indiscreet enough to reveal his interest in the par-
tition of Portugal. She showed unbounded elation,
which was soon visible in the manner of all the favour-
ite's friends. To Napoleon Godoy felt bound to
express deep gratitude ; to Murat he wrote on :- .
Christmas Eve, i8oij,"Now I begin to enjoy tranf- v^ |
quillity since I have seen a treaty which places me
under the protection of the emperor."
He expressed a confidence he was far from feeling.
When Charles IV. asked leave to publish the treaty
in order to take formal possession of the two prin-
cipalities, he received no reply from Paris. But
Napoleon had not waited for the occupation of
15
252 Godoy: the Queen^s Favourite
*' Northern Lusitania " to seize the province allotted
him in exchange for it. He was already in Italy.
Charles IV., perturbed by the discovery of his son's
perfidy, had forgotten to acquaint his daughter, the
widowed queen of Etruria, with the disposition of
her infant son's kingdom.
On November 23 the French envoy, M. d'Au-
busson de la Feuillade, presented himself at one
of her country seats, and, to her unspeakable astonish-
ment, informed her that the kingdom of Etruria had
now been annexed to France, and would immediately
be occupied by French troops. Not listening to the
explanations of the ambassador, the timid young queen
remained for a time as if spell-bound. Rousing her-
self at last, she despatched a messenger to her
father to seek further enlightenment, and set forth
to meet Napoleon at Milan. The Tuscans witnessed
her departure in absolute silence. Yet she begged
the emperor to let her retain these dominions in-
stead of those promised in Portugal. His majesty had
the audacity to inform her that the proposal for the
transfer had originated with the court of Madrid.
Unable to obtain the restitution of Tuscany, the
queen set out on her homeward journey and reached
Aranjuez on February 19, 1808, to find her worst
forebodings realised.
The dream of adding Spain to his ever-broadening
empire had long haunted Napoleon. " My dynasty,"
he had said significantly, " will soon be the oldest
in Europe." When Charles IV. refused to recognise
the new king of Naples his comment was, " His
successor will." We have seen how his schemes had
been frustrated by some well-timed concession or
The Invasion 253
some threat of resistance on the part of Godoy.
But now, as Napier remarks, the dispute between
father and son placed the golden apples within his
reach, and he resolved to gather the fruit if he had
not planted the tree. The partisans of the prince of
Asturias — and they included by far the greatest part
of the nation — were ready to hail him as a deliverer
and a protector. By a strange irony, the one
Spaniard he had cause to fear was regarded by his
countrymen as a tyrant and a traitor.
In spite of the contempt which Napoleon had for
Beauharnais, he eagerly perused his highly coloured
accounts of events at Madrid. To confirm them he
sent his confidential messenger, M. de Tournon, into
Spain to ascertain the sentiments of the people. I
incline to think that this emissary, to save himself
trouble, contented himself with what Beauharnais
told him. His reports agree too closely with the
ambassador's to have been the result of independent
inquiries. Perhaps if M. de Tournon had used his
own eyes and ears he might not have so far misled
his master as to write : " The Prince of the Peace is
the tool of the English. An army of 30,000 men
would be more than enough to dictate to Spain."
The revelations of the Escurial, the activity of the
French agents in Spain, the obvious reluctance of the
emperor to publish the treaty, satisfied Godoy that
foul mischief was brewing. A heavy concentration
of troops was reported on the French side of the
frontier. Masses of men were moving up towards
Bayonne as if to take the place of that army of reserve
which, by the terms of the convention, was to enter
Spain only in the event of an English invasion. More
254 Godoy : the Queen's Favourite
ominous still, an army was collecting around Perpignan
so as to threaten Catalonia. That force was clearly
not destined for Portugal.
Godoy was haggard with anxiety. " Anarchy,"
he writes, *' prevailed in the seat of government and
Charles IV. stood alone. In such an extremity I
knew that my own ruin was practically certain, but
if I had several times before begged for my dismissal,
I looked on it as infamous to abandon the king
when I saw him thus and when more than ever he
needed my assistance. I looked, too, at my country,
and saw how infatuated men were preparing its total
ruin or at least its decay and ignominy. Even were
it certain, I said to myself, that Bonaparte had re-
solved to place the prince of Asturias on the throne,
he would not do it without reward ; the integrity
of Spain, so happily preserved amid all the transfor-
mations of Europe, would not long escape his claws.
And what nations did this great man ever undertake
to protect without in the end making them his tri-
butaries and vassals ? and what else were the princes
who had accepted his protection but the mere
prefects of his empire ? Spain would become another
recruiting-ground for the imperial armies, like Italy
and Germany. Napoleon would attempt to embroil
the country between two powerful and hostile factions^
then offer his mediation, and finally dismember or
sequestrate the kingdom.
" His designs I penetrated, but not the manner in
which they were to be carried out. Sure of a great
evil approaching rapidly, I lay awake devising schemes
for counteracting the plans of this restless, daring,
arrogant man. Persuaded that Spain could be saved
The Invasion 255
only by a union of hearts and objects, I would have
urged on Charles IV. the heroic course of abdication
had not his son already half sold himself to the French
and laid himself under obligations which would have
meant the total subjection of Spain. Bonaparte
would have disposed of the country at his pleasure,
leaving her sovereign the merest ghost of his dignity
and making him a prisoner more surely than he ever
was at Valen^ay.
" If Prince Ferdinand, so ambitious of the throne,
had possessed the talents and the virtues necessary
to save Spain and defend his house in that terrible
crisis, I would have asked the king to place the crown
on his head ; and I say also that, if I had loved my
country less, I would assuredly have adopted this
means of transforming this prince's sentiments towards
me. I could, so much more easily than Ceballos,
have procured his friendship and confidence without
having had recourse to anything but my influence over
his august father. I might then have retired in peace
to my estates or have accompanied Charles IV., not
as a poor pilgrim in foreign lands, but into the heart
of my own country. That I did not do so and thus
rejected the chance of saving myself, helpless as I
stood, and exposed to lose my head, my country ought
at least to rememiber and to count me among her
loyal sons who have sacrificed to her their safety, their
honour, and their existence."
Godoy had, in fact, made a vain effort to escape
this crushing burden of a dying nation. Having
reconciled Ferdinand with his father, he proposed to
withdraw from the court, that it might not be said
that he was any longer a bar to their complete union.
256 Godoy: the Queen^s Favourite
Charles replied that his retirement would be uni-
versally attributed to the influence of the French
emperor, and would thus bring the crown into con-
tempt ; moreover, he could replace him only by
ministers definitely opposed or secretly favourable to
France, both being equally fatal to the State.
Godoy then proposed to propitiate the princess
partisans by surrendering the command of the army.
" And so sacrifice the opportunity afforded us under
the treaty of Fontainebleau of having a Spaniard in
command of the allied forces in Portugal ? " queried
the king. " No ; you can give up the Admiralty if
you like, if you think that will give pleasure to Fer-
dinand. Let us ask him." The prince was sent for
and his father repeated to him Manuel's request and
the motives which prompted it. His royal highness
professed to be pained and shocked at the proposal.
He owed to his dear Manuel his happy restoration to
his father's favour, and he begged him, as a supreme
favour, never to desert him. The prince may at the
moment have been swayed by some rare impulse of
gratitude or generosity. He could hardly have fore-
seen the fate to which he was dooming the unhappy
friend of his father.
On December 24 the army of reserve commanded
by General Dupont stationed at Bayonne crossed the
Bidassoa without notice to the Spanish authorities or
permission from the Spanish Government and advanced
slowly towards Burgos. The treaty had specifically
laid it down that this corps should not enter Spain
except with the consent of both the contracting
parties and in the event of an attack by England.
But the articles of the treaty vvere secret, and the
The Invasion 257
people cheered the troops as they passed, some be-
lieving that they were on their way to reinforce
Junot's army in Portugal, others hoping that they
had come to rescue their idol Ferdinand from the
clutches of the Choricero. Behind Dupont closed up
another army under Moncey ; Duhesme was ap-
proaching the Catalan frontier with rapid strides —
and it could not be pretended that Catalonia lay on
the road to Portugal.
" Before long," said Godoy to his king, '' the plains
which you see from the windows of the Escurial
will be white with the tents of Napoleon's armies.
The eagle has come to pluck your crown from your
head." Aroused at last to a full sense of his danger,
Charles convened his Council. Godoy recommended
him to appeal to the sixth article of the secret con-
vention and to insist that the French troops should
at once suspend their march till the emperor had
returned from Italy and an understanding could be
arrived at between the two courts. It was absurd
to pretend that these troops were needed for the
occupation of Portugal ; they were a menace to Spain,
and to Spain only. " I spoke for more than an hour,"
says Godoy, " with the more heat since I saw in the
passing moments the last hope of restraining Bona-
parte or of thrusting him back by force of arms."
But he spoke in vain. " If the emperor insists on
the entrance of his troops, what then ? " asked the
king. " Appeal to the nation and defend ourselves
as best we can." " An heroic but desperate reso-
lution ! " exclaimed his majesty. The other coun-
cillors were of his opinion. The minister of Marine
suggested that Napoleon probably distrusted certain
258 Godoy : the Queen^s Favourite
influences at work in his ally's court and therefore
found it necessary to strengthen his hold on Spain.
The shaft was, of course, directed at Godoy. " I
am well aware," retorted the generalissimo, " that
I am represented throughout the kingdom as the
peculiar object of the emperor's animosity ; but
he does not violate treaties and set his armies in
motion solely to attack me. And this I will say :
that if our lord the king here present does not
inspire him with confidence, neither will that other
person of whom some are thinking. In the long
run, of course, I shall be blamed for this invasion.
I shall have no other defence, then, than the testimony
of his majesty and of you gentlemen to what I have
said this day."
Unable to avert his country's ruin, he again offered
his resignation to the king. Junot, he tells us, had
invited him to take possession of his principality of
Algarve — possibly, as he suggests, to remove him from
Madrid. " False, unstable, and vain," he wrote,
" as was the position offered me by Junot, it was
in truth less dangerous than that which I held at
court, without any better security than the good-will
of Charles IV. Had I gone to Alemtejo, at the first
outrage committed by Bonaparte upon my sovereigns
and my country, I should at kast have been able to
raise Portugal and two-thirds of Spain, to collect a
large army, to open up communication with several
cabinets, and in the last resort to open our ports to
the English. The king would have had a safe place
of refuge, and Spain would have seen in me a true
friend. I showed Junot's letter to the king and gave
him my views. * If,' I added, ' as I do not expect,
The Invasion 259
the treaty is fulfilled and Bonaparte conducts himself
honestly, I shall be able to renounce the principality in
favour of one of your sons. Perhaps, too, my retire-
ment to Portugal may remove Bonaparte's distrust
of my influence on the affairs of Spain ; perhaps,
too. It will appease that faction which never tires of
working against me.'
" ' No,^ replied Charles IV., interrupting me, ' that
faction pretends to work against you, but is in reality
working against me. I have reason afresh to suspect
Ferdinand ; I fear that he is in more or less intimate
relation with your foes and mine ; I fear that Bona-
parte is playing a double game and may attempt a
scandalous division which would result in the last
indignity to my crown and my person. Ferdinand is
no longer frank with me. He is embarrassed when I
converse with him, and always speaks of Bonaparte
with great enthusiasm. In the ministers I notice a
suspicious reserve ; I remark a species of coldness and
evasiveness in more than one person in my court ;
and now you wish to leave me, the only man on whom
I can absolutely rely, whom neither Bonaparte nor
my son could seduce ! Remain beside me, let us seek
some way out of our difliculties, and trust in God, who
knows my intentions. If, in spite of all, misfortune
overtakes us, let us go together and congratulate
ourselves that at least we have not been the cause of
it.' "
Then came ominous news from Portugal. On
February i Junot, by order of the emperor, de-
clared at Lisbon that the house of Bragan^a had ceased
to reign. It was easy, then, to decree the extinction
of an ancient dynasty. On the same day a messenger
26o Godoy : the Queen''s Favourite
from the Tuileries reached Madrid. He brought the
long-expected answer to the king's letter of Novem-
ber 10. The emperor was not prepared to con-
sider a matrimonial alliance between his house and
his catholic majesty's till he knew whether or not
the prince of Asturias had been absolved of the
charges made against him and restored to his father's
favour ; as to the treaty, its publication must be
delayed yet longer, and the ex-queen of Etruria and
Godoy must wait in patience for the principalities
promised them.
Within the last two months Charles IV., robust
sportsman though he had been, had grown an old
man. Nervous and haggard, he glanced over the
letter and paled at its imperious tone. " These
dreadful complications ! " he groaned. " I will settle
them, I will settle them ! The emperor may be sure
of me. My feelings towards him are unchanged —
always, always. I will reply presently." And, eight
days later, the messenger started on his homeward
journey, bearing a mere acknowledgment of his
master's despatch. On the road home he heard the
Spaniards discussing the projected marriage of their
future sovereign with the daughter of Lucien Bona-
parte, and congratulating each other that the French
had come to pull down his cruel enemy, Godoy.
They were thus less concerned to hear that the
French had possessed themselves, by an adroit strata-
gem, of the fortress of Pampeluna, the key of the
Pyrenean passes. General Darmagnac, having arrived
with his brigade, took up his quarters in a house oppo-
site the drawbridge of the citadel. In the early
morning of February i6 a small party of his men
The Invasion 261
surprised the sentry and the guard, and, at a given
signal, a hundred grenadiers concealed in their general's
house rushed to their support. The bridge being
secured, a whole battalion was admitted into the heart
of the fortress, with profuse apologies to the governor,
for what Darmagnac himself described as a dirty-
business. Two days before Godoy had addressed in-
structions to Vallesantoro, the viceroy of Navarre,
blaming him for having allowed the French to
encamp on the glacis of the fortress and bidding
him to be on his guard. Now his warning had been
disregarded, he could do no more than direct the
viceroy to protest formally to Darmagnac's superior
officer. Marshal Moncey. A protest was the only
offensive weapon which Charles IV. would give him
power to use.
Meantime Duhesme had marched his army along
the coast of Catalonia to Barcelona. The captain-
general, Santa Clara, consented to his passage on the
understanding that he was bound for Cadiz by way
of Valencia. On February 29 by a trick, similar to
Darmagnac's, he gained possession of the citadel.
To Alvarez Mariano, the governor of Montjuich,
Godoy had sent express orders not to admit more
than five Frenchmen at any one time into the strong-
hold. Mariano obeyed, and, on the approach of
Duhesme, raised the drawbridge. The French general
straightway told the captain-general that he would
storm the fortress if it were not peaceably surrendered.
The Spaniard weakly gave way, defending himself
afterwards with the excuse that the foreign troops
were absolutely in need of protection against the
townsfolk.
262 Godoy : the Quecn^s Favourite
Commanded by his king to avoid a conflict with the
invaders at all hazards, Godoy could only gnash his
teeth at the weakness of his subordinates and repeat
the orders he had himself received : '' Keep the French
out if you can, but don't fight." Summoned to
admit the French into San Sebastian, the viceroy of
the Basque provinces applied to Madrid for instruc-
tions. He was told to surrender the place amicably.
In this individual case resistance would, for that
matter, have been useless. It would also have been
specially impolitic, for the demand was made — and
in the most courteous terms — by the dashing Murat,
grand-duke of Berg, who now arrived in Spain as
the lieutenant and representative of his imperial
brother-in-law ; and in him Godoy might have
placed great hopes, based on a long friendly corre-
spondence and exchange of presents.
But any doubt as to Napoleon's intentions was
dispelled by the unexpected appearance at the court
of Izquierdo. Seeking first Godoy, he told him that
he was charged by the emperor with a message for
the private ear of the king, but that it was of so
grave a nature that his majesty would certainly require
the help of his advisers. " If the king needs me, he
will command my presence," replied the favourite ;
and presently he was sent for by his sovereign. Never
before had Charles stood more in need of help.
The wolf had framed his indictment against the lamb.
Napoleon, in a long conversation with Izquierdo,
had raked together long-forgotten and imaginary
grievances against his ally, which the envoy had noted
and committed to writing under eighteen separate
heads. This universal benefactor felt it to be his
The Invasion 263
duty to restore the blessings of peace to Europe at all
hazards, by any means, " regular or irregular, violent
or pacific, ordinary or extraordinary." Having es-
tablished peace on a permanent basis in northern
Europe, his majesty feared that the arch-enemy of
mankind, England, would seek a field for her pestilent
activity in the south. To defeat these abominable
designs, he had concluded with his ally the bene-
ficent treaty of Fontainebleau ; and, being aware
that an English party existed at the court of Madrid,
he had even thought it necessary to guarantee the
throne of Charles IV. But now, with indignation
and dismay, he found that this malevolent party had
stirred up bad blood between the two courts, even
imputing iniquitous and treacherous designs to him
and to his ambassador. These charges had not been
investigated — (his imperial majesty, it will be remem-
bered, had forbidden any inquiry to be made !) —
and, to his profound mortification, the king of Spain
had contented himself with passing these allegations
over in silence at the recent state trial.
In fact, the emperor could not but observe, with
regret and apprehension, the coldness of his royal
ally. A Spanish squadron lay idle at Cartagena,
though he had repeatedly asked that it might be
united with his fleet at Toulon ; the consuls reported
that commerce with France was subjected to vexatious
restrictions ; English goods were smuggled into Spain
with the tacit connivance of the authorities ; and —
most striking and inexplicable fact of all ! — Spain now
maintained an army nearly four times as great as
the expeditionary force the emperor had sent into
the country. (This was tantamount to saying that
264 Godoy: the Queen's Favourite
Spain had nearly four hundred thousand men under
arms !) In view of so unfriendly an attitude, France
was bound in duty to her own troops, scattered among
a foreign and hostile population, to occupy the for-
tresses which protected or menaced their rear, which,
too, they needed for hospitals and magazines. To
save his catholic majesty the unpleasant results of
a refusal, the emperor had therefore given orders to
his generals to occupy these strongholds as peaceably
as possible.
If the prince of Asturias had in reality conspired
against his august father, so far from admitting him
to the honour of any alliance, his imperial majesty
would hear with pleasure of his disinheritance. The
conflict of parties at the Spanish court left the future
so uncertain that France was now obliged to protect
herself against a possible change of policy. The
emperor therefore proposed to hand over the whole
of Portugal to his ally in exchange for the Spanish
provinces between the Pyrenees and the Ebro, or at
least to erect these into a neutral buffer State.
The exchange presented advantages to Spain,
relieving her for ever of any anxiety on her western
border and of the necessity of guaranteeing France
a right of way across her territory to Portugal. The
emperor trusted that his catholic majesty would
acquiesce in this exchange, as otherwise the time might
come when France would be obliged to take the
Ebro provinces without having anything to offer in
their stead. In conclusion, it was proposed to re-
establish the old family compact of the Bourbons,
but even more strictly.
Here, then, was the explanation of the seizure of
The Invasion 265
the northern fortresses. Having virtually annexed the
provinces north of the Ebro, the emperor intimated to
their lawful sovereign that he could, if he liked, take
Portugal in exchange. But was this the true and the
complete design ? Izquierdo thought so. He was
convinced that Napoleon meant to have the provinces
and so to drag Spain at his chariot's wheel, as he
dragged the German and Italian States. Hervas,
the brother-in-law of Duroc, did not believe that
the emperor would attempt to seize the throne
during the life of Charles IV., but he might find a
pretext for setting aside his successor ; and that, in
the meantime, he would be ready to use the prince
as an instrument against his father was not to be
doubted.
It is to the honour of Charles IV. that he was not
prepared to purchase his personal security by handing
over a million of his subjects to a foreign yoke. The
monarchs of Bavaria and Saxony had accepted
Napoleon as their lord paramount and had been
richly rewarded for their submission with an enhance-
ment of dignity and substantial increment of terri-
tory. The proposed exchange, moreover, was not
disadvantageous to Spain. The Catalans and Basques
had proved subjects quite as troublesome as the
Portuguese were during the sixty years of Spanish
rule. Lisbon, the natural capital of the peninsula,
and Oporto, with its vast wine trade, might well have
compensated the king for the loss of Barcelona and
Saragossa. And if Spain lost a strong frontier towards
France, it was true, as Napoleon pointed out, that
she would, under the new arrangement, have but that
one frontier to defend. It is worth observing, also,
266 Godoy: the Queen^s Favourite
that not only Izquierdo, but Escoiquiz, Ceballos, and
all the friends of the prince of Asturias, believed until
the twelfth hour that such a concession would satisfy
the enemy.
The old king had listened to the long indictment
recited by Izquierdo, and with a firmness and dignity
not perhaps to have been expected of him, replied
categorically to each of the counts. The emperor