Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/53

Rh to say that the king would never return to the throne.

These tidings of the dethronement of the royal family, and the assumption of the crown by Joseph Bonaparte, arrived in the midst of preparations for the solemn festivities to be held on the occasion of swearing allegiance to the young monarch. The impression which these events created in Mexico was at first painful. Creoles as well as Spaniards hated the French. Napoleon was their arch-enemy. They swore they would never be ruled by him, or any of his creatures. On the 14th of July, the viceroy received copies of the Madrid official gazettes confirming the news, and on the following day he convoked a council of the real acuerdo, at which it was resolved neither to obey the decrees of Murat, then commanding at Madrid, nor those of any government other than that of the legitimate sovereign. The official portions of the Madrid gazettes were, moreover, ordered to be published.

But the first surprise over, very different and vehement feelings began to spring up among the people. Their ideas were confounded at the possibility of being without a king. Those who had hitherto regarded a monarch as an infallible personage remembered the fate of Louis XVI., and beheld with consternation the sudden removal of their own kings, father and son. That a mob of his own subjects should effect the