Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume III

Meantime, to assist the intrigues of Murat, there was carried on a sort of under plot, the object of which was to disguise Napoleon's real intentions, and induce the counsellors of Ferdinand to conclude, that he did not mean to use his power over Spain, save for the attainment of some limited advantages, far short of engrossing the supreme authority, and destroying the independence of the kingdom. With this view, some illusory terms held out had been communicated by Duroc to the Spanish ambassador, Izquierdo, and of which Ferdinand's council had received information. These seemed to intimate, that Napoleon's exactions from Spain might be gratified by the cession of Navarre, and some part of her frontier on the north, in exchange for the whole of Portugal, which, according to Izquierdo's information, Napoleon was not unwilling to cede to Spain. Such an exchange, however objectionable on the ground of policy and morality, would have been regarded as a comparatively easy ransom, considering the disastrous state of Spain, and the character of him who had coiled around the defenceless kingdom the folds of his power.370

Under all the influences of hope and fear, conscious helplessness, and supreme dread of Napoleon, Ferdinand took his determination, and announced to his Council of State, [8th April,] his purpose of going as far as Burgos, to meet his faithful friend and mighty ally the Emperor. His absence, he said, would amount to a few days, and he created his uncle, Don Antonio, President, during that time, of the High Council of Government. An effort was made by Ferdinand, previous to his departure, to open a more friendly communication with his father; but the answer only bore that the King was retiring to rest, and could not be troubled.

On the 11th April, in an evil day, and an hour of woe, to use the language of the Spanish romancers, Ferdinand set out on his journey, accompanied by Savary, who eagerly solicited that honour, assuring him that they should meet Buonaparte at Burgos.371 But at Burgos there were no tidings of the French Emperor, and it was only when he had proceeded as far as Vittoria, that Ferdinand learned Napoleon had but then reached Bourdeaux, and was on his way to Bayonne. He halted, therefore, at Vittoria, where Savary left him, and went on to France, to render an account to his master to what extent his mission had succeeded.

Afraid to advance or to retire, yet feeling ridiculous in the situation where he was, Ferdinand's unpleasant moments spent at Vittoria were not much cheered by private intelligence brought him by Don Mariano Urquijo. This was a Spanish nobleman of considerable talent, who had penetrated the scheme of Napoleon, and came to inform the young King and his counsellors, that the intention of Napoleon was to possess himself of the royal person, depose the dynasty of the Bourbons, and name a member of his own family to reign in their stead.

Another Spaniard, Don Joseph Hervas, the brother-in-law of General Duroc, and the intimate friend of Savary, had acquired such strong suspicions of the plot, that his information corroborated that of Urquijo. The astounded sovereign, and his perplexed advisers, could but allege the unlikelihood, that a hero like Napoleon could meditate such treachery. "Men of extraordinary talents," replied Urquijo, "commit great crimes to attain great objects, and are not the less entitled heroes." He offered to go to Bayonne as Ferdinand's ambassador; and advised him even yet to make his escape and retire to some part of his dominions, where, free at least, if not powerful, he might treat with Napoleon on more equal terms.372

Ferdinand thought it too late to follow this wise counsel; and, instead of attempting an escape, he wrote a letter to Napoleon, [14th April,] appealing to all that he had done to show himself the devoted friend and ally of France, and endeavouring to propitiate his favour. An answer was instantly returned – [dated Bayonne, 16th April] – containing much that was alarming and ominous. In this the Emperor treated Ferdinand as Prince of Asturias, not King of Spain – censured his earliest measure of writing to himself without his father's knowledge, and, with what seemed a jealous apprehension for the rights of sovereigns, blamed him for availing himself of the arm of the people to shake his father's throne. He intimated, that he had taken the Prince of the Peace under his own protection; hinted that the Prince ought not to rip up the follies of his mother – nay, did not forbear the highly offensive insinuation, that, by exposing her faults, Ferdinand might occasion his own legitimacy to be called in question. Still he assured the Prince of his continued friendship, declared himself anxious to have some personal communication with him on the subject of the revolution of Aranjuez, and intimated, that if the resignation of Charles should appear to have been voluntary, he would no longer scruple to acknowledge King Ferdinand.373

Cevallos, before mentioned as one of Ferdinand's wisest counsellors, would fain have prevailed on him to turn back from Vittoria on receiving a letter of such doubtful tenor.374 Even the people of the town opposed themselves to the prosecution of his rash journey, and went so far as to cut the traces of his mules.375 Ferdinand, however, proceeded, entered France, and reached Bayonne; placing himself thus in that state of absolute dependence upon the pleasure of the French autocrat, which, as Napoleon had foretold to Murat, could not have had an existence at any spot within the Spanish territory. Ferdinand was now a hostage at least, perhaps a prisoner.

BAYONNE.

Buonaparte received the anxious Prince with flattering distinction,376 invited him to dinner, and treated him with the usual deference exchanged between sovereigns when they meet. But that very evening he sent Savary, by whose encouragement Ferdinand had been deluded to undertake this journey, to acquaint him that the Bourbon dynasty was to cease to reign in Spain, and that the Prince must prepare to relinquish to Napoleon all right over the territories of his ancestors.377

ESCOIQUIZ – CEVALLOS.

Buonaparte explained himself at length to the Canon Escoiquiz, as the person most likely to reconcile Ferdinand to the lot, which he was determined should be inevitable. The Bourbons, he said, were the mortal enemies of him and of his house; his policy could not permit them to reign in Spain. They were incapable of wise government; and he was determined that Spain should be wisely governed in future, her grievances redressed, and the alliance betwixt her and France placed on an unalterable footing. "King Charles," he said, "is ready to co-operate in such a revolution, by transferring to me his own rights. Let Ferdinand follow his father's wise example, and he shall have the crown of Etruria, and my niece in marriage. Otherwise, I will treat with King Charles exclusively, and all Ferdinand can expect is permission to return to Spain, when hostilities must ensue between us." Escoiquiz justified the insurrection at Aranjuez, and pleaded hard the cause of his former pupil. By protecting Ferdinand, he said, Napoleon might merit and gain the esteem and the affection of Spain; but by an attempt to subject the nation to a foreign yoke, he would lose their affections for ever. Buonaparte set these arguments at defiance. The nobles and higher classes would, he said, submit for security of their property; a few severe chastisements would keep the populace in order. But he declared he was determined on the execution of his plan, should it involve the lives of two hundred thousand men. "The new dynasty," replied Escoiquiz, "will in that case be placed on a volcano – an army of two hundred thousand men will be indispensable to command a country of discontented slaves." The canon was interrupted by Buonaparte, who observed that they could not agree upon their principles, and said he would on the morrow make known his irrevocable determination.

To do Napoleon justice, he at no time through this extraordinary discussion made the least attempt even to colour his selfish policy. "I am desirous," he said, "that the Bourbons should cease to reign, and that my own family should succeed them on the throne of Spain." He declared, that this was best both for Spain and France – above all, that he had the power as well as the will to accomplish his purpose. There was never a more unpalliated case of violent and arbitrary spoliation. He argued also with Escoiquiz with the most perfect good-humour, and pulled him familiarly by the ear as he disputed with him. "So then, canon," he said, "you will not enter into my views?" – "On the contrary," said Escoiquiz,378 "I wish I could induce your Majesty to adopt mine, though it were at the expense of my ears," which Napoleon was at the moment handling somewhat rudely.379

With Cevallos the Emperor entered into a more violent discussion, for Buonaparte was as choleric by temperament, as he was upon reflection and by policy calm and moderate. Upon hearing Cevallos, in a discussion with his minister Champagny, insist in a high tone upon the character of the Spaniards, and the feelings they were likely to entertain on the manner in which Ferdinand had been received, he gave loose to his native violence of disposition, accused Cevallos of being a traitor, because having served the old King, he was now a counsellor of his son, and at length concluded with the characteristic declaration – "I have a system of policy of my own. – You ought to adopt more liberal ideas – to be less susceptible on the point of honour, and to beware how you sacrifice the interests of Spain to a fantastic loyalty for the Bourbons."380

Cevallos being found as intractable as Escoiquiz, the conduct of the negotiation, if it could be called so on the part of Ferdinand, was intrusted to Don Pedro de Labrador. Labrador, however, insisted on knowing, as an indispensable preliminary, whether King Ferdinand were at liberty; and if so, why he was not restored to his own country? Champagny381 replied, that such return could scarce be permitted, till the Emperor and he came to an understanding. Cevallos, in his turn, presented a note, expressing on what terms Ferdinand had put himself in the power of Buonaparte, and declaring his master's intention of immediate departure. As a practical answer to this intimation, the guards on the King and his brother were doubled, and began to exercise some restraint over their persons. One of the Infants was even forcibly stopped by a gendarme. The man was punished; but the resentment and despair, shown by the Spaniards of the King's retinue, might have convinced Napoleon how intimately they connected the honour of their country with the respect due to their royal family.

Buonaparte found, by all these experiments, that Ferdinand and his counsellors were likely to be less tractable than he had expected; and that it would be necessary, however unpopular King Charles and still more his wife and minister were in Spain, to bring them once more forward on this singular stage. He therefore sent to Murat to cause the old King, with the Queen and Godoy, to be transported to Bayonne without delay. The arrival of Charles excited much interest in the French assembled at Bayonne, who flocked to see him, and to trace in his person and manners the descendant of Louis XIV. In external qualities, indeed, there was nothing wanting. He possessed the regal port and dignified manners of his ancestors; and, though speaking French with difficulty, the expatriated monarch, on meeting with Napoleon, showed the easy manners and noble mien of one long accustomed to command all around him.382 But in spirit and intellect there was a woeful deficiency. Napoleon found Charles,383 his wife, and minister, the willing tools of his policy; for Godoy accounted Ferdinand his personal enemy; the mother hated him as wicked women have been known to hate their children when they are conscious of having forfeited their esteem; and the King, whose own feelings resented the insurrection of Aranjuez, was readily exasperated to an uncontrollable fit of rage against his son.

Upon his first arrival at Bayonne, Charles loudly protested that his abdication of the 19th March was the operation of force alone; and demanded that his son should repossess him in the crown, of which he had violently deprived him.

The reply of Ferdinand alleged that the resignation of his father had been unquestionably voluntary at the time, and he quoted the old King's repeated declarations to that effect. But he declared, that if they were both permitted to return to Madrid, and summon the Cortes, or body of National Representatives, he was ready to execute in their presence, a renunciation of the rights vested in him by his father's abdication.

In his answer, Charles declared that he had sought the camp of his powerful ally, not as a king in regal splendour, but as an unhappy old man, whose royal office had been taken from him, and even his life endangered by the criminal ambition of his own son. He treated the convocation of the Cortes with contempt. "Every thing," he said, "ought to be done by sovereigns for the people; but the people ought not to be suffered to carve for themselves." Finally, he assured his son that the Emperor of France could alone be the saviour of Spain, and that Napoleon was determined that Ferdinand should never enjoy the crown of that kingdom. In different parts of this paternal admonition, Charles accused his son of the crime which existing circumstances rendered most dangerous – of being indisposed towards the interests of France.

Ferdinand replied [3d May] to this manifesto in firm and respectful terms, and appealed, too justly, to the situation he at present stood in, as a proof how unbounded had been his confidence in France. He concluded, that since the conditions he had annexed to his offer of resigning back the crown to his father had given displeasure, he was content to abdicate unconditionally; only stipulating that they should both be permitted to return to their own country, and leave a place where no deed which either could perform would be received by the world as flowing from free-will.384

INTERVIEW AT BAYONNE.

The day after this letter was written, the unfortunate Ferdinand was summoned to the presence of his parents, where he also found Napoleon himself. The conclave received him sitting; and while the King overwhelmed him with the most outrageous reproaches,385 the Queen, (the statement appears scarce credible,) in the height of her fury, lost sight of shame and womanhood so far as to tell Ferdinand, in her husband's presence, that he was the son of another man.386 Buonaparte expressed himself greatly shocked at this scene, in which he compared the Queen's language and deportment to that of a fury on the Grecian stage. The Prince's situation, he owned, moved him to pity; but the emotion was not strong enough to produce any interposition in his favour. This occurred on the 5th of May, 1808. Confused with a scene so dreadful, and at the same time so disgusting, Ferdinand the next day executed the renunciation which had been demanded in such intemperate terms. But the master of the drama had not waited till this time to commence his operations.

Two days before Ferdinand's abdication, that is upon the 4th, his father Charles, acting in the character of King, which he had laid aside at Aranjuez, had named Joachim Murat Lieutenant-General of his kingdom, and President of the Government. A proclamation was at the same time published, in which the Spaniards were particularly and anxiously cautioned against listening to treacherous men, agents of England, who might stir them up against France, and assuring them that Spain had no well-founded hope of safety, excepting in the friendship of the Great Emperor.387

On the same day, and without waiting for such additional right as he might have derived from his son's renunciation, Charles resigned all claims on Spain, with its kingdoms and territories, in favour of his friend and faithful ally, the Emperor of the French. To preserve some appearance of attention to external forms, it was stipulated that the cession only took place under the express conditions that the integrity and independence of the kingdoms should be preserved, and that the Catholic religion should be the only one practised in Spain. Finally, all decrees of confiscation or of penal consequences, which had been issued since the revolution of Aranjuez, were declared null and void. Charles having thus secured, as it was termed, the prosperity, integrity, and independence of his kingdom by these articles, stipulates, by seven which follow, for the suitable maintenance of himself and his Queen, his minister the Prince of the Peace, and of others their followers. Rank, income, appanages, were heaped on them accordingly, with no niggard hand; for the prodigality of the King's gift called for some adequate requital.

Still the resignation of Ferdinand in Napoleon's favour was necessary to give him some more colourable right, than could be derived from the alienation, by the father, of a crown which he had previously abdicated. Much urgency was used with Ferdinand on the occasion, and for some time firmly resisted. But he found himself completely in Napoleon's power; and the tragedy of the Duke d'Enghien might have taught him, that the Emperor stood on little ceremony with those who were interruptions in his path. His counsellors also assured him, that no resignation which he could execute in his present state of captivity could be binding upon himself or upon the Spanish nation. Yielding, then, to the circumstances in which he was placed, Ferdinand also entered into a treaty of resignation; but he no longer obtained the kingdom of Etruria, or the marriage with Buonaparte's niece, or any of the other advantages held out in the beginning of the negotiation. These were forfeited by his temporary hesitation to oblige the Emperor. A safe and pleasant place of residence, which was not to be absolutely a prison, and an honourable pension, were all that was allowed to Ferdinand, in exchange for his natural birthright, the mighty kingdom of Spain. The Infants, his brothers, who adhered to the same accession which stripped Ferdinand of his heritage, were in like manner recompensed by similar provisions for their holding in future the kind of life which that resignation condemned them to. The palace of Navarre and its dependencies had been assigned to Ferdinand as his residence; but he and his brothers, the Infants, were afterwards conducted to that of Valançay, a superb mansion belonging to the celebrated Talleyrand, who was punished, it was said, by this allocation, for having differed in opinion from his master, on the mode in which he should conduct himself towards Spain. The royal captives observed such rules of conduct as were recommended to them, without dreaming apparently either of escape or of resistance to the will of the victor; nor did their deportment, during the tremendous conflict which was continued in the name of Ferdinand for four years and upwards, ever give Napoleon any excuse for close restraint, or food for ulterior suspicions.

LUCIEN BUONAPARTE.

The Spanish royal family thus consigned to an unresisted fate, it only followed to supply the vacant throne by a new dynasty, as Napoleon called it; but, in fact, by some individual closely connected with himself, and absolutely dependent upon him; – much in the manner in which the inferior partners of a commercial establishment are connected with, and subject to, the management of the head of the house. For this purpose, he had cast his eyes on Lucien, who was, after Napoleon, the ablest of the Buonaparte family, and whose presence of mind had so critically assisted his brother at the expulsion of the Council of Five Hundred from Saint Cloud, in a moment when, in the eyes of the bystanders, that of Napoleon seemed rather to waver.

It has been mentioned before, that Lucien had offended Napoleon by forming a marriage of personal attachment; and it is supposed, that on his part, he saw with displeasure the whole institutions and liberties of his native country sacrificed to the grandeur of one man, though that man was his brother. He had been heard to say of Napoleon, "that every word and action of his were dictated by his political system," and "that the character of his politics rested entirely on egotism." Even the proffer of the kingdom of Spain, therefore, did not tempt Lucien from the enjoyments of a private station, where he employed a large income in collecting pictures and objects of art, and amused his own leisure with literary composition. Receiving this repulse from Lucien, Buonaparte resolved to transfer his eldest brother Joseph from the throne of Naples, where, as an Italian, acquainted with the language and manners of the country, he enjoyed some degree of popularity, and bestow on him a kingdom far more difficult to master and to govern. Joachim Murat, Grand Duke, as he was called, of Berg, at present in command of the army which occupied Madrid, was destined to succeed Joseph in the throne which he was about to vacate. It was said that the subordinate parties were alike disappointed with the parts assigned them in this masque of sovereigns. Murat thought his military talents deserved the throne of Spain, and the less ambitious Joseph, preferring quiet to extent of territory, would have willingly remained contented with the less important royalty of Naples. But Napoleon did not permit the will of others to interfere with what he had previously determined, and Joseph was summoned to meet him at Bayonne, and prepared, by instructions communicated to him on the road, to perform without remonstrance his part in the pageant. The purposes of Napoleon were now fully announced to the world. An assembly of Notables from all parts of Spain were convoked, to recognise the new monarch, and adjust the constitution under which Spain should be in future administered.

The place of meeting was at Bayonne; the date of convocation was the 15th of June; and the object announced for consideration of the Notables was the regeneration of Spain, to be effected under the auspices of Napoleon.

But events had already occurred in that kingdom, tending to show that the prize, of which Buonaparte disposed so freely, was not, and might perhaps never be, within his possession. He had indeed obtained, by a course of the most audacious treachery, all those advantages which, after the more honourable success obtained in great battles, had prostrated powerful nations at his feet. He had secured the capital with an army of forty thousand men. The frontier fortresses were in his possession, and enabled him to maintain his communications with Madrid; the troops of the Spanish monarchy were either following his own banner in remote climates, or broken up and scattered in small bodies through Spain itself. These advantages he had possessed over Austria after Austerlitz, and over Prussia after Jena; and in both cases these monarchies were placed at the victor's discretion. But in neither case had he, as now at Bayonne, the persons of the royal family at his own disposal,388 or had he reduced them to the necessity of becoming his mouth-piece, or organ, in announcing to the people the will of the conqueror. So that, in this very important particular, the advantages which he possessed over Spain were greater than those which Napoleon had obtained over any other country. But then Spain contained within herself principles of opposition, which were nowhere else found to exist in the same extent.

CHAPTER XLIII

State of morals and manners in Spain – The Nobility – the Middle Classes – the Lower Ranks – the indignation of the People strongly excited against the French – Insurrection at Madrid on the 2d May – Murat proclaims an amnesty, notwithstanding which, many Spanish prisoners are put to death – King Charles appoints Murat Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, and Ferdinand's resignation of the throne is announced – Murat unfolds the plan of government to the Council of Castile, and addresses of submission are sent to Buonaparte from various quarters – Notables appointed to meet at Bayonne on 15th June – The flame of resistance becomes universal throughout Spain.

MORALS AND MANNERS IN SPAIN.

The government of Spain, a worn-out despotism lodged in the hands of a family of the lowest degree of intellect, was one of the worst in Europe; and the state of the nobility, speaking in general, (for there were noble exceptions,) seemed scarce less degraded. The incestuous practice of marrying within the near degrees of propinquity, had long existed, with its usual consequences, the dwarfing of the body, and degeneracy of the understanding. The education of the nobility was committed to the priests, who took care to give them no lights beyond Catholic bigotry. The custom of the country introduced them to premature indulgences, and they ceased to be children, without arriving either at the strength or the intellect of youth.