In the course of January, Napoleon at length replied to the King of Spain, but in an evasive fashion, for, without positively refusing to give the hand of one of his nieces to the Prince of the Asturias, he put off the date of the marriage indefinitely. The alarm of the court of Madrid at the receipt of this answer was increased by hearing that more French troops were on the march towards Catalonia and Aragon, which, with the army in Portugal, would raise the Emperor's forces in the Peninsula to 125,000 men. Finally, Napoleon in great part lifted the veil under which his plans had been hidden. Under the pretext of sending troops on board the French fleet stationed at Cadiz, he caused a powerful army corps to advance in February towards Madrid, through which the road from Bayonne to Cadiz passes, and named Prince Murat generalissimo of all the French forces in Spain.

I had now been in Paris more than six months, and although Marshal Augereau, to whom I was still aide-de-camp, was far from anticipating the war which was about to break out in the Peninsula, he thought it neither right nor conducive to my advance in my profession that I should stay at Paris when a large army was assembled beyond the Pyrenees. Being himself still kept in France by the effects of his wound, he took me to Prince Murat to ask him to attach me provisionally to his staff. I have already said that my father, who belonged to the same part of the country as Murat, had done him many kindnesses. Murat, who had always shown himself grateful, consented very readily to take me until such time as Augereau should have a command. I was well satisfied with this decision, although the position of supernumerary officer has its inconveniences, but I was anxious to show zeal, I reckoned on the Emperor's goodwill and, further, I was glad to go back to Spain and witness the great events which were in progress there. Considerable expense was necessary to make a fitting appearance on the staff of Murat, which at that time was the most brilliant in the army, but this was made easy to me by what was left of my splendid travelling allowances during and after the Friedland campaign. So I bought three good horses, with which my servant, Woirland, was to await me at Bayonne, whither I went when I had got my new uniforms.

This was the third time that a change of employment had taken me to Bayonne. Prince Murat and his staff received me most kindly, and I was soon on the best of terms with them all, though I steadily refused, in spite of continual pressure, to take part in their play. These gentlemen had cards or dice in their hands all day, winning or losing thousands of francs with most perfect calm; but besides that I have always detested play, I knew that I must keep what I had in order to renew my outfit in case of accidents, and that it was dishonourable to risk what I perhaps could not pay.

Part of the troops which Murat was to command were, perhaps, already in Castile. He entered Spain on March 10, and in five days we were at Burgos. From this time Murat regulated his march on that of the columns, and passed in succession to Valladolid in Segovia. The Spaniards, always flattering themselves that the French had come to protect the Prince of the Asturias, received our troops very well, though again astonished by their extreme youth and want of robustness, or under some incomprehensible delusion, Napoleon had persisted in sending into the Peninsula none but newly-raised regiments.

We occupied in Spain none but open towns, and two fortified places only, Barcelona and Pampeluna. But as their citadels and forts were still in the hands of the Spanish troops, the Emperor ordered his generals to try to get possession of them. To this end a thoroughly base trick was employed. The Spanish Government, while forbidding its generals to let us occupy the citadels and the forts, had ordered that the French troops should be received as friends, and everything done for their comfort. The commanders of our regiments asked permission to place their sick and their stores in the citadels, which was granted. Then they disguised their grenadiers as sick, and hid arms in the provision sacks of several companies, who, under pretext of going to the store houses for bread, made their way into the place and disarmed the Spaniards. In this way, General Duhesme, with only 5,000 men, got possession of the citadel of Barcelona and of Fort Monjuich. The citadel of Pampeluna and nearly all those in Catalonia shared the same fate.

[The Queen and the Prince of the Peace were at Aranjuez, persisting in their intention of retiring to America if matters got worse. Ferdinand, however, still hoping to obtain the hand of Napoleon's niece, saw in us only liberators, and with the support of many of the Royal Family and of the ministers, refused to follow the Queen and Godoy. At the sight of the preparations for a journey, the population and garrison of Aranjuez understood the facts, and their indignation spread to Madrid. Nevertheless, the King was on the point of starting on the morning of March 16. But the people, with the support of the troops, rose and opposed his departure. Charles submitted, and a proclamation stating that he would not go, quieted the crowd. But in the course of the night their numbers were swelled by the garrison and part of the population of Madrid, as well as peasants from the neighbourhood. Godoy's house was broken into and sacked, his guard of hussars dispersed by the King's body-guard, and the crowd went in search of the favourite himself. In order to save his life, the ministers persuaded the King to sign a decree degrading the Prince of the Peace from all his titles and dignities. At the news the crowd broke out into wild rejoicings, in which Ferdinand had the bad taste to take part.

All this time Godoy was actually concealed in his own palace, rolled up in some matting in a loft. The place had been searched, but he had not been discovered. He passed forty-eight hours in this position, and only came out when constrained by hunger. Then, however, he was promptly arrested by a sentry and handed over to the populace. He had received several wounds, when a picket of the body-guard, less cruel than the majority of their comrades, tore him from the hands of his tormenters, and got him away into the very same barrack where, twenty years before, he had been himself admitted as a soldier in the body-guard.]

On learning the arrest of their favourite, the King and Queen, in fear for his life, appealed to the generosity of the Prince of the Asturias and implored him to use his influence to release Godoy from the hands of the insurgents. Ferdinand arrived at the barracks just at the moment when the crowd was breaking in the gates. On his promise that Godoy should be brought to trial the mob retired respectfully. The prisoner was courageously awaiting his death when he saw the heir to the throne enter the stable where he was lying in his blood. At the sight of his personal foe he recovered all his energy, and when Ferdinand said to him with a generosity whether genuine or feigned, 'I pardon you,' Godoy replied with true Castilian pride, made all the more notable by his unhappy condition, 'The King alone has the right to pardon, and you are not king yet.' It is alleged, though the fact has not been proved, that Ferdinand answered, 'It will not be long first.' However that may be, half an hour later the crown was on the head of the Prince of the Asturias.

[On Ferdinand's return to the palace, the King and Queen, seeing no better way of calming the populace, abdicated in favour of their son. Instantly a frenzy of joy spread from Aranjuez to Madrid and throughout Spain, no man thinking that the approach of the French might disturb their happiness. At that moment Napoleon's troops were descending from the heights of Somo Sierra and of the Guadarrama. One column was at Buitrago and the other near the Escurial; Murat, with 30,000 men, was within a day's march of Madrid. Meanwhile Ferdinand VII., as he may now be called was not without anxiety. He again sent to the Emperor asking for the hand of his niece, and despatched the Duke of Parqué to explain the state of affairs to Murat. Then he organised his ministry and recalled his friends, including the canon Escoiquiz.] It was on March 19, just as Murat's staff was traversing the Guadarrama Mountains, that we received the first news of the rising at Aranjuez. The next day we heard of Charles's abdication and Ferdinand's accession. Murat hastened forward, and on the 21st his head-quarters were established at the town of El Molar, a few leagues from Madrid. A fearful tumult was raging in the capital. In its ferocious joy the populace had burnt and pillaged the houses of the Prince of the Peace, his family, and his friends; they would even have been massacred but for the energetic action of Count Beauharnais, who offered them at the French embassy an asylum which no one dared violate.

On learning of the revolution, Prince Murat, usually so communicative, became gloomy and preoccupied, and passed several days without speaking to any of us. Doubtless, in his place, amid a country turned upside down, any other marshal would have found his task very difficult; but Murat's personal position made it still more complicated. Seeing three of the Emperor's brothers already provided with crowns, while the fourth, Lucien, had declined one, Murat might well flatter himself that Napoleon's intention was to give him the throne of Spain if the Royal Family deserted their country and fled to America. He regretted, therefore, much the accession of Ferdinand, whom the Spanish nation adored and to whom it would rally. Therefore Murat, grounding his action on the fact that he had no orders from the Emperor to recognize Ferdinand VII. continued in his letters to give him the title of Prince of the Asturias, and advised Charles IV. to repudiate an abdication which had been extorted from him revolt and threats.

The old King and the Queen, regretting their loss of power, wrote bitter complaints to Napoleon of their son, representing his conduct at Aranjuez, not wholly without foundation as a sort of parricide. On the 23rd Murat entered Madrid at the head of Marshal Moncey's corps. The new king had called upon the people to give a good reception to his friend Napoleon's troops. He was punctually obeyed; we saw nothing but friendly faces among the vast and curious crowd. But it was easy to perceive how astonished they were at the sight of our young infantry soldiers. The moral effect was wholly to our disadvantage, and as I compared the broad chests and powerful limbs of the Spaniards who surrounded us with those of our weak and weedy privates, my national pride was humbled. Though I did not foresee the disasters which would arise from the poor opinion of our troops on the part of the Spaniards, I was sorry that the Emperor had not sent into the Peninsula some veteran regiments from the Army of Germany. Still our cavalry, and especially our cuirassiers, an arm unfamiliar to the modern Spaniards, excited their admiration, and the same with the artillery. But a shout of enthusiasm went up when the imperial guard appeared. The sight of the Mamelukes astonished the Spaniards, who could not conceive how the Christian French should have admitted Turks into their ranks. Ever since the Moorish domination, the peoples of the Peninsula have loathed the Mussulmans, though much afraid of having to fight against them. Four Mamelukes would put twenty Castilians to flight, as was proved before very long.

Murat established himself in a palace belonging to the Prince of the Peace, the only one which the mob had spared, under the impression that it still belonged to the Crown. I was lodged hard by with a much respected member of the Council of the Indies. Hardly had I alighted when Prince Murat, hearing that Godoy's enemies were sending him to prison at Madrid, no doubt to have him murdered there, and that the poor wretch was already at the gate of the town, ordered me to set out with a squadron of dragoons, and prevent at any cost the entry of the Prince of the Peace into the capital, letting the officers of his escort know that he, Murat, would hold them responsible for their prisoner's life. Two leagues from the suburbs I came upon Godoy. Although the unhappy man was terribly wounded and covered with blood, the guards who escorted him had been cruel enough to put irons on his hands and feet, and to tie him on a rough, open cart where he was exposed to the scorching rays of the sun, and to thousands of flies attracted by his wounds, which were scarcely covered with coarse linen rags. I was indignant at the sight, and glad to see that it produced the same effect on the French squadron which accompanied me.

The guards escorting the Prince of the Peace, about one hundred in number, were supported by half a battalion of infantry. I explained my object politely to the commanding officer, but he replied with extreme arrogance that he did not take his orders from the commander of the French arms. Adopting the same tone, I said that my business being to execute those orders, I should use every means to prevent the prisoner from being taken any farther. My dragoons were not recruits, but stalwart veterans of Austerlitz; determination could be read in their faces. I placed them in line so as to bar the passage of the cart, and told the officer of the guard that I waited for him to fire the first shot, but that I should then at once charge with my squadron upon him and his men. The officers of my dragoons had already given the order to draw swords, and the ardour of our adversaries appeared to be cooling a little when the commander of the half battalion in the rear came to the head of the column to see what the disturbance was about, and I recognised in him Don Miguel Rafael Cœli, the jolly officer with whom I had travelled from Nantes to Salamanca in 1802. 1Being a sensible man he understood Murat's reasons for objecting to the Prince of the Peace being brought into Madrid. If he were murdered, as was pretty certain, the French army would incur obloquy for not preventing it, while if it interfered it would provoke a bloody collision. As second in command Don Rafael had the right to give his opinion. He spoke to the officer commanding in the same sense that I had done, and it was agreed that Godoy should be detained for the time in the village of Pinto. The poor wretch had been a silent witness of what took place, and on reaching his prison he expressed his thanks to me in very good French, begging me to convey his gratitude to Prince Murat.

I took the liberty of pointing out to the guards the cruelty and disgrace to the Spanish uniform in putting irons on a prisoner who was guarded by 4,000 men. Don Rafael supported me, and we succeeded in getting the prince set free from his iron collar, handcuffs, and fetters. He was only held by a chain attached to his body, so that, though not free in prison, he could move a little and lie down on a mattress which I made them give him. His wounds, received five days ago, had not yet been dressed; the surgeon of our dragoons attended him, and the officers and even the troopers lent him linen.

Though I could reckon on the honesty of the infantry commander, I had little confidence with regard to the treatment which the Prince of the Peace would receive when I had left him in the hands of his cruel enemies, the guard. I took it on myself, therefore, to quarter the French squadron in the village, and arrange with the captain that a sentry should always be placed inside the prison to keep an eye on the one posted there by the guards. Murat approved what I had done, and for further security sent a battalion to take up its quarters at Pinto with orders to keep a sharp look out on the guards. Finally, Ferdinand VII., passing through the place next day on his way to Madrid, received from the officer of the guards a report of what had happened. Dreading above all things any complications with the French, the new king and his ministers commended him for having avoided a conflict with the dragoons, and ordered Godoy to be left in the prison at Pinto. Some days later they had him moved to the old fortress of Villa Viciosa, at a greater distance from the capital.

On March 24 Ferdinand made his royal entry into Madrid, being received by the people with indescribable joy. An immense crowd greeted him with cheers, women threw flowers in his path, and men spread their cloaks under his horses' feet. Our troops did not appear officially. Murat did not even visit Ferdinand, not knowing, until the Emperor had decided, whether the father or the son was to be recognised as sovereign of the Spains. If Napoleon intended to seize the crown, he would probably prefer to see it restored for the moment to the feeble Charles, rather than have the more difficult task of taking it from the nation's favourite, Ferdinand. Murat, therefore, felt pretty sure that the Emperor would refuse to recognise the new king.

Ferdinand, meanwhile, uneasy as to the view which Napoleon might take of his accession, consulted M. de Beauharnais; who, too upright a man himself to think it possible that Napoleon could take any steps against the liberty of a prince coming to seek him in the character of arbiter, advised Ferdinand to meet the Emperor at Bayonne. The King's friends doubted; but General Savary unexpectedly appeared with a letter from Napoleon, which determined him to the the course suggested. Moreover, he learnt that his father and mother were on their way to lay their version of the case before the Emperor, and it seemed well to anticipate them. The advice given by M. de Beauharnais had in fact been prompted by Murat and Savary. The Emperor had started for Bayonne on April 2, travelling slowly, in order to leave time for events to mature. [Ferdinand sent his brother Charles on in advance, and himself left Madrid on April 10, on the faith of Savary's assurances that Napoleon was already at Bayonne. Accompanied by that general, he reached Burgos where he did not, as he had been led to expect, find Napoleon; but did find the roads covered with French columns on the march. His suspicions that some trap was being prepared for him were calmed by Savary's assurances that Napoleon was at Vittoria. On arriving at that town, Ferdinand learnt with some surprise that, so far from having crossed the frontier, the Emperor had not yet arrived at Bayonne. This was more than his Spanish pride could endure; his counsellors pointed out that he had gone as far to meet a foreign sovereign as was consistent with his dignity, and in spite of all that Savary could say, he decided to go no farther. Furious at seeing his prey on the point of escaping him, the general posted off to Bayonne, and found that the Emperor had arrived on the 14th.

By the next day Ferdinand was practically a prisoner. Marshal Bessières had been secretly ordered to arrest him if he attempted to return, and Savary was coming to see that the order was executed. But no step of this kind was necessary, for Ferdinand, hearing that his parents, at the instance of his sister the ex-Queen of Etruria, were already on their way from Madrid to Bayonne, in fear of letting them get the ear of the Emperor before him, insisted on setting out at once, undeterred by the protests of the people and the forebodings of older advisers. On April 20 he crossed the Bidassoa. Not an infantry picket was there to present arms to him, nor a trooper to escort him. When at length some officers of the Emperor's household met him they accosted him as Prince of the Asturias. It was too late to go back; Ferdinand was in France and in Napoleon's power.

The Emperor, who was occupying the château of Marac, where I had been lodged in 1803 with Augereau, called upon Ferdinand, treated him politely, and invited him to dinner, but never gave him the title of king. On the next day he threw off the mask and announced to Ferdinand and his ministers that having been charged by Providence to create a great empire and lower the power of England, and having learnt by experience that he could not count on the assistance of Spain so long as the Bourbon family governed it, he had determined to restore the crown neither to Ferdinand nor to Charles, but to place it on the head of a member of his own family. Ferdinand and his advisers, overwhelmed by this statement, refused at first to accept it, answering with some reason that in any case no member of the French imperial family had any right to the crown of Spain.

Meanwhile the old King and Queen were approaching Bayonne, which they reached of April 20. Napoleon received them with royal honours, and brought them to dine with him at the château of Marac. There they found their beloved Manuel Godoy, whom they had not seen since the outbreak of Aranjuez. Before leaving Madrid, however, they had had an interview with Murat, and implored his intervention on behalf of the Prince of the Peace. The Emperor also had instructed him that Godoy's life was to be saved at all costs. To Murat's overtures, the provisional Junta, under the presidency of Prince Anthony, Ferdinand's uncle, replied that they had not the power to release so important a prisoner. Murat thereupon surrounded the castle of Villa Viciosa with a French brigade, ordering the general to bring away the Prince of the Peace amicably or otherwise. His guards, with the assent of the commandant, the Marquis of Chasteler, a Belgian in the Spanish service, having declared that they would stab him rather than give him up alive, Murat let them know that if they carried their purpose into effect they should be shot without mercy over his corpse. Thereupon the Junta ordered his release. The poor wretch arrived in our camp in a pitiable state; Murat received him kindly, provided for his wants, and sent him off at once with an escort of cavalry to Bayonne. Happening to recognize me as one of those who had saved him at Pinto, he expressed his desire that I should be of his escort. I should have liked it very well, but as I have already said the supernumerary aides-de-camp only get the disagreeable duties. This task was therefore entrusted to one of the regular staff, while I before long had one of extreme danger.

During the interview between Godoy and the elder sovereigns, Ferdinand came to pay his respects to his father. Charles received him with contumely, and had he not been in the Emperor's palace, would have driven him from his presence. On the following day, yielding to the persuasions of the Queen and the Prince of the Peace, who argued that as he would no longer be able to reign over Spain he would do better to accept the position which the Emperor offered him in France, and thus secure at once repose for his declining years and vengeance upon Ferdinand, Charles offered no more resistance to Napoleon's plans.]

While great events were maturing at Bayonne, Prince Murat, who had provisionally the control of the Government at Madrid, had caused Charles' protest to be published, and Ferdinand's name to be suppressed on all public documents, much to the discontent of the people and the grandees. When the news from Bayonne arrived, brought by secret emissaries in the disguise of peasants, whom Ferdinand's friends had sent, their agitation increased. The storm was grumbling around us, nor was it long before it broke out at Madrid.