CHAPTER II.

Napoleon and the Spanish Bourbons-Invasion of Spain-Tumult at Madrid-The Court enticed to Bayonne-Spanish appeal to England —Renunciation of Empire by the Bourbons-Landing of the British in Spain-Successes of Sir A. Wellesley-Convention of Cintra— Aspect of European affairs-Meeting at Erfurth-Battle of Wagram— Andrew Höfer-False hopes of Spain-Sir John Moore's Campaign— His Retreat-Battle of Corunna-Death of Sir John Moore-Gloomy aspect of the War-The Walcheren expedition-Naval successes— Lord Collingwood-His death-Troubles with America-Orders in Council-Charges against the Duke of York-His resignation-Inquiry into Abuses-Quarrel between Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning-Their duel-Changes in the Cabinet-Mr. Perceval, Prime Minister-The Jubilee Napoleon's divorce-His new Marriage-Gloom at Home and Abroad-Celebration of the 50th year of the Reign.-[1807-9.]

WHILE Napoleon was busy in the north of Europe, he had never lost sight of his aims in the Peninsula: and he had induced his ally of Spain to furnish him with the finest of his soldiery, in large numbers. The flower of the Spanish army was in Pomerania, or Hanover, or wherever they could be stationed farthest from any summons of their sovereign. He next kept a vigilant eye on the dissensions in the royal family of Spain, which he did his best to aggravate, while declaring that he could not attend to other people's domestic quarrels. Godoy's spies discovered, in the autumn of 1807, that the Prince of Asturias was thoughtful, absent, and embarassed; and the Spanish Minister at Paris wrote to Godoy, that there was certainly some secret between Ferdinand and the French government. The Prince's papers were seized. Some were in cypher, written by the Prince himself, and some by his deceased wife to her mother at Naples. In these there was no criminality, though they showed that he had secrets, and that he and his people hated Godoy and his agents. But there was a paper sealed with black, which conferred a commission after Charles IV. should have ceased to reign. The Prince explained that this was prepared as a precaution against Godoy's designs of

seizing the crown on the death of the King. Though it were so, it was a painful and shocking circumstance for the King to discover. Godoy made the most of it; and the Prince was committed to prison, on a charge of conspiracy against his father's life and throne. This was in October. The Prince at length confessed that his secret correspondence with France was about obtaining a wife from the Bonaparte family, in order to escape the peril of being compelled to marry Godoy's sister-in-law. This confession, corroborated by testimony from Paris that the Prince and Napoleon had certainly some secrets, alarmed the Court party lest they should bring down the conqueror's vengeance on themselves. The Prince wrote penitential letters, imploring pardon of his parents for having acted a disobedient part; the King proclaimed that the parental heart had disarmed the hand of justice; and the charge was hushed up. There was a show of bringing to trial the Prince's confidants, on an accusation of treason: but they were all acquitted. Care was taken to keep them and the Prince apart. The walls of fortresses, or wide spaces of land and sea, were interposed between them; and Napoleon looked on, with a keen insight, perceiving that no cordial understanding could ever again exist between father and son, and that he could make use of their hatred to rid himself of them both. "I never," he said to O'Meara, "excited the King of Spain against his son. I saw them envenomed against each other, and thence conceived the design of deriving advantage to myself, and dispossessing both."

First, in November, he increased his 40,000 men on the frontier to 60,000; and he ordered them into Spain without asking that consent of the King which was stipulated for in the treaty. They were seen taking the road, not for Lisbon, but for Madrid; and there was no need of them at Lisbon, the Portuguese being so unresisting that Junot was marching on without seeing a soldier along his whole route. Moreover, two bodies of this army marched as far away from Portugal as could be one down upon the Ebro, and the other towards Barcelona. The Court began to be somewhat uneasy at these demonstrations; but they had bound themselves to Napoleon for the guilty.

hire of the spoliation of Portugal; and they dared not call their master to account. He was himself in Italy, fixing the attention of the world upon his brilliant doings there; and nobody, out of the Peninsula, seemed to be observing how the French armies were lengthening themselves out over the highways of Spain, while the Bourbon Court sat trembling and watching for the movement to explain itself. There was a man in England, however, whose business it was to watch over continental transactions; and he had a keen eye, which was noting everything. Next, in January, as soon as Napoleon returned to Paris, he required a levy of 80,000 men, forestalling the conscription of 1809. Throughout France, the parents sighed, and said they thought the Treaty of Tilsit was to have given them peace. The levy was said to be against England; but the new soldiery were marched south. When over the frontier, they played snowball with Spanish garrisons, or drank with the soldiers, or obtained admission as sick of feigned diseases into garrison hospitals, or wore long cloaks with arms underneath, or quarrelled and fought all by express order; and thus got into one Pyrenean fortress after another, till Spain lay as open to French invasion as if the mountains had been razed. St. Sebastian, Pamplona, Barcelona, and Figueras, were garrisoned by the French by the middle of March. When Godoy was importuned for instructions by dismayed commandants, he replied that he did not see how resistance was possible. Next, the monasteries were taken for barracks, and the monks turned out to shift for themselves. Waggon-loads of biscuits, baked at Bayonne and other French towns on the frontier, were brought down, and laid up in store: and, as a decisive act, the Spanish magistracy in the towns north of the Ebro were displaced, to make way for French officials. Without a word of explanation, or the firing of a single shot, the whole of the north of Spain had become French before April, 1808; and the Spanish navy had been removed to the harbour of Toulon. Portugal had become French before the winter was over. The symbols of Portuguese nationality had been effaced; and the French arms and authorities were everywhere; in the provinces that had

been promised to Godoy, no less than in Lisbon. In rage and dismay, Godoy heard of Junot's having assumed the entire government of the whole of Portugal, in the name of Napoleon. The inhabitants of Lisbon were groaning under the enormous exactions of the French General; and in the country, the despairing peasantry refused to sow their fields: in the courts, the old laws were gone, and the Code Napoleon was set up: and many of the native soldiery made themselves free of all law, becoming robbers in the mountains. Such was the condition of Godoy's promised territory. He sat watching, trembling and wrathful, and doing nothing. The keen-eyed man who sat in the Foreign Office in London was watching too, but not idly nor in fear. He was preparing to invite the British nation to make these outraged countries a final battle-field for the liberties of Europe.

When the Queen of Etruria came to Madrid, having given up her dominions without receiving, or having any chance of receiving, the promised equivalent of Portuguese territory, the Court saw that their affairs were indeed desperate. The fact had come out, in conversation in Paris, that Ferdinand's title was to be, no longer Prince of Austurias, but Prince of the Indies. More troops were pouring over the Bidassoa; and at last, the Imperial Guard itself. Napoleon sent to Charles a present of twelve fine horses, and was coming himself to Madrid to talk over the affairs of the Peninsula. Godoy persuaded the King and Queen to go down to Seville, to sail for their American dominions, as the Braganza family had done. The Prince could not determine whether to go or stay. The secret got out; the people were in a ferment at the prospect of being so left; the French ambassador thought it a great pity that such a step should be taken. On the morning of the day of departure, the Prince was heard to say he would not go; and the citizens resolved that he should not be carried away by force. When the carriages drew up in the evening, the people gathered round them, and cut the traces, and declared that nobody should go, They hunted Godoy for his life; and he escaped only by hiding himself under some mats in a garret: but his wife, to whom he was known to be outrageously unfaithful, was

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protected, and safely lodged in the palace. This was the beginning of a revolution which ended, in three days, in the abdication of Charles IV. in favour of his son. King had first disgraced Godoy: but this was not enough.. The unhappy man had fallen after all into the hands of the populace, and barely escaped with his life, on the arrival of the guards; and the King and Queen made no secret of their concern-going to the prison to see him. Ferdinand was the only one who could control the people and to him the royal power was transferred, on the 19th of March. Thus did Ferdinand VII. attain the crown, not without suspicion on many hands of having been at the bottom of the insurrection which intercepted the flight of his father as King. In his Decree, the King declared his abdication to be free and spontaneous; and he said so to the assembled diplomatic body at Court; but in a private letter to Napoleon, two days afterwards, and in a Protest drawn up the same day, he set forth that his resignation of the Crown was forced, and that the act must be considered null. "I have been forced to abdicate," he wrote to the Emperor, "and have no longer any hope but in the aid and support of my magnanimous ally, the Emperor Napoleon."

Napoleon was not slow to interfere. The news of the insurrection of the 17th reached him at Paris in the evening of the 26th; and the next morning, he offered the crown to his brother Louis. The next step was to get the whole royal family into his hands; and Ferdinand first, as the most difficult. By a series of lies and frauds, infamous almost beyond example in history, the new King was tempted and drawn on towards Bayonne-his counsellors doubtful and remonstrating, the people alarmed and imploring, and at last proceeding so far as to cut the traces of the carriage. But he went, as under a sort of fatality, and the trap closed upon him as he entered Bayonne on the 21st of April. Murat was, meantime, the real ruler at Madrid. He so contrived as to obtain possession of the person of Godoy; and he sent him, under guard, to Bayonne. Then, he obtained long conferences with Charles and the Queen, evidently wrought upon them to set up a claim to retract the act of abdication, as