Murat saw that the angry old queen might be utilized to discredit her son, and promised to send on everything to Napoleon. At the first word of encouragement given by the Grand-Duke’s agent, De Monthion, Maria Luisa began to cover many sheets with abuse of her son. ‘He is false to the core: he has no natural affection: he is hard-hearted and nowise inclined to clemency. He has been directed by villains and will do anything that ambition suggests: he makes promises, but does not always keep them[41].’ Again she writes:—‘From my son we have nothing to expect but outrages and persecution. He has commenced by forgery, and he will go on manufacturing evidence to prove that the Prince of the Peace—that innocent and affectionate friend of the Emperor, the Duke of Berg, and every Frenchman!—may appear a criminal in the eyes of the Spanish people and of Napoleon himself. Do not believe a word that he says, for our enemies have the power and means to make any falsehood seem true[42].’ In another letter she says that the riots of Aranjuez were no genuine explosion of popular wrath, but a deliberate plot got up by her son, who spent countless sums on debauching the soldiery and importing ruffians from Madrid. He gave the signal for the outburst himself by putting a lamp in his window at a fixed hour—and so forth[43].
Finding the Queen in this state of mind, Murat saw his way to dealing a deadly blow at Ferdinand: with his counsel and consent Charles IV was induced to draw up and send to Bonaparte a formal protest against his abdication. He was made to declare that his resignation had not been voluntary, but imposed on him by force and threats. And so he ‘throws himself into the arms of the great monarch who has been his ally, and puts himself at his disposition wholly and for every purpose[44].’ This document placed in Napoleon’s hands the precise weapon which he required to crush King Ferdinand. If the Emperor chose to take it seriously, he could declare the new monarch a usurper—almost a parricide—the legality of whose accession had been vitiated by force and fraud.
As a matter of fact Bonaparte’s mind had long been made up. The revolution of Aranjuez had been a surprise and a disappointment to him: his designs against Spain were made infinitely more difficult of realization thereby. While he had only the weak and unpopular government of Godoy and Charles IV to deal with, he had fancied that the game was in his hands. It had been more than probable that the Prince of the Peace would take fright, and carry off the King and Queen to America—in which case he would, as it were, find Spain left derelict. If, however, the emigration did not take place, and it became necessary to lay hands on Charles and his favourite, Napoleon calculated that the Spaniards would be more pleased to be rid of Godoy than angry to see force employed against him. He was so profoundly ignorant of the character of the nation, that he imagined that a few high-sounding proclamations and promises of liberal reforms would induce them to accept from his hands any new sovereign whom he chose to nominate. It was clear that the accession of a young and popular king would make matters far more difficult. It was no longer possible to pose as the deliverer of Spain from the shameful predominance of Godoy. Any move against Ferdinand must bear the character of an open assault on the national independence of the kingdom.
But Bonaparte had gone too far to recede: he had not moved 100,000 men across the Pyrenees, and seized Pampeluna and Barcelona, merely in order that his troops might assist at the coronation ceremonies of another Bourbon king. In spite of all difficulties he was resolved to persevere in his iniquitous plan. He would not recognize the new monarch, but would sweep him away, and put in his place some member of his own family. But his chosen instrument was not to be Murat, but one of the Bonapartes. He knew too well the Duke of Berg’s restless spirit and overweening ambition to trust him with so great a charge as Spain. And he was right—with only Naples at his back Joachim was powerful enough to do his master grave harm in 1814. The tool was to be one of his own brothers. It was on the night of March 26 that the news of the abdication of Charles IV reached him: on the morning of the twenty-seventh he wrote to Amsterdam offering Louis Bonaparte the chance of exchanging the Dutch for the Spanish crown. The proposal was made in the most casual form—‘You say that the climate of Holland does not suit you. Besides the country is too thoroughly ruined to rise again. Give me a categorical answer: if I nominate you King of Spain will you take the offer; can I count on you?[45]’ Louis very wisely refused the proffered crown: but his weaker brother Joseph, tired of Naples and its brigands, made no scruples when the same proposal was laid before him.
This letter to Louis of Holland having been written on the first news of the events at Aranjuez, and four days before Murat began to send in his own plans and the letters of protest from the King and Queen of Spain, it is clear that the Emperor had never any intention of recognizing Ferdinand, and was only playing with him during the month that followed. It was not in mere caution that Beauharnais, the ambassador, and Murat, the military representative, of France, were bidden never to address the new sovereign as king but as Prince of the Asturias, and to act as if Charles IV were still legally reigning until they should have specific directions from Paris[46].
This state of semi-suspended relations lasted for a fortnight, from Ferdinand’s arrival in Madrid on March 24, down to his departure from it on April 10. They were very uncomfortable weeks for the new king, who grew more alarmed as each day passed without a letter from Paris ratifying his title, while French troops continued to pour into Madrid till some 35,000 were assembled in it and its suburbs.
A very few days after his accession Ferdinand was informed that it was probable that Napoleon was intending a visit to Madrid, and was at any rate coming as far as Bayonne. He immediately sent off his eldest brother Don Carlos (the hero of the unhappy wars of 1833-40) to compliment his patron, and if necessary to receive him at the frontier [April 5]. Two days later there appeared in Madrid a new French emissary, General Savary—afterwards Duke of Rovigo—who purported to come as Bonaparte’s harbinger, charged with the duty of preparing Madrid for his arrival. He carried the farce so far that he asked for a palace for the Emperor’s residence, produced trunks of his private luggage[47], and began to refurnish the apartments granted him. That he bore secret orders for Murat we know from the latter’s dispatches, but this was only half his task. Napoleon had confided to him verbal instructions to lure Ferdinand to come out to meet him in the north of Spain, among the French armies massed in Biscay and Navarre—if possible even to get him to Bayonne on French soil. In his St. Helena memoirs Napoleon denies this, and Savary in his autobiography also states that he did not act the part of tempter or make any promises to the young king: the journey to Bayonne, he says, was a silly inspiration of Ferdinand’s own. But neither Bonaparte nor Savary are witnesses whom one would believe on their most solemn oath. The former we know well: the latter had been one of the persons most implicated in the shocking murder of the Duc d’Enghien. When we find the Spanish witnesses, who conversed with Savary during his short stay in Madrid, agreeing that the general promised that Napoleon would recognize Ferdinand as king, give him an imperial princess as wife, and take him into favour, we need not doubt them. It is not disputed that Savary, unlike Murat and Beauharnais, regularly addressed his victim by the royal title, and it is certain that he started in his company and acted as his keeper during the journey[48]. The move that he at first proposed was not a long one: the general said that according to his advices the Emperor must be due at Burgos on April 13: it would be time enough to start to meet him on the tenth. Burgos lies well inside the frontiers of Castile, and if it was packed with French troops, so was Madrid: one place was no more dangerous than the other.
Exactly how far the perjuries of Savary went, or how far he was apprised of his master’s final intentions, we cannot tell, but it is certain that on April 10 he set out from Madrid in the King’s company: with them went Escoiquiz, Ferdinand’s clerical confidant, Cevallos the minister of foreign affairs, and half a dozen dukes and marquises chosen from among the King’s old partisans. To administer affairs in his absence Ferdinand nominated a ‘Junta’ or council of regency, with his uncle Don Antonio, a simple and very silly old man, at its head[49].
On reaching Burgos, on April 12, the party found masses of French troops but no signs of Napoleon. Savary appeared vexed, said that his calculation must have been wrong, and got the King to go forward two more stages, as far as Vittoria, at the southern foot of the Pyrenees [April 14]. Here Ferdinand received a note from his brother Don Carlos, whom he had sent ahead, saying that Bonaparte had been lingering at Bordeaux, and was not expected at Bayonne till the fifteenth. Ferdinand, always timid and suspicious, was getting restive: he had nothing on paper to assure him of Napoleon’s intentions, and began to suspect Savary’s blandishments. The latter doubted for a moment whether he should not have the court seized by the French garrison of Vittoria, but finally resolved to endeavour to get a letter from his master, which would suffice to lure Ferdinand across the frontier. He was entrusted with a petition of the same cast that Napoleon had been in the habit of receiving from his would-be client, full of servile loyalty and demands for the much-desired Bonaparte princess.
The four days during which Savary was absent, while the royal party remained at Vittoria, were a period of harassing doubt to Ferdinand. He was visited by all manner of persons who besought him not to go on, and especially by Spaniards lately arrived from Paris, who detailed all the disquieting rumours which they had heard at the French court. Some besought him to disguise himself and escape by night from the 4,000 troops of the Imperial Guard who garrisoned Vittoria. Others pointed out that the Spanish troops in Bilbao, which was still unoccupied by the French, might be brought down by cross-roads, and assume charge of the king’s person halfway between Vittoria and the frontier, in spite of the 600 French cavalry which escorted the cavalcade. Guarded by his own men Ferdinand might retire into the hills of Biscay. But to adopt either of the courses proposed to him would have compelled the King to come to an open breach with Bonaparte, and for this he had not sufficient courage, as long as there was the slightest chance of getting safely through his troubles by mere servility.