CHAPTER XXXII
When Captain Marbot, bearing despatches from Murat announcing the riot in Madrid, reached the château of Marrac, he found the Emperor in the park, taking his after-dinner walk, with the Queen of Spain on his arm and Charles IV. beside him, followed by the Empress Josephine, Prince Ferdinand, Don Carlos, Marshal Duroc, and some ladies.
“What news from Madrid?” cried Napoleon, as Marbot, covered with dust, drew near. The despatches were delivered in silence, and Napoleon drew to one side to read them, and to overwhelm the officer with questions. In vivid terms, Marbot described the despair of the Spanish people, the fury with which they had fought, the threatening aspect of the populace even after the revolt had been put down.
“Bah!” exclaimed Napoleon, cutting him short; “they will calm down and will bless me as soon as they see their country freed from the discredit and disorder into which it has been thrown by the weakest and most corrupt administration that ever existed!”
When the Emperor had explained to the King and Queen of Spain what had occurred in Madrid, they turned upon Ferdinand with an outburst of rage. “Wretch!” cried the old King, “you may now be satisfied. Madrid has been bathed in the blood of my subjects shed in consequence of your rebellion against your father; their blood be on your head!” The Queen was no less bitter, and even offered to strike her son. Napoleon put a stop to the painful scene.
“Bah! they will soon calm down.” So Napoleon thought, having no fear whatever that a tumultuous rising of peasants would make head against his troops. What his army had done in Italy and in Egypt, it could do in Spain. It only annoyed him, and somewhat puzzled him, to see that the people should reject his liberal constitution, and devote themselves with such frantic zeal to the most worthless of Bourbon kings. That Joseph would soon be in peaceful possession of the peninsula, that his generals would soon sweep the peasant bands out of the field, he did not doubt. Had he lacked faith as to this, he would probably not have given the crown to Joseph,—the placid, self-satisfied, comprehensively incapable Joseph. Had he dreamed of the long years of war that were to follow, he might have hearkened to the pleadings of Murat, and left that brilliant soldier to defend the crown which he so ardently coveted.
Amid ovations the Emperor and Josephine toured the provinces, on the return trip to Paris, everywhere welcomed with joy and admiration, while in the peninsula the great storm was muttering. Throughout Spain, in the highways and byways, from pulpit to market-place, Napoleon was denounced, defied, and resisted. Priests led the crusade, cursing the man of the Concordat as anti-Christ, minister of the devil, worthy of death and damnation. Committees of defence, juntas, sprang up everywhere; armies mustered almost at the stamp of the foot. Wherever a Frenchman could be stabbed, shot from ambush, or taken and sawn asunder, it was done. Roads were lined with ambuscades, stragglers and detached parties cut off, and the French generals were soon thrown on the defensive by this despised uprising of the people. At Saragossa and Valencia the French troops were repulsed; in Andalusia hordes of Spaniards surrounded Dupont’s army of twenty thousand, beat it in battle, and forced it to capitulate (Baylen, July, 1808).
In August the English landed troops in Portugal; and Junot, whose forces were scattered, fought with only thirteen thousand men against Wellington with sixteen thousand, was worsted at Vimeiro (August 21, 1808) and by the convention of Cintra (August 30, 1808) agreed to evacuate Portugal. He, too, had wanted to become a king; he, too, had thought of himself rather than of his master; he, too, had wrecked a splendid plan by sheer mismanagement and monstrous rapacity.
The disaster in Spain and Portugal came upon Napoleon like a thunderbolt; his grief and indignation knew no bounds; cries of rage and pain were wrung from him; pointing to his uniform, he said, “There is a stain here.” At Aboukir, Brueys had at least fought and died like a soldier; at Trafalgar Frenchmen had shown desperate valor; but at Baylen an army of twenty thousand imperial troops had laid down their arms to gangs of insurgents! Oh, the shame of it! Who could estimate its effect in Europe? When the Emperor spoke of Baylen to his council of state, his voice trembled, and his eyes were full of tears.
Conscious of the peril which menaced his supremacy, Napoleon determined to go in person and put down the Spanish revolt. But before doing so it was necessary that he and the Czar should have another conference, smooth over certain points of difference which had arisen, and come to a better understanding—hence the famous gathering at Erfurth (October, 1808). This time Alexander was Napoleon’s guest, and very royally was he entertained. A more brilliant assembly was never seen in Europe. Subject kings, vassals, lords of the Empire, civil and military dignitaries, courtiers, ambassadors, diplomats, eminent men of letters, surrounded the two great Emperors, and rendered homage. Business and pleasure intermingled; and while frontiers of empire were being arranged, there were banquets, balls, grand hunts, orchestral music, and the drama. Actors brought from Paris played to the Emperors and their trains, and the Czar stood up one night and took Napoleon’s hand at the line “the friendship of a great man is a gift from the gods.” Davoust used to say that Napoleon had been nodding till the Czar improvised this little by-play.