[53] Napoleon to Talleyrand, May 6, 1808.
[54] Of this interview we have the version of Napoleon himself in a dispatch to Murat, dated May 1; another by Cevallos, Ferdinand’s minister; a third by De Pradt (afterwards Archbishop of Mechlin), then present at Bayonne.
[55] Dispatch to Murat of May 5.
[56] ‘Prince, il faut opter entre la cession et la mort’ (Cevallos, p. 60).
[57] Toreño, Appendix, i. 466, 467.
[58] The third prisoner was Ferdinand’s uncle, Don Antonio.
[59] This letter, eliminated by the editors of the Correspondance de Napoléon, may be found in Lecestre, Lettres inédites de Napoléon I, i. p. 207.
[60] Napoleon, disapproving of Murat’s action on this point, committed himself to two astounding historical statements. ‘Why trouble about the sword,’ he wrote; ‘Francis I was a Bourbon [!] and he was taken by the Italians, not the Spaniards’ [!!] (Nap. Corresp., 13,724).
[61] Murat to Napoleon, April 22.
[62] Napoleon to Murat, April 26.