♦The Juiz do Povo proposes to ask for a king of Buonaparte’s family.♦
Whatever may have been the motives of the French officer in opposing Junot’s pretensions to the crown, those of M. Verdier, and the Portugueze who acted with him, cannot be mistaken, and ought not to be condemned. Unlikely as it appeared that the House of Braganza should recover the throne, they desired in this dissolution of government, to build up the best system which circumstances seemed to allow; and for this purpose they drew up a paper which they entrusted to the Juiz do Povo, Jose de Abreu Campos, that he might produce it at the assembly. The Junta of the Three Estates was but a mere name which might give colour to the proceedings of Junot; the Juiz do Povo was little more; but one name served well in array against another, and moreover this had a popular sound with it, favouring that order of things which these persons were properly desirous of restoring. Accordingly when the deputies of the clergy and the various bodies corporate assembled in the mock Junta, and some person, after the Conde da Ega’s speech, would have answered for the Juiz do Povo, Campos spoke boldly and honestly for himself. He declared that he did not assent to what was going on, and that he had no authority to assent, for he was not a representative of the people. What was proposed could not be their wish, as the paper with which he had been entrusted would show. He then, amid the confusion which his unlooked-for opposition occasioned, produced and read a paper to this effect: that the Portugueze, looking upon France as their mother country, inasmuch as the first conquerors of Portugal from the Moors were French, and mindful of the aid which they had received from France when they recovered their independence in 1640, acknowledged with all gratitude the protection which the greatest of monarchs at this time offered them: they desired a constitution and a constitutional king, who should be a prince of the imperial family; the constitution with which they should be content was one in all things like that which had been given to the duchy of Warsaw, with only an alteration in the mode of electing the national representatives, which should be by chambers. The better to conform with their ancient customs, they desired that the Catholic and Apostolic Roman religion might be the religion of the state, requiring the admission of all the principles established by the last Concordat with France, whereby the free and public enjoyment of all modes of worship was tolerated: that there should be a minister specifically charged with the department of public instruction: that the liberty of the press should be established as it then was in France, because ignorance and error had caused their decay: that the legislative power should be divided into two houses, and communicate with the executive: that the judges should be independent, and the Code Napoleon established: that causes should be publicly tried with justice and dispatch: that all property held in mortmain should be set free: that the public debt should be paid, for which means were not wanting: and that the number of public functionaries, who in the general change must be displaced, should all receive decent and equitable pensions, and upon every vacancy be ♦Neves, T. ii. C. 42.♦ preferred, provided they were duly qualified.
♦Fate of the mover of this scheme.♦
Junot and the sycophants who hoped to figure at his court were incensed at this opposition to their project. They easily overpowered the Juiz do Povo in the meeting, and the Intendant of Police was then instructed to find out the persons who had instigated him. M. Verdier in consequence was sent back to Thomar in disgrace. This was what he would most have wished, could he have returned to that tranquillity and domestic happiness which he was wont to enjoy. But the crimes of his countrymen were visited upon him. In the tumults which ensued, the people among whom he had lived so long, and by whom he had been deservedly loved and respected, imagined that as a Frenchman he must needs be a partizan of France, and he was compelled to return to Lisbon for safety. There, as long as the French continued in Portugal, he remained under the inspection of the police, a prisoner by Junot’s orders in his own house. Upon the restoration of the legitimate government, the part which he had taken was remembered as a crime, and he was ordered to leave the kingdom. The forms of justice had long been dispensed with in Portugal; and a man who had violated no allegiance, who had broken no law, who had offended in no point of honour or of duty, was marked for punishment, when those who had sinned in every point were overlooked. Junot however had little leisure to enjoy his dreams of royalty; he was roused from them by the events in Spain, to which it is now necessary to recur.
CHAPTER III.
AFFAIR OF THE ESCURIAL. SEIZURE OF THE SPANISH FORTRESSES. TUMULTS AT ARANJUEZ. FERDINAND MADE KING IN HIS FATHER’S STEAD.
♦1807.
The six months which had now elapsed since the treaty of Fontainebleau had been the most eventful in Spanish history. On the 30th of October, a few days after the signature of that treaty, and a few weeks after Prince Ferdinand had written to Buonaparte, a proclamation was issued from the Escurial, in which the King of Spain accused his eldest son of conspiring to dethrone him. ♦Ferdinand accused of plotting to dethrone his father, and attempting his mother’s life.♦ “God,” said he, in this extraordinary paper, “who watches over his creatures, does not permit the consummation of atrocious deeds when the intended victims are innocent; thus his omnipotence has saved me from the most unheard-of catastrophe. An unknown hand has discovered a conspiracy carried on in my own palace against my person. My life was too long in the eyes of my successor, who, infatuated by prejudice, and alienated from every principle of Christianity that my parental care had taught him, had entered into a project for dethroning me. Being informed of this, I surprised him in my room, and found in his possession the cipher of his correspondence and of the instructions he ♦1807. November.♦ had received from the vile conspirators. The result has been the detection of several malefactors, whose imprisonment I have ordered, as also the arrest of my son.” In a letter to Buonaparte, written the day before this proclamation was published, the King made a more horrible charge against the Prince, whom he accused of having attempted the life of his mother. “An attempt so frightful,” said he, “ought to be punished with the most exemplary rigour of the laws. The law which calls him to the succession must be revoked: one of his brothers will be more worthy to replace him on my throne and in my heart ... I thought that all the plots of the Queen of Naples would have been buried with her daughter!” This alluded to an opinion that the Prince’s late wife had first instigated him to cabal against his father. She doubtless detested Godoy and her infamous mother-in-law, and they therefore would not fail to indispose the King toward her.