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By the most astonishing series of duplicities and perfidies, Napoleon gathered into his snare at Bayonne all the contending parties of the Spanish trouble,—King Charles, the Queen, Godoy, Ferdinand, and Don Carlos, Ferdinand’s younger brother.
These Bourbons washed their dirty family linen in his presence, appealing to him against each other. Ferdinand’s royal father shook a cane over his head and cursed him; Ferdinand’s royal mother reviled him, and told him that the king, her husband, was not his father; and Godoy, the paramour of the wife and mother, sat down to meat with King and Queen, indispensably necessary to both. Charles IV., fond of pleasure and ease, resigned the crown of Spain to Napoleon; Ferdinand was asked to do likewise. He refused, and it was not till there had been an uprising in Madrid, cruelly suppressed by Murat, who lost nearly a thousand men, that he yielded. The revolt had been laid at his door, and Napoleon had threatened to treat him as a rebel.
Charles and Ferdinand became grandees of France, with princely revenues; in return Napoleon received Spain and its magnificent dependencies (May, 1808).
Calling Joseph Bonaparte from Naples to wear this new crown, Napoleon wished to give to the transfer some show of national consent. He summoned an assembly of Spanish prelates and grandees to Bayonne (June, 1808). They came, but as they came the ground upon which they walked was hot with revolt. All Spain was spontaneously and furiously running to arms. The assembly at Bayonne accepted Joseph and the constitution which Napoleon had prepared.
In all courts and cabinets Napoleon’s conduct was hotly discussed; in most of them it was furiously condemned. True, he had not used Spain much more unscrupulously than he had treated Venice; nor, indeed, more perfidiously than England had dealt with India, Russia with Poland, Prussia with Silesia. But there were two considerations which weighed heavily against Napoleon: he was not a legitimate king, and he was getting more than his share. The small men began to ask, one the other, concerning the meat upon which this our Cæsar fed; and to say, one to the other, that they, the small men, might, by union and patience and perseverance, pull the big man down.
The more closely his statecraft is studied, the more clearly will it be seen that in all things he conformed to orthodox standards. He was neither better nor worse than others. His march to power was bridged with broken promises, pitiless deeds, utter disregard of human life, and the rights of other peoples. A foe was an obstacle, which must be got out of the way. If fair means would answer, well and good; if fair means would not answer, then foul methods would be used. Precisely the same principles have been constantly practised by all conquerors, all conquering nations. Russia, England, Prussia, France—the same policy built empires for each. The Russian Czar, Alexander, fawned upon the Swedish minister, swearing friendship and good intentions when the Russian legions were already on the march to seize Finland. Russian faith was solemnly pledged afterward to the Finns themselves, that their autonomy, their local institutions, should never be destroyed. In our own day, we have seen a most Christian Czar violate this written contract and pitilessly Russianize helpless Finland.
England’s empire is built on force and fraud; Prussia’s greatness rests on Frederick’s crime against Silesia: France under Napoleon merely conformed to the well-known precedents. Ambitious and despotic, he made war upon the weak, to shut out English goods, to cripple English commerce, and to bring her to terms of peace. This was bad enough, but we have lived to see things that were worse. We have seen England make war upon China to compel her to open her ports to the deadly opium trade—deadly to the Chinese, but most profitable to the English trader. We have lived to see a Dutch republic trampled out of existence because it would not allow English gold-miners to rule it.
Let us put away cant and lies and hypocrisy; let us frankly admit that Napoleon was a colossal mixture of the good and the bad, just as Cromwell was, just as Richelieu, Frederick, and Bismarck were. Those retained attorneys of royalism, clericalism, and absolutism, who gravely compile huge books to prove that Napoleon was a fiend, an evil spirit struggling against light, are the absurdest mortals extant. Even Spain now knows better; and the national revolt there at this era is against the very system the great democratic despot would have overthrown. “Down with the Jesuits!” they cry in all the cities of Spain in this year 1901. They are just a century behind time. Napoleon, a hundred years ago, put down the Jesuit and his Inquisition, swept feudalism away, gave just laws and representative government to a priest-ridden, king-accursed people. They were not ready for the boon, and repelled it. With mad infatuation Spaniards listened to monk and grandee and English marplot. Passion flamed, and reason fled. Blind hatred of all things French took possession of men, women, and children throughout the land. Peasants were even more frantic than princes and peers. Deeds of heroism, of self-sacrifice, of cruelty were done which amazed the world. By desperate persistence, the Spaniards succeeded in getting back their good old system—Bourbon king, privileged aristocracy, priestly tyranny, feudal extortions. Great Britain kindly sent armies and subsidies to aid the good work. Spain got the old system back, and much good has it done her. It has eaten the heart out of a great people, made her name a byword among nations, stranded her in the race of human progress. To-day she comprehends what she lost a hundred years ago.