The same night [May 1], Ferdinand’s advisers bethought them of a new and ingenious move—we need not ascribe it to his own brains, which were surely incapable of the device. He wrote to King Charles to the effect that he had always regarded the abdication at Aranjuez as free and unconstrained, but that if it had not been so, he was ready to lay down his crown again and hand it back to his father. But the ceremony must be done in an open and honourable way at Madrid, before the Cortes. If his parent personally resumed the reins of power, he bowed to his authority: but if his age and infirmities induced him to name a regent, that regent should be his eldest son.
This proposal did not suit the Emperor at all, so he dictated to the old king a long letter, in which the Napoleonesque phraseology peeps out in a score of places. Charles refuses all terms, says that his son’s conduct had ‘placed a barrier of bronze between him and the Spanish throne,’ and concludes that ‘only the Emperor can save Spain, and he himself would do nothing that might stir up the fire of discord among his loved vassals or bring misery on them’ [May 2]. Ferdinand replied with an equally long letter justifying at large all his conduct of the past year [May 4].
When things stood at this point there arrived from Madrid the news of the bloody events of the second of May, which we have to relate in the next chapter. This brought Napoleon up to striking point, and once more he intervened in his own person. He sent for Ferdinand, and in the presence of his parents accused him of having stirred up the riot in the capital, and informed him that if he did not sign an abdication and an acknowledgement of his father as the only true king by twelve that night ‘he should be dealt with as a traitor and rebel.’ This is Napoleon’s own version[55], but Spanish witnesses say that the words used were that ‘he must choose between abdication and death[56].’
To any one who remembered the fate of the Duc d’Enghien such a phrase was more than an idle threat. It brought the stubborn Ferdinand to his knees at last. That evening he wrote out a simple and straightforward form of abdication—‘without any motive, save that I limited my former proposal for resignation by certain proper conditions, your majesty has thought fit to insult me in the presence of my mother and the Emperor. I have been abused in the most humiliating terms: I have been told that unless I make an unconditional resignation I and my companions shall be treated as criminals guilty of conspiracy. Under such circumstances I make the renunciation which your majesty commands, that the government of Spain may return to the condition in which it was on March 19 last, the day on which your majesty spontaneously laid down your crown in my favour[57]’ [May 6].
Ferdinand having abdicated, Napoleon at once produced a treaty which King Charles had ratified on the previous day, twenty-four hours before his son gave in. By it the old man ‘resigned all his rights to the throne of Spain and the Indies to the Emperor Napoleon, the only person who in the present state of affairs can re-establish order.’ He only annexed two conditions: ‘(1) that there should be no partition of the Spanish monarchy; (2) that the Roman Catholic religion should be the only one recognized in Spain: there should, according to the existing practice, be no toleration for any of the reformed religions, much less for infidels.’ If anything is wanting to make the silly old man odious, it is the final touch of bigotry in his abdication. The rest of the document consists of a recital of the pensions and estates in France conferred by the Emperor on his dupe in return for the abdication. It took five days more to extort from Don Ferdinand a formal cession of his ultimate rights, as Prince of the Asturias, to the succession to the throne. It was signed on May 10, and purported to give him in return a palace in France and a large annual revenue. But he was really put under close surveillance at Talleyrand’s estate of Valençay, along with his brother Don Carlos, and never allowed to go beyond its bounds. The Emperor’s letter of instructions to Talleyrand is worth quoting for its cynical brutality. He wrote to his ex-minister, who was much disgusted with the invidious duty put upon him: ‘Let the princes be received without any show, but yet respectably, and try to keep them amused. If you chance to have a theatre at Valençay there would be no harm in importing some actors now and then. You may bring over Mme de Talleyrand [the notorious Mme Grand of 1800], and four or five ladies in attendance on her. If the prince should fall in love with some pretty girl among them, there would be no harm in it, especially if you are quite sure of her. The prince must not be allowed to take any false step, but must be amused and occupied. I ought, for political safety, to put him in Bitche or some other fortress-prison: but as he placed himself into my clutches of his own free will, and as everything in Spain is going on as I desire, I have resolved merely to place him in a country house where he can amuse himself under strict surveillance.... Your mission is really a very honourable one—to take in three[58] illustrious guests and keep them amused is a task which should suit a Frenchman and a personage of your rank[59].’ Napoleon afterwards owned that he was framing what he called ‘a practical joke’ on Talleyrand, by billeting the Spaniards on him. The Prince of Benevento had wished to make no appearance in the matter, and the Emperor revenged himself by implicating him in it as the jailor of his captives. Talleyrand’s anger may be imagined, and estimated by his after conduct.
At Valençay the unfortunate Ferdinand was destined to remain for nearly six years, not amusing himself at all according to Napoleon’s ideas of amusement, but employed in a great many church services, a little partridge shooting, and (so his unwilling jailor tells us) the spoiling of much paper, not with the pen but with the scissors; for he developed a childish passion for clipping out paper patterns and bestowing them on every one that he met. One could pardon him everything if he had not spoilt his attitude as victim and martyr by occasionally sending adulatory letters to the Emperor, and even to his own supplanter, Joseph Bonaparte the new King of Spain.
SECTION I: CHAPTER VI
THE SECOND OF MAY: OUTBREAK OF THE SPANISH INSURRECTION
When King Ferdinand had taken his departure to Bayonne, the position of Murat in Madrid became very delicate. He might expect to hear at any moment, since the Emperor’s plans were more or less known to him, either that the Spanish king had been made a prisoner, or that he had taken the alarm, escaped from his escort, and fled into the mountains. In either case trouble at Madrid was very probable, though there was no serious military danger to be feared, for of Spanish troops there were only 3,000 in the city, while some 35,000 French were encamped in or about it. But there might be a moment of confusion if the Junta of Regency should take violent measures on hearing of the King’s fate, or the populace of Madrid (and this was much more likely) burst into rioting.