CHAPTER VII.
Reign of Charles the Fourth. — French Revolution. — Inquisition. — Plot of the Escurial. — Ferdinand the Seventh. — Bonaparte. — The French Invasion and Occupation of the Country. — Restoration of Ferdinand the Seventh. — His Despotism. — An Interregnum in Letters. — Reaction. — Conclusion.
The reign of Charles the Fourth was not one in which a literary contest could be carried on with the freedom that alone can render such contests the means of intellectual progress. His profligate favorite, the Prince of the Peace, during a long administration of the affairs of the country, overshadowed every thing with an influence hardly less fatal to what he patronized than to what he oppressed. The revolution in France, first resisted, as it was elsewhere, and then corruptly conciliated, struck the same terror at Madrid that it did at Rome and Naples; and, while its open defiance of every thing Christian filled the hearts of a large majority of the Spanish people with a horror greater than it inspired even in Italy, not a few were led away by it from their time-honored feelings of religion and loyalty, and prepared for changes like those that were already overturning the thrones of half Europe. Amidst this confusion, and taking advantage of it, the Inquisition, grown flexible in the hands of the government as a political machine, but still renouncing none of its religious pretensions, came forth with its last “Index Expurgatorius” to meet the invasion of French philosophy and insubordination.[390] Acting under express instructions from the powers of the state it received against men of letters, and especially those connected with the universities, an immense number of denunciations, which, though rarely prosecuted to conviction and punishment, were still formidable enough to prevent the public expression of opinions on any subject that could endanger the social condition of the individual who ventured to entertain them. In all its worst forms, therefore, oppression, civil, political, and religious, appeared to be settling down with a new and portentous weight on the whole country. All men felt it. It seemed as if the very principle of life in the atmosphere they breathed had become tainted and unwholesome. But they felt, too, that the same atmosphere was charged with the spirit of a great revolution; and the boldest walked warily and were hushed, while they waited for changes the shock of whose fierce elements none could willingly encounter.
At last the convulsion came. In 1807, the heir apparent was brought into direct collision with the Prince of the Peace, and took measures to defend his personal rights. The affair of the Escurial followed; darker than the dark cells in which it was conceived. Ferdinand was accused, under the influence of the favorite, with a design to dethrone and murder his own father and mother; and, for a moment, Europe seemed threatened with a crime which even the unscrupulous despotism of Philip the Second had not ventured to commit. This was prevented by the manly boldness and constancy of Escoiquiz. But things could not long remain in the uneasy and treacherous position in which such a rash attempt at convulsion had left them. The great revolution broke out at Aranjuez in March, 1808; Charles the Fourth abdicated in shame and terror; and Ferdinand the Seventh ascended the tottering throne of his ancestors amidst the exultation of his people. But Napoleon, then at the summit of his vast power, interfered in the troubles he had not been unwilling to foster. Under the pretext, that such fatal differences as had arisen between the father and son would disturb the affairs of Europe, he drew the royal family of Spain into his toils at Bayonne; and there, on the soil of France, the crown of the Bourbon race in Spain was ignominiously surrendered into his hands, and by him placed on the head of his brother, already king of Naples.
It was all the work of a few short weeks; and the fate of Spain seemed to be sealed with a seal that no human power would be permitted to break. But the people of that land of faith and chivalry were not forgetful of their ancient honor in this the day of their great trial. They boldly refused to ratify the treaty to which father and son had alike put their dishonored names, and sprang to arms to prevent its provisions from being fulfilled by foreign intervention. It was a fierce struggle. For nearly six years, the forces of France were spread over the country, sometimes seeming to cover the whole of it, and sometimes only small portions, but seldom exerting any real control beyond the camps they occupied and the cities they from time to time garrisoned. At last, in 1813, under the leading of England, the invaders were driven through the gorges of the Pyrenees; and, as a part of the great European retribution, Ferdinand the Seventh was replaced on the throne he had so weakly abdicated.
He was received by his people with a loyalty that seemed to belong to the earliest ages of the monarchy. But it was lost on him. He returned untaught by the misfortunes he had suffered, and unmoved by a fidelity which had showed itself ready to sacrifice a whole generation and its hopes to his honor and rights. As far as was possible, he restored all the forms and appliances of the old despotism, and thrust from his confidence the very men who had brought him home on their shields, and who only claimed for their country the exercise of a salutary freedom, without which he himself could not be maintained on the throne where their courage and constancy had seated him.[391] Even the Inquisition, which it had been one of the most popular acts of the French invaders to abolish, and one of the wisest acts of the national Cortes to declare incompatible with the constitution of the monarchy, was solemnly reinstated; and if, during a reign protracted through twenty sad and troubled years, any proper freedom was for a moment granted to thought, to speech, or to the press, it was only in consequence of changes over which the prince had no control, and of which he felt himself to be rather the victim than the author.[392]
Amidst such violence and confusion,—when men slept in armour, as they had during the Moorish contest, and knew not whether they should be waked amidst their households or amidst their enemies,—elegant letters, of course, could hardly hope to find shelter or resting-place. The grave political questions, that agitated the country and shook the foundations of society, were precisely those in which it might be foreseen, that intellectual men would take the deepest interest and expose themselves to sufferings and ruin, like the less favored masses around them. And so, in fact, it proved. Nearly every poet and prose-writer, known as such at the end of the reign of Charles the Fourth, became involved in the fierce political changes of the time;—changes so various and so opposite, that those who escaped from the consequences of one were often, on that very account, sure to suffer in the next that followed.
The young men who, during this disastrous period, were just beginning to unfold their promise, were checked at the outset of their career. Martinez de la Rosa, five years a prisoner of state on a rock in Africa before he had reached the age of thirty; Angel de Rivas, still younger, left for dead on the bloody field of Ocaña; Galiano, sentenced to the scaffold while he was earning his daily bread by daily labor as a teacher in London; Torreno, brought home on his bier, as he returned from his third exile; Arriaza serving in the armies of Ferdinand; Arjona and Barbero silenced; Xavier de Burgos plundered; Gallego, Xerica, Hermosilla, Mauri, Mora, Tapia;—these, and many others, all young men and full of the hopes that letters inspire in generous spirits, were seized upon by the passions of party or the demands of patriotism, and hurried into paths far from the pursuits to which their talents, their taste, and their social relations would alike have dedicated them;—pursuits on which, in fact, they had already entered, and to which they have since owed their most brilliant and enduring distinctions, as well as their truest happiness.
Those who were older, and had been before marked by success and public favor, fared still worse. The eyes of men had already been fastened upon them, and in the conflict and crush of the contending factions they were sure to suffer, as one or another prevailed in the long-protracted struggle. Jovellanos and Cienfuegos, as we have seen, were almost instantly martyrs to their patriotism. Melendez Valdes sunk a later and more miserable victim. Conde and Escoiquiz were exiled for opposite reasons. Moratin, after having faced death in the frightful form of want in his own country, survived to a fate in France hardly less to be dreaded. Quintana was cast by his ungrateful sovereign into the Bastile of Pamplona, with an apparent intention that he should perish there. To all of them the happiness of success in letters, to which they had been accustomed amidst the encouragement of their friends and countrymen, was denied;—from all, the hopes of fame seemed to be cut off. Most of them, and most of the small class to which they belonged, passed, as voluntary or involuntary exiles, beyond the limits of a country which they might still be compelled to love, but which they could no longer respect. The rest were silent. It was an interregnum in all elegant culture, such as no modern nation had yet seen,—not even Spain herself during the War of the Succession.