social reforms
had hitherto consolidated the work of conquest; and those which he
soon offered to the Spaniards might possibly have renovated that
nation, had they not been handed in at the sword's point; but the
motive was too obvious, the intervention too insulting, to render
success possible with the most sensitive people in Europe. On May 2nd
he wrote to Murat that he intended King Joseph of Naples to reign at
Madrid, and offered to Murat either Portugal or Naples.[193] He chose
the latter. Joseph was allowed no choice in the matter. He was
summoned from Naples to Bayonne, and, on arriving at Pau, heard with
great surprise that he was King of Spain.

Napoleon's selection was tactful. At Naples, the eldest of the
Bonapartes had effected many reforms and was generally popular; but
the treachery of Bayonne blasted all hopes of his succeeding at
Madrid. Though the grandees of Spain welcomed the new monarch with
courtly grace, though Charles IV. gave him his blessing, though
Ferdinand demeaned himself by advising his former subjects quietly to
submit, the populace willed otherwise.

Every instinct of the Spanish nature was aflame with resentment.
Loathing for Charles IV., his Queen, and their favourite, whom
Napoleon richly dowered, love of the young King whom he falsely
filched away, detestation of the French troops who outraged the rights
of hospitality, and zeal for the Roman Catholic Church, whose chief
had just been robbed of half his States, goaded the Spaniards to
madness. Their indignation rumbled hoarsely for a time, like a volcano
in labour, and then burst forth in an explosion of fury. The
constitution which Napoleon presented to the Spanish Notables at
Bayonne was accepted by them, only to be flung back with scorn by the
people. The men of enlightenment who counselled prudence and patience
were slain by raging mobs or sought safety in flight. The rising was
at once national in its grand spontaneity and local in its intensity.
Province after province rose in arms, except the north and centre,
where 80,000 French troops held the patriots in check. In the van of
the movement was the rugged little province of Asturias, long ago the
forlorn hope of the Christians in their desperate conflicts with the
Moors. Intrenched behind their mountains and proud of their ancient
fame, the Asturians ventured on the sublime folly of declaring war
against the ruler of the West and the lord of 900,000 warriors.
Swiftly Galici