A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 1, 1807-1809

by Charles Oman

From the tenth of April, the day of the King’s departure for the north, down to the twenty-ninth there was no serious cause for apprehension. The people were no doubt restless: they could not understand why the French lingered in Madrid instead of marching on Portugal or Gibraltar, according to their expressed intention. Rumours of all kinds, some of which hit off fairly well the true projects of Bonaparte, were current. Murat’s conduct was not calculated to reassure observers; he gave himself the airs of a military governor, rather than those of an officer engaged in conducting an allied army through friendly territory. Some of his acts gave terrible offence, such as that of insisting that the sword of Francis I, taken at Pavia in 1525, the pride for three centuries of the royal armoury, should be given up to him[60]. His call on the Junta for the surrender of the Prince of the Peace, whom he forwarded under French escort to Bayonne, could not fail to be unpopular. But the first real signs of danger were not seen till the twenty-second of April, when Murat, in obedience to his master, intended to publish the protest of Charles IV against his abdication. It was to be presented to the Junta in the form of a letter to its president, Don Antonio. Meanwhile French agents were set to print it: their Spanish underlings stole and circulated some of the proofs. Their appearance raised a mob, for the name of Charles IV could only suggest the reappearance of Godoy. An angry crowd broke into the printing office, destroyed the presses, and hunted away the Frenchmen. Murat at once made a great matter of the affair, and began to threaten the Junta. ‘The army which he commanded could not without dishonouring itself allow disorders to arise: there must be no more anarchy in Spain. He was not going to allow the corrupt tools of the English government to stir up troubles.’ The Junta replied with rather more spirit than might have been expected, asked why an army of 35,000 French troops had now lingered more than a month around the capital, and expressed an opinion that the riot was but an explosion of loyalty to Ferdinand. But they undertook to deal severely with factious persons, and to discourage even harmless assemblies like that of the twenty-second.

Meanwhile Murat wrote to the Emperor that it was absurd that he could not yet establish a police of his own in Madrid, that he could not print what he pleased, and that he had to negotiate with the Junta when he wished his orders published, instead of being able to issue them on his own authority[61]. He was answered in a style which must have surprised him. Napoleon was ashamed, he said, of a general who, with 50,000 men at his back, asked for things instead of taking them. His letters to the Junta were servile; he should simply assume possession of the reins of power, and act for himself. If the canaille stirred, let it be shot down[62]. Murat could only reply that ‘if he had not yet scattered rioters by a blast of grape, it was only because there were no mobs to shoot: his imperial majesty’s rebuke had stunned him “like a tile falling on his head” by its unmerited severity[63].’

Within three days of this letter there was to be plenty of grape-shot, enough to satisfy both Emperor and Grand-Duke. They probably had the revolt of Cairo and the 13th Vendémiaire in their mind, and were both under the impression that a good émeute pitilessly crushed by artillery was the best basis of a new régime.

On the night of April 29 the first clear and accurate account of what was happening at Bayonne arrived at Madrid. Napoleon had intercepted all the letters which Don Ferdinand had tried to smuggle out of his prison. He read them with grave disapproval, for his guest had not scrupled to use the expression ‘the cursed French,’ and had hinted at the propriety of resistance. He had not yet been cowed by the threat of a rebel’s death. But on the twenty-third one of the Spaniards at Bayonne succeeded in escaping in disguise, crossed the mountains by a lonely track, and reached Pampeluna, whence he posted to Madrid. This was a certain Navarrese magistrate named Ibarnavarro, to whom Ferdinand had given a verbal message to explain Napoleon’s plans and conduct to the Junta, and to inform them that he would never give in to this vile mixture of force and fraud. He could not send them any definite instructions, not knowing the exact state of affairs at Madrid, and a premature stroke might imperil the life of himself, his brother, and his companions: let them beware therefore of showing their warlike intentions till preparations had been fully made to shake off the yoke of the oppressor.

This message Ibarnavarro delivered on the night of April 29-30 to the Junta[64], who had summoned in to hear it a number of judges and other magnates of the city. Next morning, of course, the information, in a more or less garbled shape, spread all round Madrid: there were foolish rumours that the Biscayans had already taken arms, and that 30,000 of them were marching on Bayonne to save the King, as also that certain of the coast towns had invited the English to land. On the thirtieth leaflets, both written and printed, were being secretly circulated round the city, setting forth the unhappy condition of the King, and bidding his subjects not to forget Numancia[65]. It is astonishing that riots did not break out at once, considering the growing excitement of the people, and the habitual insolence of the French soldiery. But leaders were wanting, and in especial the Junta of Regency and its imbecile old president made no move whatever, on the pretext, apparently, that any commotion might imperil the lives of Napoleon’s prisoners.

It was Murat himself who brought matters to a head next day, by ordering the Junta to put into his hands the remaining members of the royal family, Ferdinand’s youngest brother Don Francisco, a boy of sixteen, and his sister the widowed and exiled Queen of Etruria, with her children. Only Don Antonio, the incapable president of the Junta, and the Archbishop of Toledo, the King’s second-cousin, were to be left behind: the rest were to be sent to Bayonne. Knowing what had happened to Don Ferdinand and Don Carlos, the people were horrified at the news; but they trusted that the Regency would refuse its leave. To its eternal disgrace that body did nothing: it did not even try to smuggle away the young Don Francisco before Murat should arrest him.

On the morning, therefore, of May 2 the streets were filled with people, and the palace gates in especial were beset by an excited mob. It was soon seen that the news was true, for the Queen of Etruria appeared and started for the north with all her numerous family. She was unpopular for having sided with her mother and Godoy against Don Ferdinand, and was allowed to depart undisturbed. But when the carriage that was to bear off Don Francisco was brought up, and one of Murat’s aides-de-camp appeared at the door to take charge of the young prince, the rage of the crowd burst all bounds. The French officer was stoned, and saved with difficulty by a patrol: the coach was torn to pieces. Murat had not been unprepared for something of the kind: the battalion on guard at his palace was at once turned out, and fired a dozen volleys into the unarmed mob, which fled devious, leaving scores of dead and wounded on the ground.

The Grand-Duke thought that the matter was over, but it had but just begun. At the noise of the firing the excited citizens flocked into the streets armed with whatever came to hand, pistols, blunderbusses, fowling-pieces, many only with the long Spanish knife. They fell upon, and slew, a certain number of isolated French soldiers, armed and unarmed, who were off duty and wandering round the town, but they also made a fierce attack on Murat’s guard. Of course they could do little against troops armed and in order: in the first hour of the fight there were only about 1,000 men at the Grand-Duke’s disposal, but this small force held its own without much loss, though eight or ten thousand angry insurgents fell upon them. But within seventy minutes the French army from the suburban camps came pouring into the city, brigade after brigade. After this the struggle was little more than a massacre: many of the insurgents took refuge in houses, and maintained a fierce but futile resistance for some time; but the majority were swept away in a few minutes by cavalry charges. Only at one point did the fight assume a serious shape. Almost the entire body of the Spanish garrison of Madrid refrained from taking any part in the rising: without the orders of the Junta the chiefs refused to move, and the men waited in vain for the orders of their officers. But at the Artillery Park two captains, Daoiz and Velarde, threw open the gates to the rioters, allowed them to seize some hundreds of muskets, and when the first French column appeared ran out three guns and opened upon it with grape[66]. Though aided by no more than forty soldiers, and perhaps 500 civilians, they beat off two assaults, and only succumbed to a third. Daoiz was bayonetted, Velarde shot dead, and their men perished with them; but they had poured three volleys of grape into a street packed with the enemy, and caused the only serious losses which the French suffered that day.