CHAP. II.] DESPERATE CONDITION OF AFFAIRS.

253

middle of March. When Godoy was importuned for instructions by dismayed commandants, he replied that he did not see how resistance was possible. Next, the monasteries were taken for barracks, and the monks turned out to shift for themselves. Wagon-loads of biscuits, baked at Bayonne and other French towns on the frontier, were brought down, and laid up in store; and, as a decisive act, the Spanish magistracy in the towns north of the Ebro were displaced, to make way for French officials. Without a word of explanation, or the firing of a single shot, the whole of the north of Spain had become French before April, 1808; and the Spanish navy had been removed to the harbor of Toulon. Portugal had become French before the winter was over. The symbols of Portuguese nationality had been effaced; and the French arms and authorities were everywhere: in the provinces that had been promised to Godoy, no less than in Lisbon. In rage and dismay, Godoy heard of Junot's having assumed the entire government of the whole of Portugal, in the name of Napoleon. The inhabitants of Lisbon were groaning under the enormous exactions of the French General; and in the country, the despairing peasantry refused to sow their fields; in the courts, the old laws were gone, and the Code Napoleon was set up; and many of the native soldiery made themselves free of all law, becoming robbers in the mountains. Such was the condition of Godoy's promised territory. He sat watching, trembling and wrathful, and doing nothing. The keen-eyed man who sat in the Foreign Office in London was watching too, but not idly nor in fear. He was preparing to invite the British nation to make these outraged countries a final battle-field for the liberties of Europe.

When the Queen of Etruria came to Madrid, having given up her dominions without receiving, or having any chance of receiving, the promised equivalent of Portuguese territory, the Court saw that their affairs were indeed desperate. The fact had come out, in conversation in Paris, that Ferdinand's title was to be, no longer Prince of Asturias, but Prince of the Indies. More troops. were pouring over the Bidassoa; and at last, the Imperial Guard itself. Napoleon sent to Charles a present of twelve fine horses, and was coming himself to Madrid to talk over the affairs of the Peninsula. Godoy persuaded the King and Queen to go down to Seville, to sail for their American dominions, as the Braganza family had done. The Prince could not determine whether to go or stay. The secret got out; the people were in a ferment at the prospect of being so left; the French ambassador thought it a great pity that such a step should be taken. On the morning of the day of departure, the Prince was heard to say he would not go; and the citizens resolved that he should not be

254

Tumult at

Madrid.

ABDICATION OF CHARLES IV.

[Book II.

carried away by force. When the carriages drew up in the evening, the people gathered round them, and cut the traces, and declared that nobody should go. They hunted Godoy for his life; and he escaped only by hiding himself under some mats in a garret; but his wife, to whom he was known to be outrageously unfaithful, was protected, and safely lodged in the palace. This was the beginning of a revolution which ended, in three days, in the abdication of Charles IV. in favor of his son. The King had first disgraced Godoy; but this was not enough. The unhappy man had fallen after all into the hands of the populace, and barely escaped with his life, on the arrival of the Guards; and the King and Queen made no secret of their concern going to the prison to see him. Ferdinand was the only one who could control the people; and to him the royal power was transferred, on the 19th of March. Thus did Ferdinand VII. attain the crown, not without suspicion on many hands of having been at the bottom of the insurrection which intercepted the flight of his father as King. In his Decree, the King declared his abdication to be free and spontaneous; and he said so to the assembled diplomatic body at Court; but in a private letter to Napoleon, two days afterwards, and in a Protest drawn up the same day, he set forth that his resignation of the Crown was forced, and that the act must be considered null. "I have been forced to abdicate," he wrote to the Emperor, " and have no longer any hope but in the aid and support of my magnanimous ally, the Emperor Napoleon."

The Court

his coun

Napoleon was not slow to interfere. The news of the insurrection of the 17th reached him at Paris in the evening of the 26th; and the next morning, he offered the crown to his brother Louis. The next step was to get the whole royal family into his hands; and Ferdinand first, as the most difficult. By a series of lies and frauds, infamous alenticed to most beyond example in history, the new King was Bayonne. tempted and drawn on towards Bayonne sellors doubtful and remonstrating, the people alarmed and imploring, and at last proceeding so far as to cut the traces of the carriage. But he went, as under a sort of fatality; and the trap closed upon him as he entered Bayonne on the 21st of April. Murat was, meantime, the real ruler at Madrid. so contrived as to obtain possession of the person of Godoy; and he sent him, under guard, to Bayonne. Then, he obtained long conferences with Charles and the Queen, evidently wrought upon them to set up a claim to retract the act of abdication, as extorted by force, and persuaded them that they would regain the crown, (already given away to Louis Bonaparte,) by

He

CHAP II.]

APPEAL TO ENGLAND.

255

going to Napoleon to ask him for it. So they, too, set out for Bayonne, and arrived on the 30th of April, four days after Godoy. Napoleon now held the whole party at his disposal, and could proceed to work out his objects in Spain -as he believed, without opposition.

To the British nation and the world the great interest was to know what the mind of the people of Spain really The Spanish was, all this time; what its quality was; its hopes nation. and wishes; its courage and firmness; its capacity, in short, for freedom. This was, at that juncture, the greatest question, the most important speculation, in Europe. If the Spaniards could not help themselves, they could not be aided; if they did not desire freedom, it could not be given them. If they were worthy to enter upon a last struggle for nationality, leaders might presently appear on their native battle-ground; if not, the battleground ought not to be entered upon. This was the question which roused and occupied the mind of all England in the summer of 1808.

The first clear view we have of the Spanish people amidst these events, is when they were rising up, at the rumor of the royal flight to Seville, and gathering to prevent it. "Do you think," they cried, while mustering before the palace, " that we have no more spirit than the people of Lisbon?" When Ferdinand was hailed as King, all Madrid burst into a blaze of illumination, and the houses and streets were adorned with flowers and green boughs. The citizens fondly hoped that a new and a young King would lead them against the French; and recover their own country for their own occupation. They were dismayed when he persisted in going to Bayonne; and they became hopeless of aid from the royal family when it was made known over Europe that Ferdinand's parents insisted on the restitution of the sovereignty, his mother actually declaring to him, (according to the testimony of Ferdinand's own adherents,) in the presence of her husband and Napoleon, that his birth was illegitimate — that he was her son, but no son of the King's. After this, we see the Spaniards meeting in the different provinces, to appoint provincial governments for the popular guidance and defence; and these juntas sending delegates to England, where now lay the only remaining hope of betrayed and insulted Spain. The first petitioners who came over were from so near the Appeal to French strongholds, that their departure was an escape. England. They came from the coast of Asturias; and one of the two, an Asturian Viscount, put off in an open boat. Mr. Canning was eager to show them kindness; and the whole British people offered them a hearty welcome. They declared fine things about the spirit and aspirations of the mountaineers in the north; and

256

ENGLAND'S REPLY TO SPAIN.

1

[Book II. it seems that they either undertook to answer for all Spain, or that what they said of the north was extended, by the imagination and the hopes of their hearers, to the whole of the nation. Money, sympathy, and promises, were given them, in disregard of admonitions from cautious politicians to wait and see what men would be sent over as really national representatives. The Duke of Portland was, by this time, almost past stirring to do or decree anything; and enthusiasm carried all such prudence before it. The favors lavished on Asturians presently brought over Galicians and Biscayans, who were still only remote provincials, who could not be supposed capable of answering for the Spanish people. Some discretion in the English was required by the fact that we were still, absurd as it seemed, at war with Spain; and more, in the opinion of those who best knew the Spaniards, from their characters and training. By character they were disposed to be sanguine and very boastful; and by training, they were prone to depend on others, and to leave off acting themselves as soon as others began to move in their behalf. But it was not a moment when the English people could be cautious. England would no longer be without allies; England's a nation was at last found in Europe which would reply. spurn the rule of Napoleon, and such a nation must be supported with the whole power of Great Britain. It was decided by acclamation by an acclaim which put down the warning voices of a few Opposition leaders that the experiment should be tried of a conflict between an enthusiastic people and the armies of France, this enthusiastic people being sustained by money and other supplies from England; and, as soon as her forces could be got ready, by an army. Thus far, England had really not fought at all on land, since the renewal of the war. Her enemies had jeered, and her allies had complained, because her soldiers were to be found only on the sea, and lining her own shores. Now, they were to meet the French on the soil of Spain and Portugal, and Napoleon was in fact to cope with a new power. The large majority, in and out of the government, were too confident of the success of our arms; and a small number "despaired from the beginning," as we find Francis Jeffrey declaring that he did. He and other opposition men believed that in a short time not a British soldier would remain in the Peninsula, but as a prisoner. But they were regarded, naturally enough, as wanting in patriotic feeling and political faith; and aspiration seemed, for once, to have passed over from the liberal side to the conservative. Wilberforce and his friends were happy, anticipating the downfall of popery in Spain. Royalty and aristocracy were happy in the hope that 1 Malmesbury Diaries, iv. p. 415. 2 Memoirs of Horner, i. p. 439.

2

CHAP. II.]

UPRISING OF THE PEOPLE.

257

the ruin of the upstart oppressor of kings was near; and Canning and the people (for Canning was then virtually on the popular side) were happy in having found a whole nation of brethren rising up to offer an exchange of sympathies on the question. which absorbed the world. Amidst the joy and the hurry, the few who were mournful and quiet had other reason for their despair than dread of Napoleon. There was the weakness of the government at home; and this was indeed a fatal mischief.

Mr. Canning had the misfortune to be brought into close and constant relations with Lord Castlereagh, who touched nothing that he did not spoil. Lord Castlereagh was Secretary at War; and his incessant blunders and constitutional incapacity trammelled the Foreign Secretary, and through him the whole Cabinet, as far as our relations with the Peninsula were concerned. The Greys and Jeffreys, being aware of this state of things, were largely justified in their apprehensions. Week by week, month after month, during the rest of the year 1808, their justification seemed to be growing complete.

Renunciation of empire by the

It was about the 1st of May that the citizens of Madrid rose in insurrection on hearing that Ferdinand was in Napoleon's power; and that Ferdinand had made a conditional renunciation of the crown. In a few days, Bourbons "order reigned" at Madrid; and the Spanish princes of Spain. had renounced their whole empire, delivering their territories in Europe and elsewhere to Napoleon, and Ferdinand even writing to his successor under the title of "his most Catholic Majesty," to congratulate him on his accession to the Spanish throne. From that time, the family were prisoners in France; and from that time, as has since been observed, Napoleon began to experience his retribution. Within a month, all Spain was rising; and during the weeks of June, when the new constitution was in course of construction at Bayonne, under the direction of Napoleon, the inhabitants of Spain were everywhere cutting up the roads, refusing supplies to the French, and killing, in a spirit of desperate hatred, every Frenchman they could lay hands on. It was at this time that the enthusiasm in England was at its height. In July came a check. On the 14th, a regular Spanish army, which was sent to intercept the new King's journey from Bayonne to Madrid, was totally routed; and then again, in a few days more, fortune declared for the other side. The French General in Andalusia, Dupont, had conducted warfare so infamously, that the spirit of the people was roused to the utmost, and they would now, if ever, show what they could do. The eyes of all England were fixed on the points of the Sierra Morena, while the forces sent after Dupont by the Junta of Seville were marching thither. Dupont capitulated at Baylen;