♦Addresses to the Intruder.♦
The higher ranks in Madrid had shown themselves from the commencement of these troubles as deficient in public spirit as they had long been in private virtues. Scarcely an individual in that capital who was distinguished for rank, or power, or riches, had stood forward in the national cause, so fallacious is the opinion that those persons will be most zealous in the defence of their country, who have what is called the largest stake in it. Addresses from all the councils and corporate bodies of the metropolis were dispatched to Buonaparte while he tarried at Valladolid, ... all alike abject, and all soliciting that they might be indulged with the presence of their king. The Council of state, by a deputy, expressed its homage of thanks for the generous clemency of the conqueror. “What gratitude,” said he, “does it not owe you for having snatched Spain from the influence of those destructive councils which fifty years of misfortune had prepared for it; for having rid it of the English armies, who threatened to fix upon its territories the theatre of continental war! Grateful for these benefits, the Council of state has still another supplication to lay at the feet of your majesty. Deign, sire, to commit to our loyalty your august brother, our lord and King. Permit him to re-enter Madrid, and to take into his hands the reins of government; that under the benevolent sway of this august prince, whose mildness, wisdom, and justice, are known to all Europe, our widowed and desolate monarchy may find a father in the best of Kings.” D. Bernardo Yriarte spoke for the Council of the Indies. “It entirely submits itself,” he said, “to the decrees of your Majesty, and to those of your august brother, the King our master, who is to create the happiness of Spain, as well by the wisdom and the assemblage of the lofty virtues which he possesses, as by the powerful support of the hero of Europe, upon whom the Council of the Indies founds its hopes of seeing those ties reunited, which ought always to unite the American possessions with the mother country.” The Council of finance requested that it might behold in Madrid the august and beloved brother of the Emperor, expecting from his presence the felicity and repose of the kingdom. The Council of war supplicated him, through an effect of his august beneficence, to confer upon the capital the felicity of the presence of their sovereign, Joseph I. This was the theme upon which all the deputations rung their changes. The Council of marine alone adding an appropriate flattery to the same request, expressed its hope of contributing to the liberty of the seas.
♦Edicts of the Intruder before his return to Madrid.♦
Joseph meantime had exercised his nominal sovereignty in passing decrees. By one the circulation of French money was permitted till farther measures concerning it should be announced; by another all persons entitled to any salary or pension from the government were deprived of it till they should have taken the oath of allegiance to him. He made an attempt also in the autumn, before reinforcements entered Spain, to place the persons belonging to his army under civil protection: and for this purpose required that in every district occupied by the army, from eight to thirty stand of arms should be deposited in every town-house, and an equal number of the respectable inhabitants registered to serve as an escort therewith for any officer or serjeant either on his road as an invalid, or in the execution of any commission. They were also to act as a patrol, for the purpose of preventing any insults or outrages which might be offered to the military, and if men did not volunteer for this service, which would entitle them to pay and rewards, the magistracy were to fix upon those whom they deemed fit to discharge it. He created also a new military order by the name of the Orden Militar de España. The Grand Mastership was reserved to himself and his successors; and the two oldest Captains General of the Army and the Fleet were always to be Grand Chancellor and Grand Treasurer: but the order itself was open to soldiers of every rank who should deserve it. A pension of 1000 reales vellon was attached to the order, and the device was a crimson star, bearing on one side the Lion of Leon with this motto ... Virtute et Fide; on the other the Castle of Castille with Joseph Napoleo, Hispaniarum et Indiarum Rex, instituit. Decrees were also issued for raising new regiments, one to be called the Royal Foreign, and the other the first of the Irish Brigade.
♦Joseph’s entrance into Madrid.♦
On the 22d of January the Intruder re-entered that city, from which he had been driven by the indignation of a whole people. At break of day his approach was announced by the discharge of an hundred cannon; a fit symphony, announcing at once to the people by what right he claimed the throne, and by what means he must sustain himself upon it. From the gate of Atocha to the church of St. Isidro, and from thence to the palace, the streets were lined with French troops, and detachments were stationed in every part of the city, more for the purpose of overawing the inhabitants than of doing honour to this wretched puppet of majesty, who, while he submitted to be the instrument of tyranny over the Spaniards, was himself a slave. The cavalry advanced to the Plaza de las Delicias to meet him; there he mounted on horseback, and a procession was formed of his aides-de-camp and equerries, the grand major domo, the grand master of the ceremonies, the grand master of the hounds, with all the other personages of the drama of royalty, the members of the different councils, and those grandees who, deserting the cause of their country, stained now with infamy names which had once been illustrious in the Spanish annals. At the gate of Atocha the governor of Madrid was ready to present him with the keys. As soon as he entered another discharge of an hundred cannon proclaimed his presence, and all the bells struck up. He proceeded through the city to the church of St. Isidro, where the suffragan Bishop, in his pontificals, the canons, vicars, and rectors, the vicar-general, and the prelates of the religious orders, received him at the gate, and six of the most ancient canons conducted him to the throne. Then the suffragan Bishop addressed him in the only language which might that day be used, the language of servility, adulation, impiety, and treason. The Intruder’s reply was in that strain of hypocrisy which marked the usurpation of the Buonapartes with new and peculiar guilt. This was his speech:
“Before rendering thanks to the Supreme Arbiter of Destinies, for my return to the capital of this kingdom entrusted to my care, I wish to reply to the affectionate reception of its inhabitants, by declaring my secret thoughts in the presence of the living God, who has just received your oath of fidelity to my person. I protest, then, before God, who knows the hearts of all, that it is my duty and conscience only which induce me to mount the throne, and not my own private inclination. I am willing to sacrifice my own happiness, because I think you have need of me for the establishment of yours. The unity of our holy religion, the independence of the monarchy, the integrity of its territory, and the liberty of its citizens, are the conditions of the oath which I have taken on receiving the crown. It will not be disgraced upon my head; and if, as I have no doubt, the desires of the nation support the efforts of its king, I shall soon be the most happy of all, because you through me will all be happy.”
♦Edicts against the Patriots.♦
Two rows of banqueting tables were laid out in the nave of the church, where the civil and military officers of the intruder, and the members of the councils, were seated according to their respective ranks. High mass was performed by the chapel-royal, and a solemn Te Deum concluded the mockery. That done, Joseph proceeded with the same form to the palace, and a third discharge of an hundred guns proclaimed his arrival there. On the day which followed this triumphal entry, its ostentatious joy, and the affected humanity and philanthropy of his professions, he issued a decree for the formation of special military tribunals, which should punish all persons with death who took arms against him, or enlisted others for the patriotic cause: the gallows was to be the mode of punishment, and over the door of the sufferer’s house a shield was to be placed, for infamy, recording the cause and manner of his ignominious death. Any innkeeper or householder in whose dwelling a man should be enlisted for the Junta’s service should undergo the same fate; but if they gave information, 400 reales were promised them, or an equivalent reward. The very day that this decree was issued, mingling, like his flagitious brother, words of blasphemy with deeds of blood, he addressed a circular epistle to the Archbishops and Bishops of the realm, commanding them to ♦Circular epistle to the clergy.♦ order a Te Deum in all the churches of their respective dioceses. “In returning to the capital (this was his language), our first care, as well as first duty, has been to prostrate ourselves at the feet of that God who disposes of crowns, and to devote to him our whole existence for the felicity of the brave nation which he has entrusted to our care. For this only object of our thoughts we have addressed to him our humble prayers. What is an individual amid the generations who cover the earth? What is he in the eyes of the Eternal, who alone penetrates the intentions of men, and according to them determines their elevation? He who sincerely wishes the welfare of his fellows serves God, and omnipotent goodness protects him. We desire that, in conformity with these dispositions, you direct the prayers of the faithful whom Providence has entrusted to you. Ask of God, that his spirit of peace and wisdom may descend upon us, that the voice of passion may be stifled in meditating upon such sentiments as ought to animate us, and which the general interests of this monarchy inspire: that religion, tranquillity, and happiness may succeed to the discords to which we are now exposed. Let us return thanks to God for the success which he has been pleased to grant to the arms of our august brother and powerful ally the Emperor of the French, who has had no other end in supporting our rights by his power than to procure to Spain a long peace, founded on her independence.”
A heavy load of national guilt lay upon the nations of the Peninsula; and those persons, who, with well-founded faith, could see and understand that the moral government of the world is neither less perfect, nor less certain in its course, than that material order which science has demonstrated, ... they perceived in this dreadful visitation the work of retribution. The bloody conquests of the Portugueze in India were yet unexpiated; the Spaniards had to atone for extirpated nations in Cuba and Hayti, and their other islands, and on the continent of America for cruelties and excesses not less atrocious than those which they were appointed to punish. Vengeance had not been exacted for the enormities perpetrated in the Netherlands, nor for that accursed tribunal which, during more than two centuries, triumphed both in Spain and Portugal, to the ineffaceable and eternal infamy of the Romish church. But the crimes of a nation, like the vices of an individual, bring on their punishment in necessary consequence, ... so righteously have all things been ordained. From the spoils of India and America the two governments drew treasures which rendered them independent of the people for supplies; and the war which their priesthood waged against knowledge and reformation succeeded in shutting them out from these devoted countries. A double despotism, of the throne and of the altar, was thus established, and the result was a state of degradation, which nothing less than the overthrow of both, by some moral and political earthquake, loosening the very foundations of society, could remove. Such a convulsion had taken place, and the sins of the fathers were visited upon the ♦Condition of Madrid.♦ children. Madrid, the seat of Philip II., “that sad intelligencing tyrant,” who from thence, as our great Milton said, “mischieved the world with his mines of Ophir,” that city which once aspired to be the mistress of the world, and had actually tyrannized over so large a part of it, was now itself in thraldom. The Spanish cloak, which was the universal dress of all ranks, was prohibited in the metropolis of Spain, and no Spaniard was allowed to walk abroad in the evening, unless he carried a light. All communication between the capital and the southern provinces, the most fertile and wealthiest of the kingdom, was cut off. Of the trading part of the community, therefore, those who were connected with the great commercial cities of the south coast were at once ruined, and they whose dealings lay with the provinces which were the seat of war were hardly more fortunate. The public creditors experienced that breach of public faith which always results from a violent revolution. The intrusive government acknowledged the debt, and gave notice of its intention to pay them by bills upon Spanish America: for this there was a double motive, the shame of confessing that the Intruder was unable to discharge the obligations of the government to whose rights and duties he affected to succeed, and the hope of interesting the holders of these bills in his cause: but so little possibility was there of his becoming master of the Indies, that the mention of such bills only provoked contempt. While commercial and funded property was thus destroyed, landed property was of as little immediate value to its owner. No remittances could be made to the capital from that part of Spain which was not yet overrun; and the devastations had been so extensive every where as to leave the tenant little means of paying the proprietor. These were the first-fruits of that prosperity which the Buonapartes promised to the Spaniards, ... these were the blessings which Joseph brought with him to Madrid! He, meantime, was affecting to participate in rejoicings, and receiving the incense of adulation, in that city where the middle classes were reduced to poverty by his usurpation, and where the wives whom he had widowed, and the mothers whom he had made childless, mingled with their prayers for the dead, supplications for vengeance upon him as the author of their miseries. The theatre was fitted up to receive him, the boxes were lined with silk, the municipality attended him to his seat, he was presented with a congratulatory poem upon his entrance, and the stage curtain represented the ♦1809.
February.♦ Genius of Peace with an olive-branch in his left hand, and a torch in his right, setting fire to the attributes of war. Underneath was written, ♦Feb. 18.♦ “Live happy, Sire! reign and pardon!” At the very time when this precious specimen of French taste complimented the Intruder upon his clemency, an extraordinary criminal Junta was formed, even the military tribunals not being found sufficiently extensive in their powers for the work of extermination which was begun. It was “for trial of assassins, robbers, recruiters in favour of the insurgents, those who maintained correspondence with them, and who spread false reports.” Persons apprehended upon these charges were to be tried within twenty-four hours, and sentenced to the gallows, and the sentence executed without appeal.