Napoleon: A Sketch of His Life, Character, Struggles, and Achievements

by Thomas E. Watson

In Spain itself fateful events were on foot. The old king, Charles IV. was a Bourbon, densely ignorant, extremely religious, and devoid of any real character. His queen was a woman of some ability and force of character, but she had become infatuated with a common soldier, Manuel Godoy, and both she and her husband were governed by the favorite.

The heir to the throne, Ferdinand, prince of the Asturias, was a young man of obstinate temper, full of duplicity and cruelty. He was loved by the Spanish people, partly because he was their handsome young prince-royal, and partly because it was known that he hated Godoy.

The old king was made to believe that his son meant to have him assassinated. He appealed to Napoleon for protection against Ferdinand. At the same time this prince requested of Napoleon the hand of a Bonaparte princess in marriage. Thus both factions looked to France, and the French Emperor used each against the other.

The Spaniards rose against Godoy, a mob wrecked his palace, and he fled for his life, hiding himself in a roll of matting in a loft. Forced out by hunger, he was seen, captured, and about to be torn to pieces when he was rescued by the guards of Ferdinand, and taken, amid blows and curses, to the barracks. The terrified old king abdicated in favor of his son; and on March 20, 1808, Ferdinand entered Madrid in triumph, to the frantic delight of the people.

French armies had already been massed in Spain, and some of the strongest fortresses seized by unscrupulous trickery. Murat was in chief command, and he marched upon the Spanish capital in overwhelming numbers—unresisted because the French were believed to be coming as friends of Ferdinand.

The old king, Charles IV., protested to Napoleon that his abdication had been made under duress; he prayed for help against his son. To Napoleon applied Ferdinand, also; for Murat held Madrid with forty thousand troops, and he had not yet recognized the title of the new king.

In April, 1808, the Emperor himself came to Bayonne, moving soon into the château of Marrac, which was surrounded by a lovely park “on the banks of the silver Nive.” The place is now a ruin, the house having been gutted by fire in 1825, and the park being now used for the artillery of the garrison. But when Napoleon came there in 1808, soon to be joined by Josephine and the court, it was a place of beauty. Biarritz, the fashionable watering-place of to-day, was then unknown; but along the same shore where summer visitors now stroll, Napoleon romped with Josephine, “chasing her along the sands, and pushing her into the sea at the edge of the tide, until she was up to her knees in water.” They bathed and played together, “and the great Emperor, England’s ‘Corsican Ogre,’ used to hide her satin shoes on the sands while she was in the water, and not allow us to bring them to her, but made her walk from the beach to the carriage barefooted, which gave him immense delight.”

All was very gay at the château of Marrac, everything free, easy, joyous, etiquette somewhat shelved. For instance, it is related that Josephine’s harpsichord needed tuning, that a man was called in to tune it, that Josephine, who was unknown to the tuner, leaned her arms on the harpsichord, chatting very familiarly with the tuner, that her dress was so plain (and perhaps slovenly) that the amorous tuner took her to be a lady’s-maid, accessible to kisses, that he assured her she was much prettier than the Empress, and that he was just about to kiss her, when the door opened and in walked the Emperor! Josephine laughed, Napoleon laughed, the tuner fled,—leaving his tools,—deaf to Napoleon’s call for him to come back.

Equally true, perhaps, is another story of the same date. There was a ball at the château of Marrac, the windows were open, the night being warm. At a pause in the music, a lady stepped out upon the balcony, seen by the sentinels, who likewise saw an officer follow her and kiss her. The sentinels knew him—it was the Little Corporal. But he saw them also, and his sharp word of command rang out, “Shoulder arms!” “Right about turn!” They turned, and they stayed turned, fixed and immovable, until the relief came an hour or so later.

So much for the bright side of this famous picture.