On the 7th the decree arrived from Bayonne, by which Charles announced the reassumption, of his authority, and appointed Murat lieutenant-general of the kingdom. A proclamation came with it, exhorting the Spaniards to trust in the experience of their old King, to obey the authority which he had received from God and his ancestors, to imitate his example, and to believe that there could be no prosperity or salvation for Spain, save in the friendship of her ally the great Napoleon. The next courier brought Ferdinand’s act of resignation to the Father-king, and dispatches whereby the Junta were discharged from their allegiance to him, and instructed to obey the orders of Charles IV. They were thus relieved from a situation in which, if it would have been difficult for any men to have acted well, it was scarcely possible to have acted worse: for they had never been ignorant of Ferdinand’s real situation, and they had received from him discretionary powers which would have authorized the most patriotic and determined measures.
♦Means of resistance authorized by Ferdinand.♦
A day or two after the reassumption of the Father-king had been announced in Madrid, there arrived Ferdinand’s answer to the preposterous questions which the Junta had proposed. However great the previous and the subsequent errors of this unhappy Prince, he was not wanting on this occasion to himself or to his country. He told the Junta that he was not in a state of freedom, and being therefore incapable himself of taking measures either for his own preservation or that of the monarchy, he invested them with full power to remove whithersoever they might deem most advisable, and exercise all the functions of sovereignty in his name, as representatives of his person. He instructed them to commence hostilities as soon as they should know that he was proceeding into the interior of France, which he would not do unless he were compelled; and he enjoined them to prevent in the best manner they could the introduction of more French troops into the Peninsula. This was the substance of one decree. A second, which accompanied it, was directed to the Junta, and as they had suggested, to any chancery or audience of the kingdom, in case they should not be in a situation to act when it arrived. In this Ferdinand declared it to be his royal will that the Cortes should be assembled in whatever place might be deemed most convenient; that they should occupy themselves exclusively at first in attending to the levies and subsidies necessary for the defence of the kingdom, and that their sittings should be permanent.
♦The Junta resolve that they have no longer authority to obey these instructions.♦
These decrees were dated on the 5th, a few hours only before Ferdinand was confronted with his parents, and exposed to those outrages and threats which extorted from him his renunciation. The messenger took a circuitous route, and travelled on foot, for the sake of security; he did not reach Madrid therefore till after Charles’s reassumption of the crown had been officially announced there; and the Junta gladly perceived that the instructions which enjoined them to obey the orders of the father, discharged them from the duty of obeying the son in this instance, Ferdinand being no longer King, and they no longer his servants. By proposing the questions they had gained time for events to take their course, and relieve them, as they vainly hoped, from responsibility and danger. Other hope or motive in proposing them they could have none: and having so far succeeded, they concealed the dispatches for a time, and afterwards destroyed them. To have acted upon them now, they alleged, would have endangered Ferdinand[37] as well as themselves.
♦Address from Ferdinand and the Infante, exhorting the people to submission.♦
The abdications both of the son and father had now been made public, and the people of Madrid, the blood of their townsmen still fresh in their streets, and the yoke upon their necks, read the address by which their late sovereign enjoined them to submit to the will of the Emperor Napoleon. That no colour of authority for the intended usurpation might be wanting, the names of Ferdinand, his brother Don Carlos, and the Infante Don Antonio, were affixed to a proclamation from Bourdeaux, condemning the spirit of resistance which had shown itself, absolving the people from all duties towards them, and exhorting them to obedience to France. In this address, the Infantes were made to say, that, “being deeply sensible of the attachment displayed towards them by the Spaniards, with the utmost grief they beheld them on the point of being plunged into anarchy, and threatened with all the dreadful calamities consequent thereupon. Aware that these might proceed from the ignorance in which the people were, both as to the principles of the conduct pursued by their highnesses, and the plans formed for the benefit of their country, they found themselves under the necessity of making an effort to open their eyes, by salutary counsel, in order to prevent any obstruction to the execution of those plans; and thus to give them the dearest proof of their affection. The circumstances under which the Prince assumed the government; the occupation of several provinces, and of all the frontier fortresses, by French troops; the actual presence of more than 60,000 of that nation in the capital and its environs; and many other circumstances known only to themselves, convinced them that, surrounded by difficulties, they had only chosen, among various expedients, that which was likely to produce the least evil; and, as such, they resolved upon the journey to Bayonne. On their arrival, the Prince, then King, was unexpectedly apprised that his father had protested against his act of abdication. Having accepted the crown only under the impression that the abdication was voluntary, he was no sooner informed of such a protest than his filial duty instantly determined him to give back the throne. But a short time after, the King his father abdicated it in his own name, and that of his whole race, in favour of the Emperor of the French, in order that the Emperor, consulting the good of the nation, should determine the person and race which should hereafter occupy it. In this state of things, considering that any attempt of the Spaniards for the maintenance of their rights could tend only to make streams of blood flow, and to render certain the loss of at least a great part of her provinces, and all her colonies: ... being further convinced, that the most effectual means of preventing these evils was, that their royal highnesses, for themselves, and all connected with them, should assent to the renunciation; taking also into consideration, that the Emperor engaged, in this case, to maintain the independence and integrity of the Spanish monarchy, and its colonies, without retaining the smallest of its dominions for himself, or separating any part from the whole; that he engaged to maintain the unity of the Catholic religion, the security of property, and the continuance of the existing laws and usages which have for so long a time preserved the power and honour of the Spanish nation ... they conceived that they were affording the most undoubted proof of their affection towards it, by sacrificing their individual and personal interests for the benefit of that nation, and by this instrument assenting, as they already had assented in a particular treaty, to the renunciation of all their rights to the throne.... They accordingly released the Spaniards from all their duties in this respect, and exhorted them to consult the interest of their country, by conducting themselves peaceably, and by looking for their happiness to the power and wise arrangements of the Emperor Napoleon.... The Spaniards might assure themselves that, by their zeal to conform to those arrangements, they would give their Prince and the two Infantes the strongest proof of loyalty, in like manner as their royal highnesses gave them the greatest example of paternal affection, by renouncing their rights, and sacrificing their own interests for the happiness of the Spaniards, the sole object of their wishes.”
♦Joseph Buonaparte chosen by his brother for King of Spain.♦
When the Emperor Napoleon had resolved upon dethroning the Spanish Bourbons, it was his wish to have made Lucien Buonaparte King of Spain, the ablest of his brethren, and the only one who was unprovided with a kingdom. His first elevation to the consulship, which was the passage of the Rubicon in his career, had been chiefly brought about by Lucien’s intrepidity and talents. But Lucien, who fancied himself the abler, as in some respects he was indeed the wiser man, had not obtained that ascendancy in his brother’s councils to which he thought himself in many ways entitled; as a lover of constitutional freedom, he heartily disapproved the system which Napoleon pursued, and was therefore in some degree estranged from him, though the bond of fraternal feeling had not been broken. Having in his diplomatic employments found means to amass a princely fortune, he was then residing at Rome, happy in his family and in his pursuits, collecting pictures, and busy in the composition of a long and elaborate poem. This condition of honourable and enviable privacy Buonaparte hoped he might be induced to relinquish for the throne of Spain and of the Spanish Indies. But Lucien knew something of Spain and of the Spaniards, whereas the Emperor had neither taken into consideration the nature of the country nor the character of the people; and even if the injustice and odium of the usurpation had not determined his refusal, the insecurity of such a throne might have decided him, and the certainty that he who accepted it must submit to be the mere instrument of Napoleon’s ambition. The choice therefore then fell upon his brother Joseph, who was reigning not without some popularity at Naples, over a kingdom which had long been grievously misgoverned, and which had submitted in fair war to the right of conquest. He too, by Lucien’s earnest advice, declined the odious elevation; but while he pursued his journey to Bayonne, whither he had been summoned, intending to persist in his refusal, the Emperor, who would take no denial from him, proceeded in his arrangements, well knowing that he would submit to that ascendancy which so few were capable of resisting.
♦Addresses from the Junta and the council of Castille to Buonaparte.