Word was sent to the militia that His Majesty desired the cessation of bloodshed, and it did not seem befitting the splendour of the sceptre for the King’s Guard to be obliged to lay down their arms. After an animated discussion it was decided that the four battalions which had attacked the town should lay down their arms, and that the other two should go out armed and take up their positions in Vicalvaro and Leganes.
But late in the afternoon, when this arrangement was going to take place, the four aggressive battalions, having made another attack on the militia, fled away by the stone steps which lead from the square of the royal palace to the Campo de Moro. Morillo brought more artillery into play, and Ballesteros, after attacking with his cavalry the groups of peasants who were proclaiming absolutism, also started in pursuit of the Guards. It spoke well for the democrats that, when the palace was momentarily left without any guard, until the Count of Carthagena arrived with the regiment of the Infante Don Carlos, it was perfectly respected, and no attempt was made to invade it.
But when Morillo arrived with his troops at the royal gates, Ferdinand rushed to the window and incited his General to attack the people, crying out: “After them! after them!” Such cowardice and treachery seemed incredible.
Instigated by his love of double-dealing and intrigue, Ferdinand sent again for Riego, the revolutionary leader, and deceived him by his conciliatory assertions that he only wished his welfare and that of all Spaniards, and that he did not believe his heart was capable of nourishing the counsels of perfidious men.
Riego, unacquainted with the dissimulation of the Court, was quite enthusiastic at the sudden conversion of the King, and in this spirit he would not have the “Trágala” sung any more, and declared he would have those who did so arrested.
The astuteness and deception of the King gave rise to inextricable confusion in affairs. On one side he promised the French Minister that he would establish the two Chambers, and on the other side he was telling Mataflorida to take the reins of a Regency and proclaim Absolutism. When the three Generals met the King as he crossed the bridge at Cadiz connecting the island with the mainland, and represented to him that it would be well for him to place the Regency in their hands, he exclaimed, “Hola! But I am not mad! That is good!” and continued his way to Cadiz.
As this is not a political book, we need not enter more fully into the long struggle of Ferdinand’s Absolutism against the Constitutional party, and how he was obliged to leave Madrid.
The country again saw the French called to interfere in the affairs of the nation, and it was indeed, as we know, only due to Angoulême that Ferdinand, after his time of humiliation in Andalusia, returned to the capital.
Once more the people went mad with delight at the sight of the King. Riego the revolutionist was dragged in a basket at an ass’s tail, to be hanged and quartered as a felon, and the people who hailed the return of the absolute monarch were indeed bidding welcome to the return of the chains which had shackled them.