Meanwhile the horrible edict, or order, given below had been published, though scarcely anyone was aware of its publication:
Soldiers:
The ill-advised populace of Madrid has risen in arms and committed murders. I am well aware that Spaniards worthy of the name have lamented that such excesses should have been committed, and I am far from confounding them with a few miserable wretches who live only for plunder and crime. But the French blood which has been spilt cries out for vengeance. For this reason I have issued the following order: Article I, This night General Grouchy shall assemble the military commission. Article II, All those who were taken in the rebellion carrying arms shall be shot. Article III, The junta or government is about to command the inhabitants of Madrid to be disarmed. All the residents of the town when the time required for the execution of this resolution has elapsed, who shall continue to carry arms, or keep such in their houses without special license, shall be shot. Article IV, Any band of more than eight persons shall be looked upon as a meeting of rebels, and fired on till they disperse. Article V, Every town or village where a Frenchman is murdered shall be burned. Article VI, Masters shall answer for their servants, owners of factories for their employees, fathers for their sons, and superiors of convents for their religious. Article VII, Authors of written or printed seditious pamphlets, and those who distribute or sell them, shall be looked upon as agents of the English and as such shall be shot.
(Signed), Joachim.
Given in our headquarters of Madrid, on the 2nd of May, 1808. By order of his royal highness, the chief of the staff,
Belliard.
In accordance with this Draconian edict the French searched everyone, and seized all persons bearing arms, even though it were a penknife or scissors; some they shot upon the spot, and imprisoned others in the barracks or in the Casa de Correo, where the military commission had been established. Night came on, and its appalling silence was unbroken save for the roar of the cannon discharged at intervals, or the report of the guns, as the unfortunate residents, in bands or bound in twos, were shot, without their defence being heard, close to the hall of the Prado at the spot where now stands a sad but glorious monument, recording and handing down to posterity the patriotism of those who were here sacrificed; which monument is a pillar of shame for this inhuman sacrifice.
Such was the end of the popular movement of the 2nd of May, a day eternally remembered in Spanish annals.[111] The country honours her sons who offered themselves as a holocaust for her, and every year a solemn civic religious ceremony takes place which keeps that day of mourning and weeping, and of glory to the country fresh in the memory of every Spaniard. Nor was this a coup d’état coldly prepared and planned by Murat, as some have imagined, nor a plot arranged by Spaniards in patriotic unions, as others say; it was a spontaneous and unpremeditated outburst, an explosion of pent-up anger on the part of a people invaded by deceptions and perfidy, deprived by treachery of the objects of their affection and of their devotion, of their kings and princes, and dominated by the haughty and hypocritical foreigner. And Murat seized the opportunity offered him and which he had watched coming, to humiliate Castilian pride, and smooth the road to seat a French prince on the Spanish throne, a throne which his imagination represented to him as being within his own reach.
On the following day houses and shops were closed, the streets were deserted and silent, the silence being unbroken save by the imposing echo of the measured tread of the French patrols, making their rounds. The edict of the preceding day was affixed in the public places.[112] Murat further published a proclamation beginning, “Valiant Spaniards: the 2nd of May will be for me, as it will be for you, a day of mourning.” He blamed the common enemy of France and Spain for this rebellion; he declared that he had received a previous warning of it which he had not credited, until the rebellion had burst upon him, and he was compelled to chastise the offenders; he assured them that the emperor was anxious to preserve the integrity of the Spanish monarchy without separating from it a single village or exacting any war tax; he exhorted the ministers of the church, the magistrates, gentlemen, landholders, and merchants to use their influence to keep down sedition.[d]
Meanwhile by Napoleon’s orders Charles IV, Maria Louisa, and Godoy had been sent to Bayonne where Ferdinand awaited Napoleon’s nod.[a]