A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 15

Stein entered upon office on the 5th of October, 1807, with almost dictatorial power. The need of the most radical changes in the public services, as well as in the social order of the Prussian State, had been brought home to all enlightened men by the disasters of the war; and a commission, which included among its members the historian Niebuhr, had already sketched large measures of reform before Hardenberg quitted office.

Stein's appointment brought to the head of the State a man immeasurably superior to Hardenberg in the energy necessary for the execution of great changes, and gave to those who were the most sincerely engaged in civil or military reform a leader unrivalled in patriotic zeal, in boldness, and in purity of character. The first great legislative measure of Stein was the abolition of serf.a.ge, and of all the legal distinctions which fixed within the limits of their caste the n.o.ble, the citizen, and the peasant. In setting his name to the edict [144] which, on the 9th of October, 1807, made an end of the mediaeval framework of Prussian society, Stein was indeed but consummating a change which the progress of neighbouring States must have forced upon Prussia, whoever held its government. The Decree was framed upon the report of Hardenberg's Commission, and was published by Stein within six days after his own entry upon office. Great as were the changes involved in this edict of emanc.i.p.ation, it contained no more than was necessary to bring Prussia up to the level of the least advanced of the western Continental States. In Austria pure serf.a.ge had been abolished by Maria Theresa thirty years before; it vanished, along with most of the legal distinctions of cla.s.s, wherever the victories of France carried a new political order; even the misused peasantry of Poland had been freed from their degrading yoke within the borders of the newly-founded Duchy of Warsaw. If Prussia was not to renounce its partners.h.i.+p in European progress and range itself with its barbarous eastern neighbour, that order which fettered the peasant to the soil, and limited every Prussian to the hereditary occupations of his cla.s.s could no longer be maintained. It is not as an achievement of individual genius, but as the most vivid expression of the differences between the old and the new Europe, that the first measure of Stein deserves a closer examination.

[The Prussian peasant before and after the Edict of Oct. 9.]

The Edict of October 9, 1807, extinguished all personal servitude; it permitted the n.o.ble, the citizen, and the peasant to follow any calling; it abolished the rule which prevented land held by a member of one cla.s.s from pa.s.sing into the hands of another cla.s.s; it empowered families to free their estates from entail. Taken together, these enactments subst.i.tute the free disposition of labour and property for the outworn doctrine which Prussia had inherited from the feudal ages, that what a man is born that he shall live and die. The extinction of serf.a.ge, though not the most prominent provision of the Edict, was the one whose effects were the soonest felt. In the greater part of Prussia the marks of serf.a.ge, as distinct from payments and services amounting to a kind of rent, were the obligation of the peasant to remain on his holding, and the right of the lord to take the peasant's children as unpaid servants into his house. A general relation of obedience and command existed, as between an hereditary subject and master, although the lord could neither exact an arbitrary amount of labour nor inflict the cruel punishments which had been common in Poland and Hungary. What the villein was in England in the thirteenth century, that the serf was in Prussia in the year 1806; and the change which in England gradually elevated the villein into the free copyholder was that change which, so many centuries later, the Prussian legislator effected by one great measure. Stein made the Prussian peasant what the English copyholder had become at the accession of Henry VII., and what the French peasant had been before 1789, a free person, but one bound to render fixed dues and service to the lord of the manor in virtue of the occupation of his land. These feudal dues and services, which the French peasant, accustomed for centuries before the Revolution to consider himself as the full proprietor of the land, treated as a mere grievance and abuse, Stein considered to be the best form in which the joint interest of the lord and the peasant could be maintained. It was reserved for Hardenberg, four years later, to free the peasant from all obligations towards his lord, and to place him in unshackled proprietors.h.i.+p of two-thirds of his former holding, the lord receiving the remaining one-third in compensation for the loss of feudal dues. Neither Stein nor Hardenberg interfered with the right of the lord to act as judge and police-magistrate within the limits of his manor; and the hereditary legal jurisdiction, which was abolished in Scotland in 1747, and in France in 1789, continued unchanged in Prussia down to the year 1848.

[Relative position of the peasant in Prussia and England.]

The history of Agrarian Reform upon the Continent shows how vast was the interval of time by which some of the greatest social changes in England had antic.i.p.ated the corresponding changes in almost all other nations. But if the Prussian peasant at the beginning of this century remained in the servile condition which had pa.s.sed out of mind in Great Britain before the Reformation, the early prosperity of the peasant in England was dearly purchased by a subsequent decline which has made his present lot far inferior to that of the children or grandchildren of the Prussian serf.

However heavy the load of the Prussian serf, his holding was at least protected by law from absorption into the domain of his lord. Before sufficient capital had been ama.s.sed in Prussia to render landed property an object of compet.i.tion, the forced military service of Frederick had made it a rule of State that the farmsteads of the peasant cla.s.s must remain undiminished in number, at whatever violence to the laws of the market or the desires of great landlords. No process was permitted to take place corresponding to that by which in England, after the villein had become the free copyholder, the lord, with or without technical legal right, terminated the copyhold tenure of his retainer, and made the land as much his own exclusive property as the chairs and tables in his house. In Prussia, if the law kept the peasant on the land, it also kept the land for the peasant. Economic conditions, in the absence of such control in England, worked against the cla.s.s of small holders. Their early enfranchis.e.m.e.nt in fact contributed to their extinction. It would perhaps have been better for the English labouring cla.s.s to remain bound by a semi-servile tie to their land, than to gain a free holding which the law, siding with the landlord, treated as terminable at the expiration of particular lives, and which the increasing capital of the rich made its favourite prey. It is little profit to the landless, resourceless English labourer to know that his ancestor was a yeoman when the Prussian was a serf. Long as the bondage of the peasant on the mainland endured, prosperity came at last. The conditions which once distinguished agricultural England from the Continent are now reversed. Nowhere on the Continent is there a labouring cla.s.s so stripped and despoiled of all interest in the soil, so sedulously excluded from all possibilities of proprietors.h.i.+p, as in England. In England alone the absence of internal revolution and foreign pressure has preserved a cla.s.s whom a life spent in toil leaves as bare and dependent as when it began, and to whom the only boon which their country can offer is the education which may lead them to quit it.

[Reform of Prussian Army.]

[Short service.]

Besides the commission which had drafted the Edict of Emanc.i.p.ation, Stein found a military commission engaged on a plan for the reorganisation of the Prussian army. The existing system forced the peasant to serve in the ranks for twenty years, and drew the officers from the n.o.bility, leaving the inhabitants of towns without either the duty or the right to enter the army at all. Since the battle of Jena, no one doubted that the principle of universal liability to military service must be introduced into Prussia; on the other hand, the very disasters of the State rendered it impossible to maintain an army on anything approaching to its former scale. With half its territory torn from it, and the remainder devastated by war, Prussia could barely afford to keep 40,000 soldiers in arms. Such were the conditions laid before the men who were charged with the construction of a new Prussian military system. Their conclusions, imperfect in themselves, and but partially carried out in the succeeding years, have nevertheless been the basis of the latest military organisation of Prussia and of Europe generally. The problem was solved by the adoption of a short period of service and the rapid drafting of the trained conscript into a reserve-force. Scharnhorst, President of the Military Commission, to whom more than to any one man Prussia owed its military revival, proposed to maintain an Active Army of 40,000 men; a Reserve, into which soldiers should pa.s.s after short service in the active army; a Landwehr, to be employed only for the internal defence of the country; and a Landsturm, or general arming of the population, for a species of guerilla warfare.

Scharnhorst's project was warmly supported by Stein, who held a seat and a vote on the Military Commission; and the system of short service, with a Reserve, was immediately brought into action, though on a very limited scale. The remainder of the scheme had to wait for the a.s.sistance of events. The principle of universal military obligation was first proclaimed in the war of 1813, when also the Landwehr was first enrolled.

[Stein's plans of political reform.]

[Design for a Parliament, for Munic.i.p.alities, and District boards.]

The reorganisation of the Prussian military system and the emanc.i.p.ation of the peasant, though promoted by Stein's accession to power, did not originate in Stein himself; the distinctive work of Stein was a great scheme of political reform. Had Stein remained longer in power, he would have given to Prussia at least the beginnings of const.i.tutional government.

Events drove him from office when but a small part of his project was carried into effect; but the project itself was great and comprehensive. He designed to give Prussia a Parliament, and to establish a system of self-government in its towns and country districts. Stein had visited England in his youth. The history and the literature of England interested him beyond those of any other country; and he had learnt from England that the partners.h.i.+p of the nation in the work of government, so far from weakening authority, animates it with a force which no despotic system can long preserve. Almost every important State-paper written by Stein denounces the apathy of the civil population of Prussia, and attributes it to their exclusion from all exercise of public duties. He declared that the nation must be raised from its torpor by the establishment of representative government and the creation of free local inst.i.tutions in town and country. Stein was no friend of democracy. Like every other Prussian statesman he took for granted the exercise of a vigorous monarchical power at the centre of the State; but around the permanent executive he desired to gather the Council of the Nation, checking at least the caprices of Cabinet-rule, and making the opinion of the people felt by the monarch. Stein's Parliament would have been a far weaker body than the English House of Commons, but it was at least not intended to be a mockery, like those legislative bodies which Napoleon and his clients erected as the disguise of despotism. The transaction of local business in the towns and country districts, which had hitherto belonged to officials of the Crown, Stein desired to transfer in part to bodies elected by the inhabitants themselves. The functions allotted to the new munic.i.p.al bodies ill.u.s.trated the modest and cautious nature of Stein's attempt in the direction of self-government, including no more than the care of the poor, the superintendence of schools, and the maintenance of streets and public buildings. Finance remained partly, police wholly, in the hands of the central Government. Equally limited were the powers which Stein proposed to entrust to the district councils elected by the rural population. In comparison with the self-government of England or America, the self-government which Stein would have introduced into Prussia was of the most elementary character; yet his policy stood out in striking contrast to that which in every client-state of Napoleon was now crus.h.i.+ng out the last elements of local independence under a rigid official centralisation.

[Munic.i.p.al reform alone carried out.]

Stein was indeed unable to transform Prussia as he desired. Of the legislative, the munic.i.p.al, and the district reforms which he had sketched, the munic.i.p.al reform was the only one which he had time to carry out before being driven from power; and for forty years the munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions created by Stein were the only fragment of liberty which Prussia enjoyed. A vehement opposition to reform was excited among the landowners, and supported by a powerful party at the Court. Stein was detested by the n.o.bles whose peasants he had emanc.i.p.ated, and by the Berlin aristocracy, which for the last ten years had maintained the policy of friends.h.i.+p with France, and now declared the only safety of the Prussian State to lie in unconditional submission to Napoleon. The fire of patriotism, of energy, of self-sacrifice, which burned in Stein made him no representative of the Prussian governing cla.s.ses of his time. It was not long before the landowners, who deemed him a Jacobin, and the friends of the French, who called him a madman, had the satisfaction of seeing the Minister sent into banishment by order of Napoleon himself (Dec., 1808). Stein left the greater part of his work uncompleted, but he had not laboured in vain. The years of his ministry in 1807 and 1808 were the years that gathered together everything that was worthiest in Prussia in the dawn of a national revival, and prepared the way for that great movement in which, after an interval of the deepest gloom, Stein was himself to light the nation to its victory.

CHAPTER VIII.

Spain in 1806--Napoleon uses the quarrel between Ferdinand and G.o.doy--He affects to be Ferdinand's protector--Dupont's army enters Spain--Murat in Spain--Charles abdicates--Ferdinand King--Savary brings Ferdinand to Bayonne--Napoleon makes both Charles and Ferdinand resign--Spirit of the Spanish Nation--Contrast with Germany--Rising of all Spain--The Notables at Bayonne--Campaign of 1808--Capitulation of Baylen--Wellesley lands in Portugal--Vimieiro--Convention of Cintra--Effect of the Spanish Rising on Europe--War Party in Prussia--Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt--Stein resigns, and is proscribed--Napoleon in Spain--Spanish Misgovernment-- Campaign on the Ebro--Campaign of Sir John Moore--Corunna--Napoleon leaves Spain--Siege of Saragossa--Successes of the French.

[Spanish affairs, 1793-1806.]

[Spain in 1806.]

Spain, which had played so insignificant a part throughout the Revolutionary War, was now about to become the theatre of events that opened a new world of hope to Europe. Its King, the Bourbon Charles IV., was more weak and more pitiful than any sovereign of the age. Power belonged to the Queen and to her paramour G.o.doy, who for the last fourteen years had so conducted the affairs of the country that every change in its policy had brought with it new disaster. In the war of the First Coalition Spain had joined the Allies, and French armies had crossed the Pyrenees. In 1796 Spain entered the service of France, and lost the battle of St.

Vincent. At the Peace of Amiens, Napoleon surrendered its colony Trinidad to England; on the renewal of the war he again forced it into hostilities with Great Britain, and brought upon it the disaster of Trafalgar. This unbroken humiliation of the Spanish arms, combined with intolerable oppression and impoverishment at home, raised so bitter an outcry against G.o.doy's government, that foreign observers, who underrated the loyalty of the Spanish people, believed the country to be on the verge of revolution.

At the Court itself the Crown Prince Ferdinand, under the influence of his Neapolitan wife, headed a party in opposition to G.o.doy and the supporters of French dominion. G.o.doy, insecure at home, threw himself the more unreservedly into the arms of Napoleon, who bestowed upon him a contemptuous patronage, and flattered him with the promise of an independent princ.i.p.ality in Portugal. Izquierdo, G.o.doy's agent at Paris, received proposals from Napoleon which were concealed from the Spanish Amba.s.sador; and during the first months of 1806 Napoleon possessed no more devoted servant than the man who virtually held the government of Spain.

[Spain intends to join Prussia in 1806.]

The opening of negotiations between Napoleon and Fox's Ministry in May, 1806, first shook this relation of confidence and obedience. Peace between France and England involved the abandonment on the part of Napoleon of any attack upon Portugal; and Napoleon now began to meet G.o.doy's inquiries after his Portuguese princ.i.p.ality with an ominous silence. The next intelligence received was that the Spanish Balearic Islands had been offered by Napoleon to Great Britain, with the view of providing an indemnity for Ferdinand of Naples, if he should give up Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte (July, 1806.) This contemptuous appropriation of Spanish territory, without even the pretence of consulting the Spanish Government, excited scarcely less anger at Madrid than the corresponding proposal with regard to Hanover excited at Berlin. The Court began to meditate a change of policy, and watched the events which were leading Prussia to arm for the war of 1806. A few weeks more pa.s.sed, and news arrived that Buenos Ayres, the capital of Spanish South America, had fallen into the hands of the English. This disaster produced the deepest impression, for the loss of Buenos Ayres was believed, and with good reason, to be but the prelude to the loss of the entire American empire of Spain. Continuance of the war with England was certain ruin; alliance with the enemies of Napoleon was at least not hopeless, now that Prussia was on the point of throwing its army into the scale against France. An agent was despatched by the Spanish Government to London (Sept., 1806); and, upon the commencement of hostilities by Prussia, a proclamation was issued by G.o.doy, which, without naming any actual enemy, summoned the Spanish people to prepare for a war on behalf of their country.

[Treaty of Fontainebleau, Oct., 1807.]

Scarcely had the manifes...o...b..en read by the Spaniards when the Prussian army was annihilated at Jena. The dream of resistance to Napoleon vanished away; the only anxiety of the Spanish Government was to escape from the consequences of its untimely daring. G.o.doy hastened to explain that his martial proclamation had been directed not against the Emperor of the French, but against the Emperor of Morocco. Napoleon professed himself satisfied with this palpable absurdity: it appeared as if the events of the last few months had left no trace on his mind. Immediately after the Peace of Tilsit he resumed his negotiations with G.o.doy upon the old friendly footing, and brought them to a conclusion in the Treaty of Fontainebleau (Oct., 1807), which provided for the invasion of Portugal by a French and a Spanish army, and for its division into princ.i.p.alities, one of which was to be conferred upon G.o.doy himself. The occupation of Portugal was duly effected, and G.o.doy looked forward to the speedy retirement of the French from the province which was to be his portion of the spoil.

[Napoleon uses the enmity of Ferdinand against G.o.doy.]

[Napoleon about to intervene as protector of Ferdinand.]

Napoleon, however, had other ends in view. Spain, not Portugal, was the true prize. Napoleon had gradually formed the determination of taking Spain into his own hands, and the dissensions of the Court itself enabled him to appear upon the scene as the judge to whom all parties appealed. The Crown Prince Ferdinand had long been at open enmity with G.o.doy and his own mother. So long as Ferdinand's Neapolitan wife was alive, her influence made the Crown Prince the centre of the party hostile to France; but after her death in 1806, at a time when G.o.doy himself inclined to join Napoleon's enemies, Ferdinand took up a new position, and allied himself with the French Amba.s.sador, at whose instigation he wrote to Napoleon, soliciting the hand of a princess of the Napoleonic House. [145] G.o.doy, though unaware of the letter, discovered that Ferdinand was engaged in some intrigue. King Charles was made to believe that his son had entered into a conspiracy to dethrone him. The Prince was placed under arrest, and on the 30th of October, 1807, a royal proclamation appeared at Madrid, announcing that Ferdinand had been detected in a conspiracy against his parents, and that he was about to be brought to justice along with his accomplices. King Charles at the same time wrote a letter to Napoleon, of whose connection with Ferdinand he had not the slightest suspicion, stating that he intended to exclude the Crown Prince from the succession to the throne of Spain. No sooner had Napoleon received the communication from the simple King than he saw himself in possession of the pretext for intervention which he had so long desired. The most pressing orders were given for the concentration of troops on the Spanish frontier; Napoleon appeared to be on the point of entering Spain as the defender of the hereditary rights of Ferdinand. The opportunity, however, proved less favourable than Napoleon had expected.

The Crown Prince, overcome by his fears, begged forgiveness of his father, and disclosed the negotiations which had taken place between himself and the French Amba.s.sador. G.o.doy, dismayed at finding Napoleon's hand in what he had supposed to be a mere palace-intrigue, abandoned all thought of proceeding further against the Crown Prince; and a manifesto announced that Ferdinand was restored to the favour of his father. Napoleon now countermanded the order which he had given for the despatch of the Rhenish troops to the Pyrenees, and contented himself with directing General Dupont, the commander of an army-corps nominally destined for Portugal, to cross the Spanish frontier and advance as far as Vittoria.

[Dupont enters Spain, Dec., 1807.]

[French welcomed in Spain as Ferdinand's protectors.]

Dupont's troops entered Spain in the last days of the year 1807, and were received with acclamations. It was universally believed that Napoleon had espoused the cause of Ferdinand, and intended to deliver the Spanish nation from the detested rule of G.o.doy. Since the open attack made upon Ferdinand in the publication of the pretended conspiracy, the Crown Prince, who was personally as contemptible as any of his enemies, had become the idol of the people. For years past the hatred of the nation towards G.o.doy and the Queen had been constantly deepening, and the very reforms which G.o.doy effected in the hope of attaching to himself the more enlightened cla.s.ses only served to complete his unpopularity with the fanatical ma.s.s of the nation. The French, who gradually entered the Peninsula to the number of 80,000, and who described themselves as the protectors of Ferdinand and of the true Catholic faith, were able to spread themselves over the northern provinces without exciting suspicion. It was only when their commanders, by a series of tricks worthy of American savages, obtained possession of the frontier citadels and fortresses, that the wiser part of the nation began to entertain some doubt as to the real purpose of their ally. At the Court itself and among the enemies of Ferdinand the advance of the French roused the utmost alarm. King Charles wrote to Napoleon in the tone of ancient friends.h.i.+p; but the answer he received was threatening and mysterious. The utterances which the Emperor let fall in the presence of persons likely to report them at Madrid were even more alarming, and were intended to terrify the Court into the resolution to take flight from Madrid. The capital once abandoned by the King, Napoleon judged that he might safely take everything into his own hands on the pretence of restoring to Spain the government which it had lost.

[Murat sent to Spain, Feb., 1808.]

[Charles IV. abdicates, March 17, 1808.]

On the 20th of February, 1808, Murat was ordered to quit Paris in order to a.s.sume the command in Spain. Not a word was said by Napoleon to him before his departure. His instructions first reached him at Bayonne; they were of a military nature, and gave no indication of the ultimate political object of his mission. Murat entered Spain on the 1st of March, knowing no more than that he was ordered to rea.s.sure all parties and to commit himself to none, but with full confidence that he himself was intended by Napoleon to be the successor of the Bourbon dynasty. It was now that the Spanish Court, expecting the appearance of the French army in Madrid, resolved upon that flight which Napoleon considered so necessary to his own success. The project was not kept a secret. It pa.s.sed from G.o.doy to the Ministers of State, and from them to the friends of Ferdinand. The populace of Madrid was inflamed by the report that G.o.doy was about to carry the King to a distance, in order to prolong the misgovernment which the French had determined to overthrow. A tumultuous crowd marched from the capital to Aranjuez, the residence of the Court. On the evening of the 17th of March, the palace of G.o.doy was stormed by the mob. G.o.doy himself was seized, and carried to the barracks amid the blows and curses of the populace. The terrified King, who already saw before him the fate of his cousin, Louis XVI., first published a decree depriving G.o.doy of all his dignities, and then abdicated in favour of his son. On the 19th of March Ferdinand was proclaimed King.

[French enter Madrid, March 23.]

Such was the unexpected intelligence that met Murat as he approached Madrid. The dissensions of the Court, which were to supply his ground of intervention, had been terminated by the Spaniards themselves: in the place of a despised dotard and a menaced favourite, Spain had gained a youthful sovereign around whom all cla.s.ses of the nation rallied with the utmost enthusiasm. Murat's position became a very difficult one; but he supplied what was wanting in his instructions by the craft of a man bent upon creating a vacancy in his own favour. He sent his aide-de-camp, Monthieu, to visit the dethroned sovereign, and obtained a protest from King Charles IV., declaring his abdication to have been extorted from him by force, and consequently to be null and void. This doc.u.ment Murat kept secret; but he carefully abstained from doing anything which might involve a recognition of Ferdinand's t.i.tle. On the 23rd of March the French troops entered Madrid. Nothing had as yet become known to the public that indicated an altered policy on the part of the French; and the soldiers of Murat, as the supposed friends of Ferdinand, met with as friendly a reception in Madrid as in the other towns of Spain. On the following day Ferdinand himself made his solemn entry into the capital, amid wild demonstrations of an almost barbaric loyalty.

[Savary brings Ferdinand to Bayonne, April, 1808.]

In the tumult of popular joy it was noticed that Murat's troops continued their exercises without the least regard to the pageant that so deeply stirred the hearts of the Spaniards. Suspicions were aroused; the enthusiasm of the people for the French soldiers began to change into irritation and ill-will. The end of the long drama of deceit was in fact now close at hand. On the 4th of April General Savary arrived at Madrid with instructions independent of those given to Murat. He was charged to entice the new Spanish sovereign from his capital, and to bring him, either as a dupe or as a prisoner, on to French soil. The task was not a difficult one. Savary pretended that Napoleon had actually entered Spain, and that he only required an a.s.surance of Ferdinand's continued friends.h.i.+p before recognising him as the legitimate successor of Charles IV. Ferdinand, he added, could show no greater mark of cordiality to his patron than by advancing to meet him on the road. Snared by these hopes, Ferdinand set out from Madrid, in company with Savary and some of his own foolish confidants.

On reaching Burgos, the party found no signs of the Emperor. They continued their journey to Vittoria. Here Ferdinand's suspicions were aroused, and he declined to proceed farther. Savary hastened to Bayonne to report the delay to Napoleon. He returned with a letter which overcame Ferdinand's scruples and induced him to cross the Pyrenees, in spite of the prayers of statesmen and the loyal violence of the simple inhabitants of the district. At Bayonne Ferdinand was visited by Napoleon, but not a word was spoken on the object of his journey. In the afternoon the Emperor received Ferdinand and his suite at a neighbouring chateau, but preserved the same ominous silence. When the other guests departed, the Canon Escoiquiz, a member of Ferdinand's retinue, was detained, and learned from Napoleon's own lips the fate in store for the Bourbon Monarchy. Savary returned to Bayonne with Ferdinand, and informed the Prince that he must renounce the crown of Spain. [146]

[Charles and Ferdinand surrender their rights to Napoleon.]

[Attack on the French in Madrid, May 2.]

For some days Ferdinand held out against Napoleon's demands with a stubbornness not often shown by him in the course of his mean and hypocritical career. He was a.s.sailed not only by Napoleon but by those whose fall had been his own rise; for G.o.doy was sent to Bayonne by Murat, and the old King and Queen hurried after their son in order to witness his humiliation. Ferdinand's parents attacked him with an indecency that astonished even Napoleon himself; but the Prince maintained his refusal until news arrived from Madrid which terrified him into submission. The irritation of the capital had culminated in an armed conflict between the populace and the French troops. On an attempt being made by Murat to remove the remaining members of the royal family from the palace, the capital had broken into open insurrection, and wherever French soldiers were found alone or in small bodies they were ma.s.sacred. (May 2.) Some hundreds of the French perished; but the victory of Murat was speedy, and his vengeance ruthless. The insurgents were driven into the great central square of the city, and cut down by repeated charges of cavalry. When all resistance was over, numbers of the citizens were shot in cold blood. Such was the intelligence which reached Bayonne in the midst of Napoleon's struggle with Ferdinand. There was no further need of argument. Ferdinand was informed that if he withheld his resignation for twenty-four hours longer he would be treated as a rebel. He yielded; and for a couple of country houses and two life-annuities the crown of Spain and the Indies was renounced in favour of Napoleon by father and son.

[National spirit of the Spaniards.]

The crown had indeed been won without a battle. That there remained a Spanish nation ready to fight to the death for its independence was not a circ.u.mstance which Napoleon had taken into account. His experience had as yet taught him of no force but that of Governments and armies. In the larger States, or groups of States, which had hitherto been the spoil of France, the sense of nationality scarcely existed. Italy had felt it no disgrace to pa.s.s under the rule of Napoleon. The Germans on both sides of the Rhine knew of a fatherland only as an arena of the keenest jealousies.

In Prussia and in Austria the bond of citizens.h.i.+p was far less the love of country than the habit of obedience to government. England and Russia, where patriotism existed in the sense in which it existed in Spain, had as yet been untouched by French armies. Judging from the action of the Germans and the Italians, Napoleon might well suppose that in settling with the Spanish Government he had also settled with the Spanish people, or, at the worst, that his troops might have to fight some fanatical peasants, like those who resisted the expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples. But the Spanish nation was no mosaic of political curiosities like the Holy Roman Empire, and no divided and oblivious family like the population of Italy.

Spain, as a single nation united under its King, had once played the foremost part in Europe: when its grandeur departed, its pride had remained behind: the Spaniard, in all his torpor and impoverishment, retained the impulse of honour, the spirited self-respect, which periods of national greatness leave behind them among a race capable of cheris.h.i.+ng their memory. Nor had those influences of a common European culture, which directly opposed themselves to patriotism in Germany, affected the home-bred energy of Spain. The temper of mind which could find satisfaction in the revival of a form of Greek art when Napoleon's cavalry were scouring Germany, or which could inquire whether mankind would not profit by the removal of the barriers between nations, was unknown among the Spanish people. Their feeling towards a foreign invader was less distant from that of African savages than from that of the civilised and literary nations which had fallen so easy a prey to the French. Government, if it had degenerated into everything that was contemptible, had at least failed to reduce the people to the pa.s.sive helplessness which resulted from the perfection of uniformity in Prussia. Provincial inst.i.tutions, though corrupted, were not extinguished; provincial attachments and prejudices existed in unbounded strength. Like the pa.s.sion of the Spaniard for his native district, his pa.s.sion for Spain was of a blind and furious character. Enlightened conviction, though not altogether absent, had small place in the Spanish war of defence. Religious fanaticism, hatred of the foreigner, delight in physical barbarity, played their full part by the side of n.o.bler elements in the struggle for national independence.

[Rising of Spain, May, 1808.]

The captivity of Ferdinand, and the conflict of Murat's troops with the inhabitants of Madrid, had become known in the Spanish cities before the middle of May. On the 20th of the same month the _Gaceta_ announced the abdication of the Bourbon family. Nothing more was wanting to throw Spain into tumult. The same irresistible impulse seized provinces and cities separated by the whole breadth of the Peninsula. Without communication, and without the guidance of any central authority, the Spanish people in every part of the kingdom armed themselves against the usurper. Carthagena rose on the 22nd. Valencia forced its magistrates to proclaim King Ferdinand on the 23rd. Two days later the mountain-district of Asturias, with a population of half a million, formally declared war on Napoleon, and despatched envoys to Great Britain to ask for a.s.sistance. On the 26th, Santander and Seville, on opposite sides of the Peninsula, joined the national movement. Corunna, Badajoz, and Granada declared themselves on the Feast of St. Ferdinand, the 30th of May. Thus within a week the entire country was in arms, except in those districts where the presence of French troops rendered revolt impossible. The action of the insurgents was everywhere the same. They seized upon the arms and munitions of war collected in the magazines, and forced the magistrates or commanders of towns to place themselves at their head. Where the latter resisted, or were suspected of treachery to the national cause, they were in many cases put to death. Committees of Government were formed in the princ.i.p.al cities, and as many armies came into being as there were independent centres of the insurrection.