NAPOLEON AT MADRID

From December 4 to December 22 the Emperor remained fixed in the neighbourhood of Madrid. He did not settle down in the royal palace, and it would seem that he made no more than one or two hurried visits of inspection to the city[526]. He established himself outside the gates, at Chamartin, a desolate and uncomfortable country house of the Duke of Infantado, and devoted himself to incessant desk-work[527]. It was here that he drew up his projects for the reorganization of the kingdom of Spain, and at the same time set himself to the task of constructing his plans of campaign against those parts of the Peninsula which still remained unsubdued. In seventeen days, uninterrupted by the cares of travel, Bonaparte could get through an enormous amount of business. His words and deeds at this period are well worth studying, for the light that they throw alike on his own character and on his conceptions of the state and the needs of Spain.

His first act was to annul the capitulation which he had granted to the inhabitants of Madrid. Having served its purpose in inducing the Junta to yield, it was promptly violated. ‘The Spaniards have failed to carry it out,’ he wrote, ‘and I consider[p. 474] the whole thing void[528].’ Looking at the preposterous clauses which he had allowed to be inserted in the document, there can be no doubt that this was his intention at the very moment when he ratified it. It was a small thing that he should break engagements, such as those in which he had promised not to quarter troops in the monasteries (Article 7), or to maintain all existing officials in their places (Article 2). But having guaranteed security for their life and property, freedom from arrest, and free exit at their pleasure, to such persons as chose to remain behind in the city, it was shameless to commence his proceedings with a proscription and a long series of arrests. The list of persons declared traitors and condemned to loss of life and goods was not very long: only ten persons were named, and seven of these were absent from Madrid. But the three others, the Prince of Castelfranco, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, and the Count of Altamira, were seized and dispatched into France, sentenced to imprisonment for life.

The arrests were a much more serious matter. In flagrant contravention of the terms of surrender, Bonaparte put under lock and key all the members of the Council of the Inquisition on whom he could lay hands, irrespective of what their conduct had been during the reign of the Supreme Junta. He also declared all the superior officers of the army resident in Madrid, even retired veterans, to be prisoners of war, and liable to answer with their necks for the safety of the captives of Dupont’s corps. Among them was discovered an old French émigré, the Marquis de Saint-Simon, who had entered the service of Charles IV as far back as 1793, and had taken part in the last campaign. The Emperor refused to consider him as a Spaniard, declared that he was one of his own subjects, had him tried by court-martial, and condemned him to death. All this was to lead up to one of those odious comedies of magnanimity which Bonaparte sometimes practised for the benefit of the editor of the Moniteur. Saint-Simon’s daughter was admitted to the imperial presence to beg for her father’s life, and the master of the world deigned to com[p. 475]mute the punishment of the ‘traitor’ to imprisonment for life in the mountain-fortress of Joux[529]. This was a repetition of the Hatzfeldt affairs at Berlin, and Saint-Simon was treated even worse than the unfortunate Prussian nobleman of 1806. Truly the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel!

Among other persons who were arrested were Don Arias Mon, president of the Council of Castile, the Duke of Sotomayor, and about thirty other notables: some were ultimately sent away to France, others allowed to go free after swearing allegiance to Joseph Bonaparte.

All these measures were designed to strike terror into the hearts of the Spaniards. But at the same time the Emperor issued a series of decrees—in his own name and not in that of his brother, the titular king—which were intended to conciliate them by bestowing upon them certain tangible benefits. He knew that there existed the nucleus of a Liberal party in Spain, and hoped to draw it over to his side by introducing certain much-needed reforms in the administration of the country. With this object he removed the tiresome inter-provincial octroi duties, abolished all feudal dues and all rights of private jurisdiction, declared that all monopolies should be annulled, and forbade all assignments of public revenues to individuals. Such measures would have seemed excellent to many good Spaniards, if they had been introduced by a legitimate ruler: but coming from the hand of a foreign conqueror they were without effect. Moreover there was hardly a square mile of Spanish territory, outside Madrid and the other towns held by the French, where Napoleon’s writs could run. Every village which was unoccupied was passively or actively disobedient. The reforms, therefore, were but on paper. Another series of decrees, which appeared at the same time, were in themselves quite as justifiable as those which were concerned with administrative changes, but were certain to offend nine-tenths of the Spanish nation. They dealt with the Church and its ministers. The most important was one which declared (with perfect truth) that there were far too many monasteries and nunneries in Spain, and that it was necessary to cut them down to one-third of their existing number. The names of those which were destined to survive were published: to them the inmates of the remaining institutions were[p. 476] to be transferred, as vacancies arose. The suppressed convents were to become the property of the state. Part of their revenues was to be devoted to raising the salaries of the secular clergy, so that every parish priest should have an income of 2,400 reals (about ￡25). Monks or nuns who might choose to leave the monastic life were to be granted a small pension[530]. At the same time the Inquisition was abolished ‘as dangerous to the crown and to civil authority,’ and all its property confiscated. In Madrid there was seized 2,453,972 reals in hard cash—about ￡25,000; the smallness of the amount much surprised the French, who had vague ideas concerning the fabulous wealth of the institution[531].

The only results of these measures were that every Spaniard was confirmed in his belief that Napoleon was a concealed atheist and an irreconcilable enemy of all religion. Could anything else be expected of one who (in spite of his Concordats and Te Deums) was after all a child of the Revolution? The man who had persecuted the Pope in January, 1808, would naturally persecute the monks of Spain in December. As to the Inquisition, its fate inspired no rejoicing: it had been effete for many years: there was not a prisoner in any of its dungeons. Indeed it had enjoyed a feeble popularity of late, for having refused to lend itself as a tool to Godoy. The only result of Napoleon’s decree for its abolition was that it acquired (grotesque as the idea may seem) considerable credit in the eyes of the majority of the Spanish people, as one of the usurper’s victims. Never was work more wasted than that which the Emperor spent on his reforms of December, 1808. They actually tended to make old abuses popular with the masses, merely because he had attempted to remove them. As to the possibility of conciliating the comparatively small body of Liberals, he was equally in error: they agreed with the views of Jovellanos: reforms were necessary, but they must come from within, and not be imposed by force from without. They were Spaniards first and reformers afterwards. The only recruits whom Bonaparte succeeded in enrolling for his brother’s court were the purely selfish bureaucrats who would accept any government—who would serve Godoy, Ferdinand, Joseph, a red republic, or the Sultan of Turkey[p. 477] with equal equanimity, so long as they could keep their places or gain better ones.

The Emperor had a curious belief in the power of oaths and phrases over other men, though he was entirely free himself from any feebleness of the kind. He took considerable pains to get up a semblance of national acceptance of his brother’s authority, now that his second reign was about to begin. Joseph had appeared at Chamartin on December 2[532]: but he was not allowed to re-enter Madrid for many days. The Emperor told him to stay outside, at the royal palace of the Pardo, till things were ready for his reception. This was not at all to the mind of the King, who took his position seriously, and was deeply wounded at being ordered about in such an arbitrary fashion. He sent in a formal protest against the publication of the decrees of December 4: his own name, he complained, not that of his brother, ought to have appeared at the bottom of all these projects of reform. He had never coveted any crown, and least of all that of Spain: but having once accepted the position he could not consent to be relegated into a corner, while all the acts of sovereignty were being exercised by his brother. He was ready to resign his crown into the hands from which he had received it: but if he was not allowed to abdicate, he must be allowed to reign in the true sense of the word. It made him blush with shame before his subjects[533] when he saw them invited to obey laws which he had never seen, much less sanctioned. Napoleon refused to accept this abdication: he looked at matters from an entirely different point of view. He was master of Spain, as he considered, not merely by the cession made at Bayonne, but by the new title of conquest. He intended to restore Joseph to the throne, but till he had done so he saw no reason why he should not exercise all the rights of sovereignty at Madrid. If, in a moment of pique, he said that his brother might exchange the crown of Spain for that of Italy, or for the position of lieutenant of the Emperor in France during his own numerous absences, there is clear evidence that these were empty words. His dispatches show not the least sign of any project for[p. 478] the future of Spain other than the restoration of Joseph; and while the latter was at the Pardo he was continually receiving notes concerning the reorganization of the Spanish army and finances, which presuppose his confirmation on the throne within the next few days[534].

It would seem that Napoleon’s real object in keeping his brother off the scene, and acting as if he intended to annex Spain to France as a vassal province, was merely to frighten the inhabitants of Madrid into a proper frame of mind. If they remained recalcitrant, and refused to come before him with petitions for pardon, they were to be threatened with a purely French military government. If they bowed the knee, they should have back King Joseph and the mockery of liberal and constitutional monarchy which he represented. So much we gather from the Emperor’s celebrated proclamation of December 7, and his allocution to the Corregidor and magistrates of Madrid two days later. Both of these addresses are in the true Napoleonesque vein. In the first we read that if the people of Spain prefer ‘the poisons which the English have ministered to them’ to the wholesome régime introduced from France, they shall be treated as a conquered province, and Joseph shall be removed to another throne. ‘I will place the crown of Spain on my own brow, and I will make it respected by evil-doers, for God has given me the strength and the force of will necessary to surmount all obstacles.’ In the second, which is written in a mood of less rigour, the inhabitants of Madrid are told that nothing could be easier than to cut up Spain into provinces, each governed by a separate viceroy. But if the clergy, nobles, merchants, and magistrates of the capital will swear a solemn oath upon the Blessed Sacrament to be true and loyal for the future to King Joseph, he shall be restored to them and the Emperor will make over to him all his rights of conquest. We[p. 479] cannot stop to linger over the other details of these addresses: one of the most astounding statements in them is that the quarrel between King Charles and King Ferdinand had been hatched by the English ministry[535], and that the Duke of Infantado, acting as their tool, was plotting to make Spain England’s vassal, ‘an insensate project which would have made blood run in torrents’! But this mattered little, as within a few weeks every English soldier would have been cast out of the Peninsula, and Lisbon no less than Saragossa, Valencia, and Seville would be flying the French flag[536].

In accordance with the Emperor’s command, the notables of Madrid, civil and ecclesiastical, were compelled to go through the ceremony of swearing allegiance to King Joseph on the Holy Sacrament, which was exposed for several days in every church for this purpose. Apparently a very large number of persons were induced, by terror or despair, to give in their formal submission to the intrusive King. Three pages of the Madrid Gazette for December 15 are filled with the names of the deputies of the ten quarters and sixty-four barrios of the city, who joined in the formal petition for the restorati............