His excuse for the treachery as expressed at the time was as follows: "My action is not good from a certain point of view, I know. But my policy demands that I shall not leave in my rear, so near to Paris, a dynasty hostile to mine." From this and from other similar remarks, it would seem that his resolve to dethrone the Bourbons was taken while on his march to Jena, but was thrust down into the abyss of his inscrutable will for a whole year, until Junot's march to Lisbon furnished a safe means for effecting the subjugation of Spain. This end he thenceforth pursued unswervingly with no sign of remorse, or even of hesitation—unless we accept as genuine the almost certainly spurious letter of March 29th, 1808. That letter represents him as blaming Murat for entering Madrid, when he had repeatedly urged him to do so; as asking his advice after he had all along kept him in ignorance as to his aims; and as writing a philosophical homily on the unused energies of the Spanish people, for whom in his genuine letters he expressed a lofty contempt.[192]
The whole enterprise is, indeed, a masterpiece of skill, but a masterpiece marred by ineffaceable stains of treachery. And at the close of his life, he himself said: "I embarked very badly on the Spanish affair, I confess: the immorality of it was too patent, the injustice too cynical, and the whole thing wears an ugly look since I have fallen; for the attempt is only seen in its hideous nakedness deprived of all majesty and of the many benefits which completed my intention."
That he hoped to reform Spain is certain. Political and social reforms had hitherto consolidated the work of conquest; and those which he soon offered to the Spaniards might possibly have renovated that nation, had they not been handed in at the sword's point; but the motive was too obvious, the intervention too insulting, to render success possible with the most sensitive people in Europe. On May 2nd he wrote to Murat that he intended King Joseph of Naples to reign at Madrid, and offered to Murat either Portugal or Naples.[193] He chose the latter. Joseph was allowed no choice in the matter. He was summoned from Naples to Bayonne, and, on arriving at Pau, heard with great surprise that he was King of Spain.
Napoleon's selection was tactful. At Naples, the eldest of the Bonapartes had effected many reforms and was generally popular; but the treachery of Bayonne blasted all hopes of his succeeding at Madrid. Though the grandees of Spain welcomed the new monarch with courtly grace, though Charles IV. gave him his blessing, though Ferdinand demeaned himself by advising his former subjects quietly to submit, the populace willed otherwise.
Every instinct of the Spanish nature was aflame with resentment. Loathing for Charles IV., his Queen, and their favourite, whom Napoleon richly dowered, love of the young King whom he falsely filched away, detestation of the French troops who outraged the rights of hospitality, and zeal for the Roman Catholic Church, whose chief had just been robbed of half his States, goaded the Spaniards to madness. Their indignation rumbled hoarsely for a time, like a volcano in labour, and then burst forth in an explosion of fury. The constitution which Napoleon presented to the Spanish Notables at Bayonne was accepted by them, only to be flung back with scorn by the people. The men of enlightenment who counselled prudence and patience were slain by raging mobs or sought safety in flight. The rising was at once national in its grand spontaneity and local in its intensity. Province after province rose in arms, except the north and centre, where 80,000 French troops held the patriots in check. In the van of the movement was the rugged little province of Asturias, long ago the forlorn hope of the Christians in their desperate conflicts with the Moors. Intrenched behind their mountains and proud of their ancient fame, the Asturians ventured on the sublime folly of declaring war against the ruler of the West and the lord of 900,000 warriors. Swiftly Galicia and Leon in the north repeated the challenge; while in the south, the fertile lands of Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia flashed back from their mountains the beacon lights of a national war. The former dislike of England was forgotten. The Juntas of Asturias, Galicia, and Andalusia sent appeals to us for help, to which Canning generously responded; and, on July 4th, we passed at a single bound from war with the Spanish Bourbons to an informal alliance with the people of Spain.
Napoleon now began to see the magnitude of his error. Instead of gaining control over Spain and the Indies, he had changed long-suffering allies into irreconcilable foes. He prepared to conquer Spain. While Joseph was escorted to his new capital by a small army, Napoleon from Bayonne directed the operations of his generals. Holding the northern road from Bayonne to Burgos and Madrid, they were to send out cautious feelers against the bands of insurgents; for, as Napoleon wrote to Savary (July 13th): "In civil wars it is the important posts that must be held: one ought not to go everywhere." Weighty words, which his lieutenants in Spain were often to disregard! Bessières in the north gained a success at Medina de Rio Seco; but a signal disaster in the south ruined the whole campaign. Dupont, after beating the levies of Andalusia, penetrated into the heart of that great province, and, when cumbered with plunder, his divided forces were surrounded, cut off from their supplies, and forced to surrender at Baylen—in all about 20,000 men (July 19th). The news that a French army had laid down its arms caused an immense sensation in an age when Napoleon's troops were held to be invincible. Baylen was hailed everywhere by despairing patriots as the dawn of a new era. And such it was to be. If Valmy proclaimed the advent of militant democracy, the victory of Spaniards over one of the bravest of Napoleon's generals was felt to be an even greater portent. It ushered in the epoch of national resistance to the overweening claims of the Emperor of the West.
That truth he seems dimly to have surmised. His rage on hearing of the capitulation was at first too deep for words. Then he burst out: "Could I have expected that from Dupont, a man whom I loved, and was rearing up to become a Marshal? They say he had no other way to save the lives of his soldiers. Better, far better, to have died with arms in their hands. Their death would have been glorious: we should have avenged them. You can always supply the place of soldiers. Honour alone, when once lost, can never be regained."
Moreover, the material consequences were considerable. The Spaniards speedily threatened Madrid; and, on the advice of Savary, Joseph withdrew from his capital after a week's sojourn, and fell back hurriedly on the line of the Upper Ebro, where the French rallied for a second advance.
Their misfortunes did not end here. In the north-east the hardy Catalans had risen against the invaders, and by sheer pluck and audacity cooped them up in their ill-gotten strongholds of Barcelona and Figueras. The men of Arragon, too, never backward in upholding their ancient liberties, rallied to defend their capital Saragossa. Their rage was increased by the arrival of Palafox, who had escaped in disguise from the suite of Ferdinand at Bayonne, and brought news of the treachery there perpetrated. Beaten outside their ancient city, and unable to hold its crumbling walls against the French cannon and columns of assault, the defenders yet fiercely turned to bay amidst its narrow lanes and massive monasteries. There a novel warfare was waged. From street to street and house to house the fight eddied for days, the Arragonese opposing to French valour the stubborn devotion ever shown by the peoples of the peninsula in defence of their walled cities, and an enthusiasm kindled by the zeal of their monks and the heroism of the Maid of Saragossa. Finally, on August 10th, the noble city shook off the grip of the 15,000 assailants, who fell back to join Joseph's forces higher up the Ebro.
Even now the Emperor did not fully realize the serious nature of the war that was beginning. Despite Savary's warnings of the dangers to be faced in Spain, he persisted in thinking of it as an ordinary war that could be ended by good strategy and a few victories. He censured Joseph and Savary for giving up the line of the Upper Douro: he blamed them next for the evacuation of Tudela, and summed up the situation by stating that "all the Spanish forces are not able to overthrow 25,000 French in a reasonable position"—adding, with stinging satire: "In war men are nothing: it is a man who is everything."