Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/225

Rh 1808.] NAPOLEON 213 the Italian Republic, Napoleon had remodelled the govern ment at his pleasure, and in the end had put his own family at the head of it. After Tilsit he thought him self strong enough to make a similar change in Spain, and the occupation of Portugal seemed to afford the opportunity of doing this. By two conventions signed at Fontainebleau on October 27th the partition of Portugal was arranged with Spain. The Prince of the Peace was to become a sovereign prince of the Algarves, the king of Spain was to have Brazil with the title of emperor of the two Americas, &c. ; but the main provision was that a French army was to stand on the threshold of Spain ready to resist any intervention of England. The occupation of Portugal took place soon after, Junot arriving at Lisbon on November 30, just as the royal family with a following of several thousands set sail for Brazil under protection of French the English fleet. At the same time there commenced in army in defiance of all treaties a passage of French troops into Spain. gp a i nj w hich continued until 80,000 had arrived, and had taken quiet possession of a number of Spanish fortresses. At last Murat was appointed to the command of the army of Spain. He entered the country on March 1, 1808, and marched on Madrid, calculating that the king would take flight and take refuge at Seville or Cadiz. This act revealed to the world the nature of the power which had been created at Tilsit. The lawless acts of Napoleon s earlier life were palliated by the name of the French Revolution, and since Brumaire he had established a character for comparative moderation. But here was naked violence without the excuse of fanaticism ; and on what a scale ! One of the greater states of Europe was in the hands of a burglar, who would moreover, if successful, become king not only of Spain but of a boundless empire in the New World. The sequel was worse even than this commencement, although the course which events took seems to show that by means of a little delay he might have attained his end without such open defiance of law. The administration of Spain had long been in the contemptible hands of Manuel Godoy, supposed to be the queen s lover, yet at the same time high in the favour of King Charles IV. Ferdinand, the heir apparent, headed an opposition, but in character he was not better than the trio he opposed, and he had lately been put under arrest on suspicion of designs upon his father s life. To have fomented this opposition without taking either side, and to have rendered both sides equally contemptible to the Spanish people, was Napoleon s game ; the Spanish people, who profoundly admired him, might then have been induced to ask him for a king. Napoleon, however, perpetrated his crime before the scandal of the palace broke out. The march of Murat now brought it to a head. Popular On March 17th a tumult broke out at Aranjuez, which led rising in ^ the fall of the favourite, and then to the abdication of pain. k e k m g an( j the proclamation of Ferdinand amid universal truly Spanish enthusiasm. It was a fatal mistake to have forced on this popular explosion, and Napoleon has char acteristically tried to conceal it by a supposititious letter, in which he tries to throw the blame upon Murat, to whom the letter professes to be addressed. It warns Murat against rousing the Spanish patriotism and creating an opposition which it will be impossible to put down ; it predicts all that actually happened ; but it has all the marks of invention, and was certainly never received by Murat. The reign of Ferdinand having thus begun, all that the French could do was to decline to acknow ledge him, and to encourage Charles to withdraw his abdication as given under duress. By this means it became doubtful who was king of Spain, and Napoleon, having carefully abstained from taking a side, now presented himself as arbiter, Ferdinand was induced to betake himself to Napoleon s presence at Bayonne, where he arrived on April 21st; his father and mother followed on the 30th. Violent scenes took place between father and son ; news arrived of an insurrection at Madrid and of the stern suppression of it by Murat; in the end Napoleon succeeded in extorting the abdication both of Charles and Ferdinand. It was learned too late that the insurrection of Spain had not really been suppressed. This crime, as clumsy as it was monstrous, brought on that great popular insurrection of Europe against the universal monarchy which has profoundly modified all subsequent history, and. makes the Anti-Napoleonic Revolu tion an event of the same order as the French Revolution. A rising unparalleled for its suddenness and sublime spontaneousness took place throughout Spain and speedily found a response in Germany. A new impulse was given, out of which grew the great nationality movement of the 19th century. Meanwhile Napoleon, having first offered the throne of Spain to his brother Louis, who refused it, named Joseph king, retaining, however, a reversion to himself and heirs in default of male heirs of Joseph, who had only daughters. The royal council first, afterwards a junta of nobles assembled at Bayonne, accepted him on July 7th. But it must have become clear to Napoleon almost at once that he had committed the most enormous of blunders. Instead of gaining Spain he had in fact lost it, for hitherto he had been master of its resources without trouble, but to support Joseph he was obliged in this same year to invade Spain in person with not less than 180,000 men. With Spain too he lost Portugal, which in June followed the Spanish example of insurrection, and had Spain henceforth for an ally and not for an enemy. Hitherto he had had no conception of any kind of war not strictly professional. He had known popular risings in Italy, La Vendee, and Egypt, but had never found it at all difficult to crush them. The determined insurrection of a whole nation of 11,000,000 was a new experience to him. How serious it might be he learned as early as July, when Dupont with about 20,000 men surrendered at Baylen in Andalusia to the Spanish general Castanos. In August he might wake to another miscalculation of which he had been guilty. An English army landed in Portugal, defeated Junot at Vimeiro, and forced him to sign the convention of Cintra. By this he evacuated Portugal, in which country the insurrection had already left him much isolated. This occurrence brought to light a capital feature of the insurrection of the Peninsula, viz., that it was in free communication everywhere with the power and resources of England. Thus the monarchy of Tilsit suffered within a year the Napoleon most terrible rebuff. Napoleon himself now appears upon in Spain, the scene. His first step was to revive the memory of Tilsit by a theatrical meeting with Alexander, which was arranged at Erfurt in September. The power of the duumvirate was there displayed in the most imposing manner, and the alliance was strengthened by new engagements taken by Napoleon with respect to the Danubian principalities. At the same time he checked the rising spirit of resistance in Prussia by driving from office the great reforming minister Stein. At the beginning of November he was ready for the invasion of Spain. Joseph had retired to Vittoria, and the armies of the insurrection fronted him along the Ebro under the command of Blake, Castanos, and Palafox. Between November 7th and llth the army of Blake was dissolved by Lefebvre, and Napoleon entered Burgos, which was mercilessly pillaged ; on the 23d Castanos was defeated at Tudela by Lannes ; by December 2d Napo leon, having forced the mountain passes, was before Madrid, and on the 4th he was in possession of the town, where, endeavouring somewhat late to conciliate the