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fered; and the insignia of his various orders, rich with gold and jewels, were carefully preserved and delivered to the king. In the height of their fury also they had compassion upon the wife and daughter of Godoy; the former perhaps had been made an object of popular favour because of the scandalous life of her husband, and they were conducted safely to the palace with a kind of triumph, but in a state of feeling which may well be conceived. The uproar continued through the night. At the earliest break of day Ferdinand appeared in the balcony, and by his presence some degree of order was restored. The populace were weary, if they were not satisfied; the troops ranged themselves under their respective banners, guards were posted at the door of the house which had been ransacked, and quiet was apparently re-established. At seven in the morning the king issued a decree, saying, that as he intended to command his army and navy in person, he dismissed the Prince of the Peace from his rank of generalissimo and chief admiral, and permitted him to withdraw whithersoever he pleased. He also notified this in a letter to Buonaparte, wherein, as if the real cause of the dismission could possibly be concealed, it was said that leave had been granted to the minister to resign these offices because he had long and repeatedly requested it: " but," the king added, " as I cannot for get the services the prince has rendered me, and particularly that of having co-operated with my invariable desire to maintain the alliance and intimate friendship that unite me to your imperial and royal majesty, I shall preserve my esteem for him."

The people were not to be appeased by a measure so obviously designed to save the favourite from their hatred, and give him an opportunity of effecting his escape. There were no seditious movements during that day and the ensuing night; but the cause of alarm and agitation continued. Godoy, in the first moment of danger, had taken shelter in a garret, among a heap of mats, in one of which he wrapt himself. There he remained about two and thirty hours; till, unable longer to endure the intolerable thirst produced by the feverishness of fear, on the morning of the 19th he left his hiding-place, and came forth to meet his fate, whatever it might be. It would have been a dreadful one, if the soldiers had not first perceived him, and afforded him some protection against an infuriated populace. Notwithstanding the guard under which he was immediately placed, the raging mob fell upon him, and he was led away prisoner. He had pistols when he had hid himself, and he has been reproached for not using them either against himself or his assailants; but though at such a time he could have little hope of life, he had a Catholic sense of the value of what little interval might be granted him, and he cried out for a confessor when death appeared to be at hand. That cry may sometimes avail with a Catholic mob, when it would be vain to entreat for any other mercy. He was, however, beaten and wounded, and his escort would hardly have been able to have saved his life, if the king had not sent Ferdinand to save him. Under his protection-under the protection of the man whom he had most injured, and whom he justly regarded as his greatest enemy, he was deposited safely in the guard-house; and

the

the prince then in the name of his father satisfied the people, by assuring them that the fallen minister should be brought to condign punishment, according to the laws. The hope of seeing him publicly executed induced them to forego the immediate fulfilment of their vengeance, which would have been an inferior gratification. They dispersed accordingly, and there was another interval in the storm.

'It broke out with renewed violence about middle day, when a carriage with six mules drew up to the guard-house. A report immediately spread that the culprit was to be removed to Granada, for the purpose of screening him from justice: the mob presently collected; they cut the traces and broke the carriage to pieces. They were once more quieted by the presence of Ferdinand, who repeated in his father's name a solemn promise that Godoy should be punished in due course of justice. How far these repeated commotions arose naturally from the strange circumstances of the kingdom and the court, or how far they may have been excited by intriguing men, who hoped for employment under a new reign, and by those who with warm hearts and heated imaginations promoted the work of revolution for its own sake, it is impossible to ascertain; even those who were present have not known what opinion to form. But whatever the moving causes of these tumults may have been, the effect was, that on the evening of that day Charles, in the presence of Ferdinand, his ministers, and the principal officers of the court, resigned the throne. One of the guards immediately spread the news, and never was any intelligence more rapidly diffused. The abdication was publicly announced by a proclamation from Charles, stating that the infirmities under which he laboured (for he suffered much from rheumatic pains) would not permit him longer to support the burthen of public affairs; and that as it was necessary for the recovery of his health that he should enjoy the tranquillity of a private life in a more temperate climate, he had, after the most serious deliberation, determined to abdicate the crown in favour of his very dear son. He therefore by this decree of "free and voluntary abdication" made known his royal will, that the Prince of Asturias should be acknowledged and obeyed as king and natural lord of all his kingdoms and dominions. The news of these events was received throughout the kingdom with the most enthusiastic delight. At Madrid the rabble manifested their joy by entirely destroying the houses of Godoy, of his brother, his mother, and his more conspicuous adherents; his portraits and his escutcheons were burnt wherever they could be found. In many places Te Deum was performed as a thanksgiving for the favourite's fall; in others, bull-fights were given with all the barbarity of the Spanish custom, horses always, and men oftentimes, being sacrificed in those abominable pastimes. At Salamanca the monks and students danced in the market-place.'-p. 168–173.

The first act of Ferdinand VII. betrayed either his delusion with respect to the designs of Buonaparte, or his fear of offending him; or, what is more probable, both :-it was to direct that the French troops, who were now rapidly approaching Madrid in alarming

numbers,

numbers, should be received as friends and allies. They were led by Murat; and a worthier instrument of perfidy and cruelty could not have been selected. Murat knew that Napoleon was not prepared for the latter events which had occurred at Aranjuez; but he was in his master's confidence, and at no loss what measures to pursue on the unexpected abdication of Charles. He accelerated his march, therefore, and entered the capital, after making a formidable display of his forces under its walls and as an additional intimidation, he caused a report to be spread, that the Emperor himself was already on his route to the Peninsula. Of all the foreign ministers at Madrid, Beauharnois, the French ambassador, alleging that he was not yet furnished with instructions from his court, had been the only one who did not congratulate Ferdinand on his accession. But Murat, who was better acquainted with the real views of Buonaparte, went farther than the ambassador; he declared that he could only treat with the old king; and, as if he meant to take him and the queen under his protection, he sent a numerous body of troops to Aranjuez, to guard them: he, at the same time, caused it to be understood, that the French would interpose in behalf of the prisoner Godoy. Charles easily fell into the net thus spread for him. Instigated by the fears of the queen for the safety of her paramour, and by his own misplaced friendship for that unworthy object, perhaps, too, by a personal feeling of offended dignity, he was induced secretly to dispatch to Buonaparte a formal protest against his act of abdication, which he now termed compulsory; and to appeal by letter to the protection of the very tyrant whose undisguised aggressions had driven him, not a week before, to the resolution of abandoning his throne to seek refuge in America.

The seizure of the capital by the French, who were now fifty thousand strong in the city and its immediate vicinity, while thirty thousand more preserved the communications with Bayonne; the refusal of the French ambassador and Murat to acknowledge the accession of Ferdinand; the mysterious silence of Buonaparte himself on this point, and the rumours of his journey into Spain, all conspired to fill the new government with perplexity and alarm, Yet there appeared to the young king no better alternative than, by every warm and flattering expression of respect, to court the favour of the despot. It was the object of Murat, without extinguishing his hopes, to terrify him into the most abject submission, and the measures which he adopted with that view were completely successful. While reports of Napoleon's approaching arrival at Madrid were industriously circulated with increased confidence, and preparations were even made by the French for the event, Murat hinted that it would be a delicate compliment to the

VOL. XXIX. NO. LVII.

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emperor if the infante Don Carlos, Ferdinand's next brother, were appointed to meet him on the road; and that prince immediately departed on this fatal journey.

Having thus secured one victim, Murat's next endeavour was to entice Ferdinand also into the same snare. Don Carlos had scarcely set out, before the French commander-in-chief suggested that it would be an agreeable mark of attentive consideration to his master, if the king were to advance a short distance from the capital to welcome his illustrious guest. Ferdinand hesitated, and then, what had at first been lightly touched upon, and merely advised as an act of courtesy, was pressed upon him as a measure of importance, which would be attended with the happiest consequences to himself and to the interests of the kingdom. But the young monarch had at least one prudent counsellor. His minister Cevallos (whom we saw in England soon after this) earnestly dissuaded him from quitting his capital until he should receive certain intelligence that Buonaparte had passed the Pyrennees; and Murat, baffled for the moment, found it necessary to alter his scheme. After some delay, a new actor was introduced on the scene. General Savary (that worthy person who is now permitted to call himself Duc de Rovigo) arrived at Madrid, and, announcing himself as envoy from the emperor, demanded an audience of the king, which was immediately granted. In this interview he professed that he was sent merely to compliment Ferdinand, and to inquire whether his sentiments with respect to France were in consonance with those which the king, his father, had entertained; in which case, the emperor would immediately recognize him as king of Spain and the Indies. The answer was of course satisfactory, and Savary concluded the conference, during which he had held the most flattering language, by asserting that the emperor was already near Bayonne, and on his way to Madrid. But he had no sooner left the audience chamber than he began, as if in his individual capacity, to execute the real object of his mission. It would be highly grateful and complimentary to Buonaparte, he said, if the king should meet him on the road; and he stated repeatedly, and in the most positive terms, that his imperial majesty's arrival might be expected every hour. The pressing instances of Savary, and the frequent assertion of this daring falsehood, were accompanied with such an intermixture of flattery and intimidation, as might best operate upon such a mind as Ferdinand's. Murat failed not to give the same assurances, to repeat the same falsehoods, and to enforce the same menaces; and Ferdinand and his ministers were finally driven to consent to what they dared not refuse. On the 11th of April, Ferdinand, accompanied by Savary, commenced his ill-omened journey, which he intended should terminate at Burgos: but he

was

was now in the toils, and every hour plunged him deeper in perplexity or infatuation. Though at. Burgos he found no tidings of Buonaparte, his betrayer, Savary, lured him on to Vittoria;-though at that place he was implored by persons who had learned or penetrated the perfidious intentions of Buonaparte, to proceed no farther;-though the first letter which the despot now condescended to address to him from Bayonne, was full of alarming observations; yet, yielding to the opinions of others, who urged him not to evince any distrust of the emperor, and intimidated by the knowledge that he was now in the power of the French troops, who had encircled him at Vittoria, he precipitated himself on his fate, passed the fron-tier, and discovered that he was a prisoner. The atrocious schemes of Buonaparte were now rapidly hastening to their consummation. Ferdinand had not been many days at Bayonne, before the tyrant dispatched orders to Murat to send thither Charles and his queen, Godoy, and all the remaining members of the Spanish royal family. The scenes which succeeded their arrival at Bayonne are detailed by our author with circumstantial care and minuteness, and are replete with interest; but they can here be shown only in their general result. After a firmer and more dignified resistance than might have been looked for from the unhappy Ferdinand, he was at length forced into a renunciation of the crown; and his father, who was made the miserable engine of his disgrace, only resumed the empty title of sovereignty, to sign a second abdication of the throne in favour of his magnanimous ally, the Emperor Napoleon.' He was then, with the whole of his family, dispatched into the interior of France.

It is correctly observed by Mr. Southey, that the train of perfidy whereby Buonaparte had thus far accomplished his purpose, is unexampled even in the worst ages of history. The whole transaction was a business of pure unmingled treachery, unprovoked, unextenuated, equally detestable in its motive, its means, and its end.' But the hour of retribution was at hand. From the very moment, which seemed to complete his triumph over the last liberties of the continent, is to be dated the commencement of that unconquerable resistance of the people of Europe to his remorseless tyranny, which terminated not until, encouraged and directed by the unshaken constancy of the British government and nation, it had hurled him from his bad pre-eminence of usurpation and crime, to the seclusion and exile in which he closed his flagitious career.

The indignant feelings which animated the Spanish nation, on the treacherous seizure of the northern fortresses by the French troops, had been shared by the people of Madrid; and when Murat entered the capital, he found a spirit in the inhabitants which neither he nor his master had anticipated. His measures,

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