THE FRENCH AGGRESSION IN SPAIN: ABDICATION OF CHARLES IV

The ‘Affair of the Escurial’ added some complications to the situation of affairs in Spain from Napoleon’s point of view. But there was nothing in it to make him alter the plans which he was at this moment carrying out: if the Bourbons were to be evicted from Spain, it made the task somewhat easier to find that the heir to the throne was now in deep disgrace. It would be possible to urge that by his parricidal plots he had forfeited any rights to the kingdom which he had hitherto possessed. In dealing with the politics of Spain he might for the future be disregarded, and there would be no one to take into consideration save the King and Queen and Godoy. All three were, as the Emperor knew, profoundly unpopular: if anything had been needed to make the nation more discontented, it was the late scandalous events at the Escurial. Nothing could be more convenient than that the favourite and his sovereigns should sink yet further into the abyss of unpopularity.

Napoleon therefore went steadily on with his plans for pushing more and more French troops into Spain, with the object of occupying all the main strategical points in the kingdom. The only doubtful point in his schemes is whether he ultimately proposed to seize on the persons of the royal family, or whether he intended by a series of threatening acts to scare them off to Mexico, as he had already scared the Prince of Portugal off to Rio de Janeiro. It is on the whole probable that he leaned to the latter plan. Every week the attitude of the French armies became more aggressive, and the language of their master more haughty and sinister[34]. The tone[p. 34] in which he had forbidden the court of Spain to allow any mention of himself or his ambassador to appear, during the trial of Prince Ferdinand and his fellow conspirators, had been menacing in the highest degree. After the occupation of Portugal no further allusion had been made to the project for proclaiming Godoy Prince of the Algarves. His name was never mentioned either to the Portuguese or to the officers of Junot. The favourite soon saw that he had been duped, but was too terrified to complain.

But it was the constant influx into Spain of French troops which contributed in the most serious way to frighten the Spanish court. Junot had entered Lisbon on Nov. 30, and the news that he had mastered the place without firing a shot had reached the Emperor early in December. But long before, on the twenty-second of November, the French reserves, hitherto known as the ‘Second Corps of Observation of the Gironde,’ which had been collected at Bayonne in November, crossed the Spanish frontier. They consisted of 25,000 men—nearly all recently levied conscripts—under General Dupont. The treaty of Fontainebleau had contained a clause providing that, if the English tried to defend Portugal by landing troops, Napoleon might send 40,000 men to aid Junot after giving due notice to the King of Spain. Instead of waiting to hear how the first corps had fared, or apprising his ally of his intention to dispatch Dupont’s corps across the frontier, the Emperor merely ordered it to cross the Bidassoa without sending any information to Madrid. The fact was that whether the preliminary condition stated in the treaty, an English descent on Portugal, did or did not take place, Bonaparte was determined to carry out his design. A month later the Spaniards heard, to their growing alarm, that yet a third army corps had come across the border: this was the ‘Corps of Observation of the Ocean Coast,’ which had been hastily organized under Marshal Moncey at Bordeaux, and pushed on to Bayonne when Dupont’s troops moved forward. It was 30,000 strong, but mainly composed of conscript battalions of the levy of 1808, which had been raised by anticipation in the previous spring, while the Russian war was still in progress. On the eighth of January this army began to pass the Pyrenees, occupying all the chief towns of Biscay and Navarre, while Dupont’s divisions pressed on and cantoned themselves in Burgos,[p. 35] Valladolid, and the other chief cities of Old Castile. They made no further advance towards Portugal, where Junot clearly did not require their aid.

The Spanish government was terror-stricken at the unexpected appearance of more than 60,000 French troops on the road to Madrid. If anything more was required to cause suspicion, it was the news that still more ‘corps of observation’ were being formed at Bordeaux and Poitiers. What legitimate reason could there possibly be for the direction of such masses of troops on Northern Spain? But any thought of resistance was far from the mind of Godoy and the King. Their first plan was to propitiate Napoleon by making the same request which had brought the Prince of the Asturias into such trouble in October—that the hand of a princess of the house of Bonaparte might be granted to the heir of the Spanish throne. The Emperor was making an ostentatious tour in Italy while his forces were overrunning the provinces of his ally—as if the occupation of Castile and Biscay were no affair of his. His most important act in November was to evict from Florence the ruling sovereign, the King of Etruria, and the Regent, his mother, thus annexing the last surviving Bourbon state save Spain to the French crown. He wrote polite but meaningless letters to Madrid, making no allusion to the boon asked by Charles IV. The fact was that Napoleon could now treat Ferdinand as ‘damaged goods’; he was, by his father’s own avowal, no more than a pardoned parricide, and it suited the policy of the Emperor to regard him as a convicted criminal who had played away his rights of succession. If Napoleon visited his brother Lucien at Mantua, it was not (as was thought at the time) with any real intention of persuading him to give his daughter to the craven suitor offered her[35], but in order to tempt her father to accept the crown of Portugal—even perhaps that of Spain. But Lucien, who always refused to fall in with Napoleon’s family policy, showed no gratitude for the offer of a thorny throne in the Iberian Peninsula, and not without reason, for one of the details of the bargain was to be that he should divorce a wife to whom he was fondly attached.

It was only after returning from Italy in January that the Emperor deigned to answer the King of Spain’s letter, now two months old,[p. 36] in precise terms. He did not object to the principle of the alliance, but doubted if he could give any daughter of his house to ‘a son dishonoured by his own father’s declaration.’ This reply was not very reassuring to Godoy and his master, and worse was to follow. In the end of January the Moniteur, which the Emperor always used as a means for ventilating schemes which were before long to take shape in fact, began a systematic course of abusing the Prince of the Peace as a bad minister and a false friend. More troops kept pouring across the Pyrenees without any ostensible reason, and now it was not only at the western passes that they began to appear, but also on the eastern roads which lead from Roussillon into Catalonia and Valencia. These provinces are so remote from Portugal that it was clear that the army which was collecting opposite them could not be destined for Lisbon. But on February 10, 1808, 14,000 men, half French, half Italians, under General Duhesme, began to drift into Catalonia and to work their way down towards its capital—Barcelona. A side-light on the meaning of this development was given by Izquierdo, Godoy’s agent at Paris, who now kept sending his master very disquieting reports. French ministers had begun to sound him as to the way in which Spain would take a proposal for the cession to France of Catalonia and part of Biscay, in return for Central Portugal. King Charles would probably be asked ere long to give up these ancient and loyal provinces, and to do so would mean the outbreak of a revolution all over Spain.

In the middle of February Napoleon finally threw off the mask, and frankly displayed himself as a robber in his ally’s abode. On the sixteenth of the month began that infamous seizure by surprise of the Spanish frontier fortresses, which would pass for the most odious act of the Emperor’s whole career, if the kidnapping at Bayonne were not to follow. The movement started at Pampeluna: French troops were quartered in the lower town, while a Spanish garrison held, as was natural, the citadel. One cold morning a large party of French soldiers congregated about the gate of the fortress, without arms, and pretended to be amusing themselves with snowballing, while waiting for a distribution of rations. At a given signal many of them, as if beaten in the mock contest, rushed in at the gate, pursued by the rest. The first men knocked down the unsuspecting sentinels, and seized the muskets of the guard stacked in the arms-racks of the guard-room.[p. 37] Then a company of grenadiers, who had been hidden in a neighbouring house, suddenly ran in at the gate, followed by a whole battalion which had been at drill a few hundred yards away. The Spanish garrison, taken utterly by surprise and unarmed, were hustled out of their quarters and turned into the town[36].

A high-spirited prince would have declared war at once, whatever the odds against him, on receiving such an insulting blow. But this was not to be expected from persons like Godoy and Charles IV. Accordingly they exposed themselves to the continuation of these odious tricks. On February 29 General Lecchi, the officer commanding the French troops which were passing through Barcelona, ordered a review of his division before, as he said, its approaching departure for the south. After some evolutions he marched it through the city, and past the gate of the citadel; when this point was reached, he suddenly bade the leading company wheel to the left and enter the fortress. Before the Spaniards understood what was happening, several thousand of their allies were inside the place, and by the evening the rightful owners, who carried their opposition no further than noisy protestations, had been evicted. A few days later the two remaining frontier fortresses of Spain, San Sebastian, at the Atlantic end of the Pyrenees, and Figueras, at the great pass along the Mediterranean coast, suffered the same fate: the former place was surrendered by its governor when threatened with an actual assault, which orders from Madrid forbade him to resist [March 5]. Figueras, on the other hand, was seized by a coup de main, similar to that at Pampeluna; 200 French soldiers, having obtained entrance within the walls on a futile pretext, suddenly seized the gates and admitted a whole regiment, which turned out the Spanish garrison [March 18][37]. It would be hard, if not impossible, to find in the whole of modern history any incident approaching, in cynical effrontery and mean cunning, to these first hostile acts of the French on the[p. 38] territory of their allies. The net result was to leave the two chief fortresses, on each of the main entries into Spain from France, completely in the power of the Emperor.

Godoy and his employers were driven into wild alarm by these acts of open hostility. The favourite, in his memoirs[38], tells us that he thought, for a moment, of responding by a declaration of war, but that the old king replied that Napoleon could not be intending treachery, because he had just sent him twelve fine coach-horses and several polite letters. In face of his master’s reluctance, he tells us that he temporized for some days more. The story is highly improbable: Charles had no will save Godoy’s, and would have done whatever he was told. It is much more likely that the reluctance to take a bold resolve was the favourite’s own. When the French troops still continued to draw nearer to Madrid, Godoy could only bethink himself of a plan for absconding. He proposed to the King and Queen that they should leave Madrid and take refuge in Seville, in order to place themselves as far as possible from the French armies. Behind this move was a scheme for a much longer voyage. It seems that he proposed that the court should follow the example of the Regent of Portugal, and fly to America. At Mexico or Buenos Ayres they would at least be safe from Bonaparte. To protect the first stage of the flight, the troops in Portugal were directed to slip away from Junot and mass in Estremadura. The garrison of Madrid was drawn to Aranjuez, the palace where the court lay in February and March, and was to act as its escort to Seville. It is certain that nothing would have suited Napoleon’s plans better than that Charles IV should abscond and leave his throne derelict: it would have given the maximum of advantage with the minimum of odium. It is possible that the Emperor was working precisely with the object of frightening Godoy into flight. If so his scheme was foiled, because he forgot that he had to deal not only with the contemptible court, but with the suspicious and revengeful Spanish nation. In March the people intervened, and their outbreak put quite a different face upon affairs.

Meanwhile the Emperor was launching a new figure upon the stage. On February 26 his brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, the new Grand-Duke of Berg, appeared at Bayonne with the title of ‘Lieutenant of the Emperor,’ and a commission to take command[p. 39] of all the French forces in Spain. On March 10 he crossed the Bidassoa and assumed possession of his post. Murat’s character is well known: it was not very complicated. He was a headstrong, unscrupulous soldier, with a genius for heading a cavalry charge on a large scale, and an unbounded ambition. He was at present meditating on thrones and kingdoms: Berg seemed a small thing to this son of a Gascon innkeeper, and ever since his brothers-in-law Joseph, Louis, and Jerome Bonaparte had become kings, he was determined to climb up to be their equal. It has frequently been asserted that Murat was at this moment dreaming of the Spanish crown: he was certainly aware that the Emperor was plotting against the Bourbons, and the military movements which he had been directed to carry out were sufficient in themselves to indicate more or less his brother-in-law’s intentions. Yet on the whole it is probable that he had not received more than half-confidences from his august relative. His dispatches are full of murmurs that he was being kept in the dark, and that he could not act with full confidence for want of explicit directions. Napoleon had certainly promised him promotion, if the Spanish affair came to a successful end: but it is probable that Murat understood that he was not to be rewarded with the crown of Charles IV. Perhaps Portugal, or Holland, or Naples (if one of the Emperor’s brothers should pass on to Madrid) was spoken of as his reward. Certainly there was enough at stake to make him eager to carry out whatever Bonaparte ordered. In his cheerful self-confidence he imagined himself quite capable of playing the part of a Machiavelli, and of edging the old king out of the country by threats and hints. But if grape-shot was required, he was equally ready to administer an unsparing dose. With a kingdom in view he could be utterly unscrupulous[39].

On March 13 Murat arrived at Burgos, and issued a strange proclamation bidding his army ‘treat the estimable Spanish nation as friends, for the Emperor sought only the good and happiness of Spain.’ The curious phrase could only suggest that unless he gave this warning, his troops would have treated their allies as enemies.[p. 40] The scandalous pillage committed by many regiments during February and March quite justified the suspicion.

The approach of Murat scared Godoy into immediate action, all the more because a new corps d’armée, more than 30,000 strong, under Marshal Bessières, was already commencing to cross the Pyrenees, bringing up the total of French troops in the Peninsula to more than 100,000 men. He ordered the departure of the King and his escort, the Madrid garrison, for Seville on March 18. This brought matters to a head: it was regarded as the commencement of the projected flight to America, of which rumours were already floating round the court and capital. A despotic government, which never takes the people into its confidence, must always expect to have its actions interpreted in the most unfavourable light. Except Godoy’s personal adherents, there was not a soul in Madrid who did not believe that the favourite was acting in collusion with Napoleon, and deliberately betraying his sovereign and his country. It was by his consent, they thought, that the French had crossed the Pyrenees, had seized Pampeluna and Barcelona, and were now marching on the capital. They were far from imagining that of all the persons in the game he was the greatest dupe, and that the recent developments of Napoleon’s policy had reduced him to despair. It was correct enough to attribute the present miserable situation of the realm to Godoy’s policy, but only because his servility to Bonaparte had tempted the latter to see how far he could go, and because his maladministration had brought the army so low that it was no longer capable of defending the fatherland. Men did well to be angry with the Prince of the Peace, but they should have cursed him as a timid, incompetent fool, not as a deliberate traitor. But upstarts who guide the policy of a great realm for their private profit must naturally expect to be misrepresented, and there can be no doubt that the Spaniards judged Godoy to be a willing helper in the ruin of his master and his country.

Aranjuez, ordinarily a quiet little place, was now crowded with the hangers-on of the court, the garrison of Madrid, and a throng of anxious and distraught inhabitants of the capital: some had come out to avoid the advancing French, some to learn the latest news of the King’s intentions, others with the deliberate intention of attacking the favourite. Among the latter were the few friends of the Prince of the Asturias, and a much greater number who[p. 41] sympathized with his unhappy lot and had not gauged his miserable disposition. It is probable that as things stood it was really the best move to send the King to Seville, or even to America, and to commence open resistance to the French when the royal person should be in safety. But the crowd could see nothing but deliberate treason in the proposal: they waited only for the confirmation of the news of the departure of the court before breaking out into violence.
Portrait illustration

DON MANUEL GODOY
PRINCE OF THE PEACE
AT THE AGE OF 25

On the night of the seventeenth of March Godoy was actually commencing the evacuation of Aranjuez, by sending off his most precious possession, the too-celebrated Donna Josepha Tudo, under cover of the dark. The party which was escorting her fell into the midst of a knot of midnight loiterers, who were watching the palace. There was a scuffle, a pistol was fired, and as if by a prearranged plan crowds poured out into the streets. The cry went round that Godoy was carrying off the King and Queen, and a general rush was made to his house. There were guards before it, but they refused to fire on the mob, of which no small proportion was composed of soldiers who had broken out of their barracks without leave. In a moment the doors were battered down and the assailants poured into the mansion, hunting for the favourite. They could not find him, and in their disappointment smashed all his works of art, and burnt his magnificent furniture. Then they flocked to the palace, in which they suspected that he had taken refuge, calling for his head. The King and Queen, in deadly terror, besought their ill-used son to save them, by propitiating the mob, who would listen to his voice if to no other. Then came the hour of Ferdinand’s triumph; stepping out on to the balcony, he announced to the crowd that the King was much displeased with the Prince of the Peace, and had determined to dismiss him from office. The throng at once dispersed with loud cheers.

Next morning, in fact, a royal decree was issued, declaring Godoy relieved of all his posts and duties and banished from the court. Without the favourite at their elbow Charles and his queen seemed perfectly helpless. The proclamation was received at first with satisfaction, but the people still hung about the palace and kept calling for the King, who had to come out several times and salute them. It began to look like a scene from the beginning of the French Revolution. There was already much talk in the crowd of the benefit that would ensue to Spain if the Prince of[p. 42] the Asturias, with whose sufferings every one had sympathized, were to be entrusted with some part in the governance of the realm. His partisans openly spoke of the abdication of the old king as a desirable possibility.

Next day the rioting commenced again, owing to the reappearance of Godoy. He had lain concealed for thirty-six hours beneath a heap of mats, in a hiding-place contrived under the rafters of his mansion; but hunger at last drove him out, and, when he thought that the coast was clear, he slipped down and tried to get away. In spite of his mantle and slouched hat he was recognized almost at once, and would have been pulled to pieces by the crowd if he had not been saved by a detachment of the royal guard, who carried him off a prisoner to the palace. The news that he was trapped brought thousands of rioters under the royal windows, shouting for his instant trial and execution. The imbecile King could not be convinced that he was himself safe, and the Queen, who usually displayed more courage, seemed paralysed by her fears for Godoy even more than for herself. This was the lucky hour of the Prince of the Asturias; urged on by his secret advisers, he suggested abdication to his father, promising that he would disperse the mob and save the favourite’s life. The silly old man accepted the proposal with alacrity, and drew up a short document of twelve lines, to the effect ‘that his many bodily infirmities made it hard for him to support any longer the heavy weight of the administration of the realm, and that he had decided to remove to some more temperate clime, there to enjoy the peace of private life. After serious deliberation he had resolved to abdicate in favour of his natural heir, and wished that Don Ferdinand should at once be received as king in all the provinces of the Spanish crown. That this free and spontaneous abdication should be immediately published was to be the duty of the Council of Castile.’