Philip V. was better advised when he decided to erect a palace on the site of the master of the Order of Santiago’s summer residence than when he wrested a foothold for La Granja from the side of the mountains of Segovia. The royal home at Aranjuez is charmingly situated in the midst of avenues of stately elms and sycamores at the confluence of the Tagus and Jarama—a verdurous oasis in the midst of treeless, waterless Castile. He constructed the palace and the public chapel from stone taken from a quarry in the district of Colmenar, which he bought for the purpose. The timber he procured from the mountains of Cuenca, and the lead for the roofing from some mines that existed near Consuegra. Philip III. enriched the gardens with many of the fine bronzes and marbles that are to be seen there, and some of the splendid fountains were also added by his orders; but the Parterre department which Philip II. laid out was completed by the art-loving Philip IV., who furnished the busts of the Roman emperors, the statues, and the beautiful medallions. In 1748 the palace was again on fire, and the principal façade was restored by Ferdinand VI. in its present more elegant form.
That weak and fatuous monarch Charles IV., who added the Casas del Principe to the Escorial, and El Pardo, and the auxiliary Casa del Labrador to the palace of Aranjuez, had a particular affection for the ‘Spanish Fontainebleau.’ Here the king and queen and their favourite, Godoy, passed much of their time in the anxious days that preceded the fall of the monarchy; and here, in March 1808, the determination was arrived at by which the detested Prince of the Peace was torn from office and power, literally by the hands of the incensed mob. What a curious spectacle of a family group they present to our eyes! Charles IV. and Maria Luisa, Ferdinand and Godoy, with mutual hatred in their hearts and the sound of the tumult of Madrid ringing in their ears. King, prince, and minister each believed the advancing French to be his friends; each felt confident that Spain was being trampled under foot by foreign soldiers to advance their several conflicting interests. But suddenly from the rapidly approaching host came messengers with an ultimatum from Napoleon, containing impossible conditions that would have dismembered Spain and deprived her of her independence. It was evident now that Napoleon was coming not as a saviour but as a conqueror, and now it was too late to resist him by force of arms. In the palace of Aranjuez it was resolved that the Court should retire to Seville, and from there, if the worst happened, sail for America.
Although this secret resolution was carefully guarded, a rumour of the projected flight got about, and the mob vented their anger upon Godoy, whom they believed was prepared to sell the country to the Corsican. In vain Charles addressed proclamations to ‘my dear vassals,’ and assured them that his dear ally, the Emperor of the French, was only making use of Spanish soil to reach points threatened by the English enemy; in vain he denied the story of his intended flight. The greater part of the garrison in Madrid was ordered to Aranjuez, but with the soldiers went an army of country people who surrounded the king’s palace and the palace of the favourite, and closely guarded every avenue of escape. At midnight of the 17th March a bugle-call rang out, a shot responded to the summons, and in a moment the revolution was in full swing. Around the royal residence, in which Charles was lying ill with gout, the mob contented itself by howling threats and imprecations, but Godoy’s palace was carried by assault. The work of destruction was stayed for a few moments while the Princess of the Peace, a member of the royal family, and her daughter were respectfully conveyed to the royal palace. Then the ruffians got to work in terrible earnest. With murderous thoroughness they searched every room and corridor for the despised author of the national trouble, wrecking everything in their path. But Godoy had slipped from his bed, and found a refuge under a roll of matting in a neighbouring lumber-room. For thirty-six hours he remained in hiding until hunger and thirst drove him from his retreat, and he was led from his ruined house to the barrack guardroom through a populace that thirsted for his life. The wretched fugitive, ill with fear and fatigue, was placed between two mounted guards, and the journey was made at a sharp trot, but he could not out-distance the vengeance of the crowd, and his guards could not protect him. Fierce blows were rained upon him by the infuriated multitude, and the man who had been master of Spain, bleeding from a score of wounds and gasping for breath, was only rescued from instant death by a miracle.
The mob still overran the streets of Aranjuez, and swarmed around the royal palace in which Charles IV. signed the decree handing the crown of Spain to Ferdinand. A few days later he withdrew his abdication privately at the instigation of General Monthion, Murat’s chief of the staff, and shortly afterwards left Aranjuez for the Escorial, from whence, on the 25th April following, he set out for Bayonne, to lay the crown at the feet of the Emperor of the French. The king died at Rome in 1819; Ferdinand, having spent six years at Valençay, where he was virtually a prisoner of the French, was restored to the throne of Spain. During the nineteen years of his reign Ferdinand VII. and the coarse, ignorant vulgarians who composed the camarilla by which he surrounded himself, spent much of their time at Aranjuez. Here the vast conspiracy was hatched against the Constitution, which led to the battle between the militia and the citizens in 1822; and here the worthless monarch intrigued until his death to re-establish absolutism, and restore the old rotten order of things which the nation had shed its best blood to wipe out.
The nearness of Aranjuez to Madrid and the beauty of its situation has always made it a favourite residence of the Spanish royal family. The town itself, which has a population of some ten thousand inhabitants, is composed of wide streets and large squares, and many noble families possess villas in the neighbourhood. The interior of the palace, which reveals an incongruous jumble of modern innovations adapted to the architecture and decoration of bygone generations, is filled with a large assortment of works of art, some possessing a very high order of merit, and others very little. The celebrated staircase which faces the principal entrance is magnificent. It leads to the Saleta, a room embellished with a granite chimney-piece and chandeliers of rock crystal and bronze, and containing several paintings by the famous Italian artist Luca Giordano, who is known in Spain by the name of Juan Jordán. Other pictures by Giordano, painted on white silk damask, are to be seen in an adjoining apartment. In the Oratory is a superb altar, with an agate inlaid table, and Titian’s ‘Annunciation of the Virgin.’ Next to the Oratory is the Hall of Ambassadors, a modern apartment, with a ceiling painted in 1850 by Vicente and Maximino Camarón. The walls of the queen’s study in the same suite are covered with white damask, and the room is furnished with twelve chairs and a carved mahogany table of the time of Charles IV.
The ball-room and the dining-room, even the Moorish room, in which Rafael Contreras has revived the beauties of the Alhambra, are surpassed by the music-room, which is the finest saloon in the palace. Here all the decorations are Chinese in character, worked out and enamelled with great skill; and the chandelier, which is in one piece, is an exquisite specimen of workmanship. The walls of this room are entirely covered with large porcelain plaques, representing in high relief groups of beautifully modelled Oriental figures. The looking-glasses, made at La Granja, with their frames composed of fruits and flowers, enhance the effect. Joseph Gricci, who modelled and painted the music-saloon, was one of the artists brought over from Naples by Charles III. in 1759, when he established in Madrid the factory of Buen Retiro. In addition to this superb porcelain, the palace boasts a bedstead of splendidly carved lignum-vitae, and some pictures by Bosch (Jerome van Aeken), a painter of the sixteenth century, who is almost unknown outside Spain. These canvases represent fantastic subjects and allegories in the style of Breughel, and were highly praised by the critics of his time.
The Convent of San Pascual was founded by Charles III., and the theatre in the town owed its inception to the same monarch. The convent church contains only a few valuable pictures, but it is rich in marble and beautifully carved wood. The convent library possesses many ancient manuscripts, and the convent grounds are famous for their beauty, but the gardens of the royal palace are the crowning glory of Aranjuez.
That most entertaining author and indefatigable dispenser of Testaments, George Borrow, travelled in Spain at a time when royalty was battling for its very existence. He found the country dangerous and desolated, and the country homes of its kings fallen into a state of neglect. When he was in La Granja, the palace of San Ildefonso was shut up, and the town which surrounds the patrimony of the Crown of Spain was practically deserted. He had no better luck in Aranjuez. He admits the beauty of the district, but he describes the place as in a state of desolation; he recalls the fact that Ferdinand VII. spent his latter days in its palace surrounded by lovely señoras and Andalusian bull-fighters, and quotes—perhaps with more sentiment than sympathy—the words of Schiller:
‘The happy days in fair Aranjuez
Are past and gone.’
‘Intriguing courtiers no longer crowd its halls,’ he reflects; ‘its spacious circus, where Manchegan bulls once roared in rage and agony, is now closed, and the light tinkling of guitars is no longer heard amidst its groves and gardens.’ One feels as one reads these passages that Borrow was not at his best as a moralist. One prefers him when he is describing in his lively, absorbing manner his personal experiences, and is glad to learn that he disposed of eighty Testaments in desolate Aranjuez, and that he ‘might have sold many more of these Divine books’ if he had remained there a longer period.