Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/310

300 served to the last by Godoy with a loyalty that half excused his faults and vices. The Bourbon rubbish was swept from Madrid; Don Carlos had already abdicated; Ferdinand, entrapped and terrified, was set aside; the old palaces were garnished for newcomers; and after Lucien and Louis Bonaparte had refused the proffered throne, Napoleon sent to Naples for Joseph, who was crowned, June 15, King of Spain at Bayonne.

Meanwhile the Spanish people woke to consciousness that their ancient empire had become a province of France, and their exasperation broke into acts of wild revenge. May 2 Madrid rose in an insurrection which Murat suppressed by force. Several hundred lives on either side were lost; and although the affair itself was one of no great importance, it had results which made the day an epoch in modern history.

The gradual breaking up of the old European system of politics was marked by an anniversary among each of the Western nations. The English race dated from July 4, 1776, the beginning of a new era; the French celebrated July 14, 1789, the capture of the Bastille, as decisive of their destinies. For a time, Bonaparte's coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire in 1799 forced both France and England back on their steps; but the dethronement of Charles IV. began the process in a new direction. The Second of May—or as the Spaniards called it, the Dos de Maio—swept the vast Spanish empire into the vortex of dissolution. Each