Another point of discord was Napoleon’s nomination of Joseph to the throne of Naples. Traditionally, the kings of Naples had been invested by the Pope, so Napoleon’s action caused offence. When he insisted the Pope recognise the new monarch the Pope refused, prompting Napoleon to send troops in to occupy all the ports in the Papal States, purportedly to prevent communication between the Vatican and the exiled Bourbons, now in Sicily.7
Napoleon kept making demands of the Pope as though he were one of his ministers, requesting, for instance, that he annul the marriage of Jérôme to Elizabeth Patterson. As the couple had never been married in church, the Pope could not oblige, which annoyed Napoleon, who was intending to marry Jérôme to Catherine of Württemberg and wanted to make him look as acceptable as possible to the family of the bride. On his return from Tilsit he sent more troops into the Papal States, and demanded the Pope withdraw his religious objections to his Code and apply it in his states.
As he sped around Italy, reviewing troops, inspecting fortifications and lecturing local authorities, Napoleon managed to fit in operas at La Scala and La Fenice, and to go to the theatre in smaller cities. Joseph came from Naples to confer with him in Venice, and on 13 December Napoleon had a six-hour-long meeting with Lucien at Mantua. He needed his younger brother to rejoin the family enterprise and offered him any kingdom he wanted, but, stuck in the rut of his self-inflicted conventions, he insisted Lucien must first divorce his wife, whom he deemed both too common and, as a divorcee, unsuitable. Lucien retorted that Napoleon had also married an unsuitable woman, adding, ‘and at least mine isn’t old and stinking like yours’. Napoleon undertook to recognise Lucien’s daughters Lolotte and Lilli and make them princesses of France, but not his son, who was born out of wedlock. Lolotte would marry the prince of the Asturias and become queen of Spain. Lucien could carry on living with his wife, but she could only have the status of concubine. To sweeten the pill Napoleon offered to make her Duchess of Parma. But Lucien, who disagreed with the course Napoleon was taking, refused.8
Three days later, in Milan, Napoleon signed yet another decree concerning the blockade. Britain had responded to his Berlin Decrees by ruling that any ship belonging to a neutral nation which had not put into a British port and had its cargo taxed (at 25 per cent) was liable to seizure. Napoleon reacted by ordering the seizure of any vessel that had conformed to the British decrees. This prompted President Thomas Jefferson of the United States to place an embargo on British and French vessels entering American ports.
Napoleon was back at the Tuileries on 1 January 1808. Three days later he visited David’s studio to see the monumental painting of his coronation in progress. On 9 January he inaugurated the new theatre he had ordered Fontaine to construct in the Tuileries, with a performance of Paer’s Griselda, but at the second performance, of Corneille’s Cinna, the room was so cold the ladies in their scanty dresses had to flee at the interval, and he vented his rage on the unfortunate architect. In between hunting, attending performances of tragedies by Racine, presiding over the council of the university and inspecting public works, he fitted in visits to Maria Walewska, whom he had brought to Paris and installed in a discreet house. He also decreed the introduction of full military discipline into the navy, sent Joseph a plan for the invasion of Sicily, and gave orders for the military occupation of the Papal States.
In the course of a meeting with the Austrian ambassador, Metternich, he broached the subject of combined Franco-Austrian operations against Turkey. One can only wonder at how he thought he would represent this to his ally Alexander, given the Russian monarchy’s age-old dream of conquering Constantinople. Napoleon wrote to him on 2 February dangling another prospect before him, presumably meant to distract him: ‘An army of 50,000, Russian, French, perhaps even partly Austrian troops, marching into Asia through Constantinople would need to get no further than the Euphrates to make England quake and fall to its knees before the Continent.’ But while he dreamed of dealing British power a blow in the east, he was going to have to defend himself against it closer to home.9
By the beginning of 1808 it had become obvious that drastic action was required if Spain was not going to disintegrate. Aside from the struggles for power revolving around its dysfunctional royal family, there were broader tensions as well as local animosities simmering all over the country, between peasants and nobles, nobles and clergy, peasants and clergy, traditionalists and reformers, and within the clergy between those who supported the Inquisition and those who wanted it abolished; most historians agree that the manifold passions agitating Spanish society were about to boil over into extreme violence. France could ill afford to have a failing state on its border, particularly one open on three sides to seaborne British attack.10
Along with most Europeans, the French viewed Spain as an archaic state ruled by an imbecile dynasty, populated by a lazy and decadent people marshalled by obscurantist priests – in a word, a society that badly needed the benefits of the Enlightenment. In the course of his recent tour of Italy, Napoleon had formed the impression that on the whole its inhabitants had accepted the new order he had imposed, and many had embraced it with enthusiasm. There seemed little reason to doubt that the same could be done in Spain.
His primary concern was to keep the British out, and he had been gradually sending troops into northern Spain under the pretext of guarding the supply lines of Junot in Portugal. By the beginning of 1808 Generals Dupont and Moncey had some 20,000 men each at Valladolid and Burgos respectively. In order to keep his options open, Napoleon deflected Charles IV’s proposal of a dynastic marriage to Lucien’s daughter on grounds of the disgraceful behaviour of the prince of the Asturias. On 20 February he sent Murat in with another 80,000 men while he considered what to do next.11
Talleyrand argued that France would never be safe unless she could rely on the alliance with Spain, and that the solution imposed by Louis XIV a century earlier was the only sensible one: the throne of Spain should be occupied by a member of the same dynasty as that reigning in France. Cambacérès warned against getting involved in yet another country, but while Napoleon considered the options, events in Spain sucked him in.12
On the night of 18 March 1808, supporters of Ferdinand stormed Godoy’s palace at Aranjuez and imprisoned him, then forced Charles IV to abdicate in favour of his son, whom they proclaimed King Ferdinand VII. They assumed that they had the support of France, and were surprised when Murat, who had occupied much of the country by stealth and installed himself in Madrid, took the unfortunate Charles under his protection. Charles wrote to Napoleon informing him that he had been forced to abdicate and in effect placing himself at his disposal. Napoleon began to think his own presence in Madrid was necessary, and at the end of March he ordered horses, pages and cooks to be sent there. At the same time, he invited Ferdinand to France. It is difficult to deduce his ultimate goal, or whether he had one at this stage.13
On 2 April he left Saint-Cloud, ostensibly on a tour of inspection of the south-west, stopping at Orléans, Bordeaux and other towns to inspect troops and meet local notables. Along the way he encountered three Spanish grandees sent by Ferdinand to announce his accession to the throne, but refused to receive them. On 14 April he reached Bayonne, and three days later took up residence nearby at the grim château of Marracq.
Massively built but small, it barely contained Napoleon and Josephine, who joined him there later with her maison, which huddled uncomfortably in a series of small upstairs rooms. Napoleon’s numerous staff were accommodated in nearby houses and cottages, while his military escort camped on the lawn in front of the house: a battalion of grenadiers of the Guard first, next to them a detachment of Basque gardes d’honneur in red dolmans, black berets, breeches and stockings, and 500 metres away a fancily-uniformed squadron of the newly formed Polish chevau-légers of the Guard.14
The day after taking up residence Napoleon wrote to Ferdinand, reserving his decision on whether to recognise him and inviting him to Bayonne. Th
e same day he wrote to his brother Joseph warning him that in five or six days he might write again asking him to leave Naples and come to Bayonne. When Ferdinand arrived, on 20 April, Napoleon had a short interview with him and discussed matters with members of his entourage. Six days later Napoleon met Godoy, who had also arrived; he told him the Bourbons had lost all credit in Spain, and the people wanted Napoleon as their ruler. ‘If I am not mistaken,’ Napoleon wrote to Talleyrand, ‘this play has reached its fifth act, and we are about to see the dénouement.’ It began with the arrival on 30 April of Charles and Maria-Luisa, who trundled into the town in a convoy of magnificent state coaches of another age, ‘huge gilded boxes with glass in front and behind as well as on the doors’, suspended on wide leather straps attached to outsize gilded wheels. After dining with them that evening, Napoleon could begin to make his own assessment of the Spanish royal family.15
He had taken little time to rule out Ferdinand. ‘The Prince of the Asturias is very stupid, very wicked, very hostile to France,’ he wrote to Talleyrand. As well as being an imbecile, he was untrustworthy – he had expressed regret that when forcing Charles to abdicate his partisans had not followed the example of Tsar Paul’s assassins. He would also be easy for the British to manipulate. On the other hand, a couple of meetings with Charles and his consort sufficed to persuade Napoleon that he too was incapable of ruling effectively. ‘King Charles is a good man,’ he thought, while ‘the queen has her heart and her past written all over her face; no more need be said’. He persuaded Charles to revoke his abdication and appoint Murat as his lieutenant pending a resolution of the crisis.16
This had taken on a new dimension with the outbreak on 2 May of a riot in Madrid. Supposedly a protest against the departure for Bayonne of two more members of the royal family, it turned into an attack on all Frenchmen, principally soldiers, stationed in the capital, between 150 and 200 of whom were murdered. Murat restored order with savage repressions involving the execution of around a thousand rioters. When it reached Bayonne, the news contributed to a scandalous royal row in front of Napoleon, as Charles accused Ferdinand of treachery and Maria-Luisa urged Napoleon to have him executed. An exasperated Napoleon declared he could not recognise anyone as despicable as Ferdinand, and bullied him into renouncing his claim to the throne and acknowledging his father as king. Whether under pressure from Napoleon or not it is not clear, but Charles then renounced his own right to the throne, which he placed at the disposal of Napoleon, on the grounds that only he was in a position to restore order.17
Napoleon returned to Marracq that evening in a state of agitation, and walked around the park with his chaplain, the Abbé de Pradt, discussing the diminishing options. He could see only one: ‘The old dynasty is used up, and I have to rebuild the work of Louis XIV,’ as he put it to General Mathieu Dumas. The next day he wrote to Talleyrand instructing him to prepare the château of Compiègne to receive the ex-king of Spain and his consort. The prince of the Asturias and his brother Don Carlos were to be put up at Talleyrand’s château of Valençay, a punishment for Talleyrand, who was given the additional job of finding him a woman. ‘I believe the most important part of the job to have been done,’ Napoleon wrote, adding that although there might be a few disturbances, the firm lesson given by Murat in Madrid would prevent further trouble. He waited another four days before writing to Joseph instructing him to come and take the throne of Spain, encouraging him with the argument that while Naples was ‘at the ends of the earth’, ‘In Madrid, you are in France.’18
Another four weeks passed before Joseph arrived, and during that time Napoleon visited local garrisons and ports. At Biarritz he bathed in the sea, watched over by mounted chasseurs of the Guard. Presumably in consequence of a lack of reading matter, he gave orders for the creation of a thousand-volume travelling library, in the small duodecimo format with large print fit to be read in a carriage. It was to include sections on religion and the classics, a hundred novels, history, memoirs and the great classics of French drama. He also instructed his librarian to make extracts and précis of the campaigns of Crassus, Trajan and other Roman emperors against the Parthians on the Euphrates, and to have maps and plans of the area drawn up. When the weather grew warm, he and Josephine were plagued with flies and other insects, and slept together under a mosquito net. He was affectionate with her, and did everything to scotch the gossip about a possible divorce.19
Joseph reached Bayonne on 7 June, and the two brothers began setting up the new monarchy. They drew up a constitution which enshrined many Spanish traditions and recognised Catholicism as the religion of state. Napoleon refrained from introducing the Code as he had insisted on doing in Italy. On 22 June, at Valençay, Ferdinand swore an oath of fealty to Joseph, who was proclaimed King José I on 8 July by a hastily convened Cortes consisting of ninety-one members. He was congratulated by the other members of the former dynasty, and began issuing proclamations styling himself ‘Don José, by the Grace of God, King of Castille, Aragon, the Two Sicilies, Jerusalem, Navarre, Grenada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia’, and a sackful of other titles which had accrued to the Spanish monarchy, including sovereignty over the Canaries, the Eastern and Western Indies, those of Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant and Milan, and many others even more abstruse. Napoleon told him not to be so silly, and packed him off to Madrid the following day.20
Joseph looked forward to his new role with confidence. In his two years on the throne of Naples he had proved himself a competent and generally popular king, displaying tact, behaving as a good Catholic and respecting local traditions. He had reformed the corrupt administration and modernised the army, cleared out gaols filled with people festering for forgotten crimes and suppressed much of the endemic banditry, eventually capturing the most notorious bandit, Fra Diavolo. He admitted that he had been naïve and idealistic in believing that people would respond well to reasonable and benign rule, and occasionally had to resort to firmness. But he did understand something Napoleon did not – that Naples could not be ruled as a colony.21
Despite the apparent similarities, Spanish society and the Spanish political edifice differed fundamentally from those of Naples, and the cauldron of complex and contradictory hatreds had boiled over as a result of recent events inside and outside the country. The French military incursion had provoked resistance, to which the French responded with reprisals which in turn produced savage reactions, releasing a spiral of cruelty which spun out of control as the French razed villages and looted churches, and the inhabitants disembowelled or crucified French soldiers in retaliation.
The French Revolution, which had combined the destruction of the Catholic Church and religious persecution with that of the monarchy and the nobility, had branded all Frenchmen as enemies of Church and throne, while Napoleon’s recent persecution of the Pope had turned him in the Spanish popular imagination into the Antichrist. Priests proclaimed that to kill a Frenchman was not a sin but a step on the path to heaven. Ferdinand on the other hand was miraculously transformed into a sacred symbol. Although he had not a drop of Spanish blood – of his sixteen great-great-grandparents, four were Bavarian, three French, two Polish, two Italian, one Austrian and the rest German (two of them Protestant) – he had become a national hero, el Deseado, the Desired One.
Joseph’s enthusiasm evaporated long before he reached Madrid. ‘The fact is that there is not one Spaniard who is on my side apart from the small number of people who made up the junta and are travelling with me,’ he wrote to his brother only three days after setting off from Bayonne. Even they began leaving him as he travelled on, and less than a week later he had to face the fact that ‘I have not one single supporter here.’ A couple of days later he made his solemn entry into Madrid: bells pealed and cannon saluted, but there was nobody in the streets or at the windows. ‘I was not received by the inhabitants of this city as I was by those of Naples,’ he reported.22
In a succession of letters he assured his brother that they had been delu
ded, and that to pacify the country was an almost impossible task, given that he was facing an exasperated nation of twelve million people. He changed his approach, as in the circumstances ‘kindness would appear as cowardice’, and only overwhelming force could produce results, though he regarded it as ‘a repulsive task’. He demanded an extra 150,000 troops and overall command of them – beginning with Murat, who had fallen ill with dismay at having been passed over, all the military commanders were ignoring him and acting independently of each other.23
Napoleon made light of his brother’s warnings. He had left Bayonne on 21 July after receiving reports of Bessières’ rout of a Spanish army at Medina del Rioseco, confident in the effectiveness of French arms to deal with the situation. He made a stately progress, inspecting military units and attending receptions with the civil authorities as he went, and reached Bordeaux on 31 July. Joseph’s literary pretensions had always annoyed him, and in his jeremiads he read only cowardice. He wrote back telling him the Spaniards were cowards, and he must show resolution and apply force. But his tone faltered after, on 2 August, he received news which profoundly shocked him.24
Napoleon Page 51
