by Philip Dwyer
A Despised Family
If the reasons for Napoleon intervening in Portugal appear reasonably straightforward, the same cannot be said for Spain. The fact that he was thinking of partitioning Portugal and handing over suzerainty to the King of Spain should put paid to any assertion that he was always bent on eliminating the House of Bourbon in Europe. There was very little long-term thinking in his foreign policy choices, most of which were short-term responses to specific developments, even if that development was the consequence of his own actions.31 What happened then in the six months between the Treaty of Fontainebleau at the end of October 1807 and April 1808 when Napoleon deposed the ruling house of Spain and put his brother on the throne?
Political intrigue and a family dispute that got out of hand is the short answer. The Spanish royal family was possibly the most dysfunctional of all the dysfunctional royal families in Europe. The queen, Maria Luisa, granddaughter of Louis XV, an empty-headed, vain, ardent, unpredictable woman who meddled in politics and dabbled in love affairs – she was accused by contemporaries of being a modern-day Messalina, promiscuous wife of the Emperor Claudius – inflicted her ‘odd tastes’ and ‘scabrous fantasies’ on the rest of the country.32 An unflattering portrait by the Russian ambassador to Madrid has her completely withered at the age of thirty-eight; she had lost all her teeth by then and wore a set of ill-fitting dentures.33 The king, a ‘hale, good-humoured, obliging man’, often remarked, albeit jokingly, that she was ugly and getting old, and this was at least fourteen years before Napoleon invaded Spain.34 The royal couple had virtually handed over power to Godoy, who had ruled over Spain for fifteen years. Godoy was one of those favoritos (royal favourites) littered across Spanish history. Rumour had it that he slept with the queen, though little but gossip supports the assertion.35
The king’s son, Fernando, Prince of Asturias, a spiteful, stupid boy with ‘an ugly face, a tubby figure, round knees and legs’, hated his mother and her favourite, Godoy, and had designs on the throne.36 At the end of October 1807, on the same day the Treaty of Fontainebleau was ratified, Carlos uncovered a plot to overthrow Godoy. Fernando was directly implicated, as a result of which he was confined to a cell in the Escurial, a monastery near the Sierra de Guadarrama, about fifty kilometres north-east of Madrid. The plot revealed the hostility of two competing factions at court, one around the king, Charles IV, and led by Godoy, the other an aristocratic party centred on the Prince of Asturias and some prominent courtly aristocrats. The two factions were in basic political agreement, especially in their desire to ally with France, and fought only for power.37 Increasingly, however, the Spanish came to see Fernando as the martyr and the king and queen, as well as Godoy, as the problem. It was a view encouraged by Napoleon, who told his foreign minister to organize a campaign in the Spanish press against Godoy.38
Napoleon’s attitude towards Godoy was in part shaped by what he had discovered when he was in Berlin in 1806; he was shown correspondence that proved that Spain, which was meant to be an ally, had conspired against him.39 Convinced that Prussia would defeat France, Godoy had put out feelers for a triple alliance with Russia and Britain, and was foolish enough to publish a manifesto that designated Napoleon as their principal enemy, calling the Spanish to arms. Napoleon did nothing for the moment, but he no doubt filed it at the back of his mind, ready to use when the opportunity arose. We know just how vindictive he could be, so he may have built up resentment against Spain for flirting with the coalition, or at the very least now considered it an untrustworthy ally.
Though Napoleon’s troops entered Spain unopposed – the Emperor did have, after all, the acquiescence of the king by the Treaty of Fontainebleau – the French presence caused anger among both the people and the political elite, an anger directed against Godoy, who was blamed for letting the French in. During the night of 17 March, supporters of Fernando, and a mob stirred up and recruited from among the people of Madrid, laid siege to the royal palace.40 The motìn (or popular riot) of Aranjuez, as the incident is known (named after a town about forty-eight kilometres south of the capital, where the royal family was in residence), resulted in Carlos abdicating in favour of his son, who then became Fernando VII. We now think that Napoleon encouraged Fernando in his intrigues and then, as we shall shortly see, used him to take possession of the Spanish throne.41 It is from this time on as well that we can see a radical turn in Spanish attitudes toward the French. For the moment, incidents involving the murder of French soldiers remained isolated, but generally speaking relations between French troops and the Spanish deteriorated dramatically from this point.42
We can pass over the complicated fallout from this palace coup. Joachim Murat, appointed the Emperor’s lieutenant to the army in Spain,43 was only a few kilometres away from Madrid when news of Carlos’s overthrow reached him. He was visibly shaken by the event, predicting in a letter to Napoleon that blood was going to flow, and that Europe would blame France for it.44 Murat urged Napoleon to come to Madrid to sort out the mess, but by this stage Napoleon had already decided that the Spanish House of Bourbon would soon cease to exist.45 On 1 April, he wrote to Murat to say that the Guard had already been sent towards Madrid, something that did not bode well for the Spanish royal house.
Napoleon’s thinking on Spain evolved over time and went from what one could call its instrumentalization as part of an overall strategic goal – excluding the British from the Continent – to incorporating it within his Empire.46 This is a turning point, what one historian has referred to as a ‘foreign-political slide’, into what is commonly dubbed the Spanish quagmire, and which would result in his first military and political defeat.47 It is worth, however, dwelling on the reasons why Napoleon decided to intervene in the first place and the methods he used to achieve his goals. This is no easy task for, as with most things surrounding Napoleon, there are no clear-cut policies; he often contradicted himself, left his options open, chose one that suited the moment, and justified his actions a posteriori.
Over the preceding months, Napoleon had hesitated between several solutions: he could invade Spain and oblige the Spanish royal house to flee to South America (just as the House of Braganza had); he could leave Carlos IV on the throne, an unlikely option unless he also removed Godoy from the political scene; he could replace Carlos with Fernando, compliant and well liked by the people, but there was no guarantee that Fernando would be any more capable of ruling Spain than Carlos;48 he could join the two dynasties by marriage with a French princess;49 he could take the northern provinces and leave Fernando to reign over the rest of the country; or he could overthrow the Bourbons and replace them with someone from his own family. Napoleon was no doubt thinking of Louis XIV, who had done just that during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).
A marriage alliance with the Spanish Bourbons appears to have been a possibility as late as January 1808.50 Napoleon met with his brother Lucien in Mantua in December 1807, in the hope of persuading him to marry off his daughter Charlotte, who was only thirteen years old, to Fernando of Spain, but Lucien would not hear of it (which is interesting, considering that he had tried to marry off Napoleon himself to one of Carlos IV’s daughters). It is impossible to tell whether Napoleon was serious or whether this was simply a ploy to get Lucien to divorce his wife. At any rate, Napoleon wrote to say that he loved him ‘as he loved above all else his family’, and that he had no fault other than being emperor and powerful. He was sure, however, to explain the situation in which he found himself, both in Europe and vis-à-vis his family. ‘But placed as he is, he does not want to be wrong, he does not want that which interferes with his established system of which he alone is the source and creator.’51 In other words, Napoleon made a distinction between himself as Emperor and himself as brother.
The question is when did Napoleon decide to overthrow the Spanish Bourbons? The riot of Aranjuez and the carryings-on of the Spanish royal family must have prompted him to act decisively. In March 1808, he offered Louis the
Spanish throne; ‘the climate of Holland does not suit you’, Louis was glibly informed. He was not persuaded. ‘I am not the governor of a province. By what right could I ask an oath of loyalty from another people, if I do not remain loyal to the one that I gave Holland when I ascended the throne?’52 Napoleon then turned to Joseph, much to the chagrin of Murat, who was hoping this time to obtain a crown.53 Although he reiterated that nothing was certain, Napoleon decided to intervene militarily by the end of the month of March. A week after Carlos and Fernando had both abdicated (see below), he informed Joseph that he had made him King of Spain.54 ‘In Madrid you are in France; Naples is at the end of the world. I wish that immediately after having received this letter you leave the regency with whomever you want . . . and that you leave on 20 [May] and that you are here on 1 June.’ Murat would eventually be given Joseph’s throne in Naples.
Just as he had accepted Naples from his brother’s hands, so too did Joseph accept Spain, without on the surface objecting to this new development. He liked Naples so it was with great regret that he left.55 The thing that irked him the most was having to hand Naples over to Murat.56 By this stage, countries, their rulers and their people had become pawns on the chequerboard of Napoleon’s strategic games. His decisions were utterly devoid of thought for the people involved, and the consequences for them. Joseph was not consulted, he was told. One could look at the offer of Spain as a reward of sorts for the manner in which Joseph had conducted himself in Naples; but then he had little choice.57 Napoleon must have considered that he would be acceptable both to Spanish liberals in favour of a French intervention and to the Spanish people. Joseph, moreover, had experience in dealing with a region in revolt (Calabria), so he could bring some knowledge to bear in the pacification of the country. What he thought of all this, however, remains unknown.
So too are Napoleon’s thoughts, although he was pouring troops into Spain, and seizing control of a number of strategic points, like the fortresses of Pamplona and Barcelona (which aroused suspicions about the reason for the French military presence). The ease with which Junot had marched into Portugal, virtually unopposed, and the fact that his troops were able to take up positions in Spain in the midst of the political turmoil that was disturbing Madrid, must have made an impression on Napoleon.58 In December 1807, around 25,000 troops were stationed between Burgos and Vitoria. By April 1808, more than 120,000 men had crossed the Pyrenees and were now garrisoned in the Peninsula.
Napoleon was naive or foolish enough to believe the flattering reports he was receiving from his special envoys in Madrid, such as Lannes, Berthier, Murat and Savary, as well as the new ambassador to Spain, Josephine’s brother-in-law François de Beauharnais. Beauharnais, a mediocre diplomat, presented Napoleon with inaccurate reports about what was happening in the Spanish capital, and grossly exaggerated the welcome the Emperor would receive from the Spanish.59 These men were not lying, but they too had little knowledge of the country themselves and frequented only pro-French aristocratic circles in Madrid, the afrancesados, which gave them a distorted conception of what Spain was about. On the other hand, Napoleon received reports of the changes that had taken place in Spain and the potential of the Spanish to commit ‘great excesses’,60 but he chose to ignore them. He preferred instead to believe that he was popular in Spain, and that the Spanish monarchy was not.61 The fact that Murat wrote shortly after arriving in Madrid to say that Napoleon was awaited as if he were the Messiah probably did not help.62
Worse, Napoleon, imbued with a number of cultural clichés about the Spanish, had only a distorted idea of Spain and its people. He echoed sentiments commonly held at the time when he wrote that the Spanish were ‘vile and cowardly, about the same as I found the Arabs to be’.63 His low opinion of both the Portuguese and the Spanish may have had something to do with his decision to intervene in the Peninsula.64 However, he had never set foot there and had never read a book about either country. In looking at Spain it suited him to see a dilapidated monarchy in a backward country; it blinded him to the reality of the situation – the profoundly religious nature of its people, their attachment to traditions, their fiercely independent nature, the regionalist sentiments that pervaded the provinces.65 Napoleon certainly seems to have underestimated the resources needed to control Spain. If the Abbé de Pradt is to be believed, he spoke of needing no more than 12,000 men in all.66 ‘It is child’s play,’ he is supposed to have said. ‘Those people do not know what French troops are. Believe me, it will be over quickly. When my great political chariot is launched, it has to pass; woe to those who find themselves under its wheels.’67 To his mind, because Spain was dominated by the Church and the Inquisition, and as a consequence was ‘superstitious’, it was backward by French standards.
One pre-eminent scholar believes that Napoleon acted alone in deciding to invade Spain.68 It is a view that ignores a number of factors, not least that Napoleon was in the habit of making important decisions only after consulting others. There was, moreover, what might be called an ‘interventionist faction’ at the imperial court, which included people like Talleyrand, Murat and Champagny, all in favour of a military solution to Spain’s dynastic woes.69 It is possible that Talleyrand saw intervention in Spain as a means of forcing Britain to concede defeat.70 Champagny, the foreign minister, fearful that the political crisis in Spain could be used to Britain’s advantage, recommended that a prince, a friend of France, assume the Spanish throne.71
The invasion of the Peninsula has to be seen within a wider, international context: it was also about control of Latin America, as well as about a future partition of the Ottoman Empire.72 Napoleon annexed Tuscany, Parma, Lucca and other central Italian states in March 1807, and he annexed the Kingdom of Etruria in March 1808 as a way of controlling the ports of Taranto and Brindisi, all with a view to organizing an expedition to the Mediterranean.73 We know this is what he had in mind when he ordered Rear-Admiral Decrès to concentrate the fleet at Taranto with the aim of transporting 30,000 men in October 1808 to (possibly) Tunis, Algiers or Egypt.74 In the winter of 1807–8, Napoleon also made plans to invade Sicily, but suddenly cancelled them in favour of an expedition to reinforce the garrison at Corfu.75 Corfu was a good point from which to launch a naval invasion of Egypt.
And for that the navies of Portugal and Spain were important. One of the secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit called for the uniting of all European fleets in a concerted attack against the Royal Navy. It is an indication that Napoleon was still thinking in terms of defeating Britain, or at least of contesting its domination of the high seas. In July 1807, a combination of the French, Russian, Danish, Swedish, Spanish and Portuguese fleets would have given the French numerical superiority in ships of the line.76 But in the erratic environment that was early nineteenth-century European diplomacy, circumstances could change very rapidly. In September 1807, the British again attacked Copenhagen and captured seventeen Danish ships of the line along with eleven frigates; a small number were deemed unseaworthy and burnt, but it added greatly to the British naval arsenal.77 In 1805, Sweden entered into an alliance with Britain, adding an extra twelve ships of the line, which then proceeded to blockade the Russian port of Kronstadt, disabling a further twenty Russian ships of the line.78 And as we have seen, General Junot, sent to seize the Portuguese fleet at the end of 1807, did not arrive in time; a further twenty ships (ten Russian, ten Portuguese) were lost as they either sailed for Brazil or were blocked up in Portuguese ports. Another thirty ships were lost with the invasion of Spain (including some French ships that had found harbour in Cadiz after Trafalgar), seized by the British.
In all then, nearly one hundred ships of the line were lost to Napoleon before he could get his hands on them, a figure that makes Trafalgar pale in comparison. In order to make up the losses, he launched an ambitious shipbuilding programme. The goal was 150 ships of the line, a figure he was well under way to achieving by the time he invaded Russia in 1812 and which would have given him something close
to a 50 per cent numerical superiority over the British.79 Britain was never able to have more than 113 ships of the line at sea at any one time, and even then they were often badly undermanned. One could be forgiven for thinking that the French ships were poorer in quality than the British, but that was not always the case. Although reluctant to fight, because they were unable to escape the British blockades often enough to put to sea for exercise, more than a few French captains knew how to manoeuvre.80
‘A Pitiful Intrigue’
Rather than travel to Madrid, Napoleon expected the Spanish royal family to come to him, or at least to meet him halfway, on French territory, at Bayonne (a stone’s throw from Biarritz and the Spanish border). Fernando had to appear before Napoleon as a means of letting him know who was boss, a tactic the Emperor had used on previous occasions. General Savary, a sort of Mr Fix-it, who often did Napoleon’s dirty work, was sent to Madrid to persuade Carlos IV and now Fernando VII to accept Napoleon’s ‘mediation’, and to lure Fernando to a meeting outside France.81 Savary told Fernando that if he wanted to be recognized by France, he had to meet the Emperor. To sweeten the pill, and at the suggestion of Savary, Napoleon wrote to Fernando saying that he was prepared to recognize him as the legitimate King of Spain, if his father had not abdicated under duress, and that he should come to Bayonne so that they could discuss the matter.82 On 10 April 1808, much to the disappointment of the Madrilenian crowds, Fernando set out to meet Napoleon, leaving behind a junta (council) to govern in his absence; Carlos and Maria Luisa set out a few days later.