“My Brother: I have received your Royal Highness’s letter. In the papers of the King, your father, you must have seen proofs of the interest I have always felt in your Royal Highness. You will permit me, under present circumstances, to address you loyally and frankly.
“I hoped, on reaching Madrid, to have persuaded my illustrious friend to undertake some necessary reforms in his states, and to satisfy in some measure the public opinion of the country. The dismissal of the Prince of the Peace seemed to me to be necessary both for his own happiness and that of his subjects. Affairs in the north have delayed my journey. Certain events have taken place at Aranjuez. I pronounce no judgment on these, nor on the conduct of the Prince of the Peace; but I know this well, that it is dangerous for kings to accustom their people to shed blood and to administer justice to themselves. I pray God that your Royal Highness may not learn this one day by your own experience. It is not in the interest of Spain to injure a Prince who is husband to a Princess of the blood royal, and who has so long reigned over the kingdom. He has now no friends, nor will your Highness have any if misfortune overtake you. Men are always ready to make us suffer for the honors they have paid us. Besides, how could proceedings be taken against the Prince of the Peace without implicating the Queen and the King, your father? Such a lawsuit will encourage dissensions and faction, and the consequences will be fatal to your crown. Your Royal Highness has no other claim to it than that conferred on you by your mother; if the lawsuit reflects dishonor on her, your Royal Highness’s rights will be thereby destroyed. Close your ears, therefore, to weak and perfidious counsel; you have no right to sit in judgment on the Prince of the Peace. His crimes, if he is accused of any, are absorbed in the rights of the throne. I have often expressed a desire that the Prince of the Peace should be removed from the conduct of affairs. The friendship of King Charles has often induced me to keep silence, and to turn away my eyes from his weak attachment. Wretched creatures that we all are! our motto should be, ‘Weakness and Error.’ But all may be arranged. Let the Prince of the Peace be banished from Spain; I will offer him a refuge in France.
“As to the abdication of King Charles IV., he made it at a time when my army was occupying Spain, and in the eyes of Europe and of posterity I should appear to have sent large numbers of troops thither merely in order to turn my ally and my friend off his throne. As a neighboring sovereign, I may be allowed to wait for full and entire information before recognizing this abdication. I say to your Royal Highness, to all Spaniards, and to the whole world, if the abdication of King Charles IV. is spontaneous, if it has not been forced on him by the insurrection and the tumult at Aranjuez I will make no difficulty about recognizing it, and will acknowledge your Royal Highness to be King of Spain. I desire, therefore, to converse with you to this end. The caution with which I have watched these things for the last month should be a guarantee of the support I would afford you if, in your turn, a factious spirit, of whatever kind, should disturb you on your throne. When King Charles informed me of the events of last October, I was painfully impressed by them, and I may have contributed, by the suggestions I then made, to the happy ending of the Escurial affair. Your Royal Highness was greatly to blame: no other proof of this is needed than the letter you addressed to me, which I have persistently ignored. When, in your turn, you are a King, you will know how sacred are the rights of a throne. Any advances made to a foreign sovereign are criminal. Your Royal Highness must be on your guard against outbursts of popular feeling. A few of my soldiers might be murdered in isolated situations, but the destruction of Spain would be the result. I already perceive with regret that letters from the Captain-General of Catalonia have been distributed about Madrid, and that everything has been done to promote disturbance there.
“I have now fully explained myself to your Royal Highness; you perceive that I am hesitating between various ideas, which require confirmation. You may be assured that, in any case, I shall treat you as I would treat the King, your father. I beg you to believe in my desire for conciliation, and to grant me an opportunity of proving my good will and high esteem.”
We see by this letter that the Emperor still reserved to himself the right of judging of the validity of the abdication of Charles IV. It appears, however, that Savary flattered the young King into the belief of more positive approbation than was actually contained in the letter, while Murat was secretly urging King Charles to retract. By thus writing to the Prince of the Asturias, the Emperor contrived a means of saving the Prince of the Peace, if necessary, from taking part with Charles IV., and finally of blaming the first symptom of rebellion against his father on the part of the Prince of the Asturias. It was known, however, at this period that the ambassador of France had suggested to the Prince the demand which he had made for the hand of a Princess of the Imperial family in marriage. It was this demand which had most deeply offended the favorite.
The Prince of the Asturias left Madrid on the 10th of April. He received tokens of affection from his people on his way, and great anxiety was everywhere displayed at his approach to the frontier. Savary reiterated his assurances that by pushing on farther they must meet the Emperor, and kept the Prince under strict guard. On reaching Burgos, the Prince’s council began to take alarm; but they continued their route to Vittoria, where the people unharnessed the horses from the carriage, the guard had to force a passage, and this was done almost against the will of the Prince, whose hopes were fading.
“At Vittoria,” Savary told me afterward, “I thought for an instant that my prisoner was about to escape, but I took care he should not. I frightened him.” “But,” I answered, “do you mean that, if he had resisted, you would have killed him?” “Oh no,” he said; “but I protest that I would never have let him go back.”
The Prince’s councilors, however, were reassured by the reflection that a marriage would conciliate all parties, and, being unable to understand the immensity of the Imperial projects, they looked upon such an alliance, together with the sacrifice of a few men and of the liberty of trade, as the conclusion of a definitive treaty. They yielded, therefore, to the soldierly arguments of Savary, and finally crossed the frontier.
The royal party entered Bayonne on the 21st of April. Those persons of the household who were then in attendance on the Emperor discovered, by the change in his temper, how important for the success of his projects was the arrival of the Infantes. Until then he had seemed full of care, confiding in no one, but dispatching courier after courier. He dared not reckon on the success of his plan. He had invited the old King to come to him, who, as well as the Queen and the favorite, had just then nothing better to do; but it seemed so likely that the new King would take advantage of the revolt about to break out in Spain and would rouse the new-born enthusiasm of all classes for the deliverance of their country, that, until the actual moment when he was informed that the Prince had crossed the Pyrenees, the Emperor must have looked on the event as wellnigh impossible. He has since said that, dating from this blunder, he had no longer a doubt of the incapacity of King Ferdinand.
On the 20th of April the Queen of Holland gave birth to a son who was named Louis.