal guards; and was placed under
arrest. Terrified by what he saw at Aranjuez, and heard from Madrid,
Charles IV. abdicated the throne; and on the 20th, Ferdinand, his son,
was proclaimed King of Madrid, amidst a tumult of popular applause.
Murat, Grand Duke of Berg, had before this assumed the chief command of
all the French troops in Spain; and hearing of the extremities to which
the court factions had gone, he now moved rapidly on Madrid, surrounded
that capital with 30,000 men, and took possession of it in person, at
the head of 10,000 more, on the 23rd of March. Charles IV. meantime
despatched messengers both to Napoleon and Murat, asserting that his
abdication had been involuntary, and invoking their assistance against
his son. Ferdinand, entering Madrid on the 24th, found the French
general in possession of the capital, and in vain claimed his
recognition as king. Murat accepted the sword of Francis I., which,
amidst other adulations, Ferdinand offered to him; but pertinaciously
declined taking any part in the decision of the great question, which
demanded, as he said, the fiat of Napoleon.
The Emperor heard with much regret of the precipitancy with which his
lieutenant had occupied Madrid--for his clear mind had foreseen ere now
the imminent hazard of trampling too rudely on the jealous pride of the
Spaniards; and the events of the 17th, 18th, and 19th March were well
qualified to confirm his impression, that although all sense of dignity
and decorum might be extinguished in the court, the ancient elements of
national honour still remained, ready to be called into action, among
the body of the people. He, therefore, sent Savary, in whose practised
cunning and duplicity he hoped to find a remedy for the military
rashness of Murat, to assume the chief direction of affairs at Madrid;
and the rumour was actively spread, that the Emperor was about to appear
there in person without delay.
Madrid occupied and begirt by forty thousand armed strangers, his title
unrecognised by Murat, his weak understanding and tumultuous passions
worked upon incessantly by the malicious craft of Savary, Ferdinand was
at length persuaded, that his best chance of securing the aid and
protection of Napoleon lay in advancing to meet him on his way to the
capital, and striving to gain his ear before the emissaries of Godoy
should be able to fill it with their reclamations. Savary eagerly
offered to accompany him on this fatal journey, which began on the 10th
of April. The infatuated Ferdinand had been taught to believe that he
should find Buonaparte at Burgos; not meeting him there, he was tempted
to pursue his journey as far as Vittoria: and from thence, in spite of
the populace, who, more sagacious than their prince, cut the traces of
his carriage, he was, by a repetition of the same treacherous arguments,
induced to proceed stage by stage, and at length to pass the frontier
and present himself at Bayonne, where the arbiter of his fate lay
anxiously expecting this consummation of his almost incredible folly. He
arrived there on the 20th of April--was received by Napoleon with
courtesy, entertained at dinner at the imperial table, and the same
evening informed by Savary that his doom was sealed--that the Bourbon
dynasty had ceased to reign in Spain, and that his personal safety must
depend on the readiness with which he should resign all his pretensions
into the hands of Buonaparte.
He, meanwhile, as soon as he was aware that Ferdinand had actually set
out from Madrid, had ordered Murat to find the means of causing the old
King, the Queen, and Godoy to repair also to Bayonne; nor does it appear
that his lieutenant had any difficulty in persuading these personages
that such was the course of conduct most in accordance with their
interests. They reached Bayonne on the 4th of May, and Napoleon,
confronting the parents and the son on the 5th, witnessed a scene in
which the profligate rancour of their domestic feuds reached extremities
hardly to have been contemplated by the wildest imagination. The
flagitious Queen did not, it is said and believed, hesitate to signify
to her son that the King was not his father--and this in the presence of
that King and of Napoleon. Could crime justify crime--could the fiendish
lusts and hatreds of a degenerate race offer any excuse for the
deliberate guilt of a masculine genius, the conduct of this abject court
might have apologised for the policy which it perhaps tempted the
pampered ambition of Napoleon to commence, and which it now encouraged
him to consummate by an act of suicidal violence.
Charles IV. resigned the Crown of Spain for himself and his heirs,
accepting in return from the hands of Napoleon a safe retreat in Italy
and a large pension. Godoy, who had entered into the fatal negotiation
of Fontainebleau, with the hope and the promise of an independent
sovereignty carved out of the Portuguese dominions, was pensioned off in
like manner, and ordered to partake the Italian exile of his patrons. A
few days afterwards, Ferdinand VII., being desired to choose at length
between compliance and death, followed the example of his father, and
executed a similar act of resignation. Napoleon congratulated himself on
having added Spain and the Indies to his empire, without any cost either
of blood or of treasure; and the French people, dazzled by the apparent
splendour of the acquisition, overlooked, if there be any faith in
public addresses and festivals, the enormous guilt by which it had been
achieved. But ere the ink with which the Spanish Bourbons signed away
their birthright was dry, there came tidings to Bayonne which might well
disturb the proud day-dreams of the spoliator, and the confidence of his
worshippers.
Not that Napoleon had failed to measure from the beginning the mighty
dangers which surrounded his audacious design. He had been warned of
them in the strongest manner by Talleyrand, and even by Fouche; nay, he
had himself written to rebuke the headlong haste of Murat in occupying
the Spanish capital--to urge on him the necessity of conciliating the
people, by preserving the show of respect for their national authorities
and institutions--to represent the imminent hazard of permitting the
Duke del Infantado to strengthen and extend his party in Madrid--and
concluding with those ominous words: _Remember, if war breaks out, all
is lost_.
Ferdinand, before he left Madrid, invested a council of regency with the
sovereign power, his uncle, Don Antonio, being president, and Murat one
of the members. Murat's assumption of the authority thus conferred, the
departure of Ferdinand, the liberation and departure of the detested
Godoy, the flight of the old King--these occurrences produced their
natural effects on the popular mind. A dark suspicion that France
meditated the destruction of the national independence, began to spread;
and, on the 2nd of May, when it transpired that preparations were making
for the journey of Don Antonio also, the general rage at last burst out.
A crowd collected round the carriage meant, as they concluded, to convey
the last of the royal family out of Spain; the traces were cut; the
imprecations against the French were furious. Colonel La Grange, Murat's
aide-de-camp, happening to appear on the spot, was cruelly maltreated.
In a moment the whole capital was in an uproar: the French soldiery were
assaulted everywhere--about 700 were slain. The mob attacked the
hospital--the sick and their attendants rushed out and defended it. The
French cavalry, hearing the tumult, entered the city by the gate of
Alcala--a column of 3000 infantry from the other side by the street
Ancha de Bernardo. Some Spanish officers headed the mob, and fired on
the soldiery in the streets of Maravelles: a bloody massacre ensued:
many hundreds were made prisoners: the troops, sweeping the streets from
end to end, released their comrades; and, to all appearance,
tranquillity was restored ere nightfall. During the darkness, however,
the peasantry flocked in armed from the neighbouring country: and, being
met at the gates by the irritated soldiery, not a few more were killed,
wounded, and made prisoners. Murat ordered all the prisoners to be tried
by a military commission, which doomed them to instant death. It is
disputed whether the more deliberate guilt of carrying the sentence into
execution lies with the commander-in-chief himself, or with Grouchy; it
is certain that a considerable number of Spaniards--the English
authority most friendly to the French cause admits
_ninety-five_[58]--were butchered in cold blood on the 3rd of May.
This commotion had been preceded by a brief insurrection, easily
suppressed and not unlikely to be soon forgotten, on the 23rd of April,
at Toledo. The events in the capital were of a more decisive character,
and the amount of the bloodshed, in itself great, was much exaggerated
in the reports which flew, like wildfire, throughout the Peninsula--for
the French were as eager to overawe the provincial Spaniards, by
conveying an overcharged impression of the consequences of resistance,
as their enemies in Madrid were to rouse the general indignation, by
heightened details of the ferocity of the invaders and the sternness of
their own devotion. In almost every town of Spain, and almost
simultaneously, the flame of patriotic resentment broke out in the
terrible form of assassination. The French residents were slaughtered
without mercy: the supposed partisans of Napoleon and Godoy (not a few
men of worth being causelessly confounded in their fate) were sacrificed
in the first tumult of popular rage. At Cadiz, Seville, Carthagena,
above all in Valencia, the streets ran red with blood. The dark and
vindictive temper of the Spaniards covered the land with scenes, on the
details of which it is shocking to dwell. The French soldiery, hemmed
in, insulted, and whenever they could be found separately,
sacrificed--often with every circumstance of savage torture--retorted by
equal barbarity whenever they had the means. Popular bodies (juntas)
assumed the conduct of affairs in most of the cities and provinces,
renounced the yoke of France, reproclaimed Ferdinand king, and at the
maritime stations of chief importance entered into communication with
the English fleets, from whom they failed not to receive pecuniary
supplies, and every encouragement to proceed in their measures. Deputies
were sent to England without delay; and welcomed there with the utmost
enthusiasm of sympathy and admiration. England could both speak and act
openly. Throughout the whole of the enslaved continent the news of the
Spanish insurrection was brooded over with a sullen joy.
Napoleon received the intelligence with alarm; but he had already gone
too far to retract without disturbing the magical influence of his
reputation. He, moreover, was willing to flatter himself that the lower
population of Spain alone took an active part in these transactions;
that the nobility, whose degradation he could hardly over-estimate,
would abide by his voice; in a word, that with 80,000 troops in Spain,
besides Junot's army in Portugal, he possessed the means of suppressing
the tumult after the first effervescence should have escaped. He
proceeded, therefore, to act precisely as if no insurrection had
occurred. Tranquillity being re-established in Madrid, the Council of
Castile were convoked, and commanded to elect a new sovereign: their
choice had of course been settled beforehand: it fell on Joseph
Buonaparte, King of Naples; and ere it was announced, that personage was
already on his way to Bayonne. Ninety-five _Notables_ of Spain met him
in that town; and swore fealty to him and a new Constitution, the
manufacture of course of Napoleon. Joseph, on entering Spain, was met by
unequivocal symptoms of scorn and hatred:--nay, one great battle had
already been fought between the French and the patriots:--but, the main
road being strongly occupied throughout with his brother's troops, he
reached Madrid in safety.
Lucien Buonaparte, it is understood, received the first offer of this
crown; but he did not envy the condition of his brother's royal vassals,
and declined the dangerous honour. Murat had expected it, and much
resented his disappointment; but Napoleon did not consider him as
possessed of the requisite prudence, and he was forced to accept the
succession to the vacant throne of Naples.
Joseph had become not unpopular in Naples, and being a peaceful man,
would gladly have remained in that humbler kingdom; but Napoleon no more
consulted the private wishes of his subaltern princes on such occasions,
than he did those of his generals in the arrangements of a campaign.
On the 24th of July (says Colonel Napier), "Joseph was proclaimed King
of Spain and the Indies, with all the solemnities usual upon such
occasions; not hesitating to declare himself the enemy of eleven
millions of people, the object of a whole nation's hatred; calling, with
a strange accent, from the midst of foreign bands, upon that fierce and
haughty race to accept of a constitution which they did not understand,
and which few of them had even heard of; his only hope of success
resting on the strength of his brother's arms; his claims on the consent
of an imbecile monarch and the weakness of a few pusillanimous nobles,
in contempt of the rights of millions now arming to oppose him."
[Footnote 58: Colonel Napier, p. 25.]