ese,
or English debarkation on their territory. His army of reserve, in
number far exceeding the 40,000 men named in the treaty, had already
passed the Pyrenees, in two bodies, under Dupont and Moncey, and were
advancing slowly, but steadily, into the heart of Spain. Nay, without
even the pretext of being mentioned in the treaty, another French army
of 12,000, under Duhesme, had penetrated through the eastern Pyrenees,
and being received as friends among the unsuspecting garrisons, obtained
possession of Barcelona, Pampeluna, and St. Sebastian, and the other
fortified places in the north of Spain, by a succession of treacherous
artifices, to which the history of civilised nations presents no
parallel. The armies then pushed forwards, and the chief roads leading
from the French frontiers to Madrid were entirely in their possession.

It seems impossible that such daring movements should not have awakened
the darkest suspicions at Madrid; yet the royal family, overlooking the
common danger about to overwhelm them and their country, continued,
during three eventful months, to waste what energies they possessed in
petty conspiracies, domestic broils, and, incredible as the tale will
hereafter appear, in the meanest diplomatic intrigues with the court of
France. The Prince of Asturias solicited the honour of a wife from the
House of Napoleon. The old King, or rather Godoy, invoked anew the
assistance of the Emperor against the treasonable, nay (for to such
extremities went their mutual accusations), the parricidal plots of the
heir-apparent. Buonaparte listened to both parties, vouchsafed no direct
answer to either, and continued to direct the onward movement of those
stern arbiters, who were ere long to decide the question. A sudden panic
at length seized the King or his minister, and the court, then at
Aranjuez, prepared to retire to Seville, and, sailing from thence to
America, seek safety, after the example of the House of Braganza, in the
work of whose European ruin they had so lately been accomplices. The
servants of the Prince of Asturias, on perceiving the preparations for
this flight, commenced a tumult, in which the populace of Aranjuez
readily joined, and which was only pacified (for the moment) by a royal
declaration that no flight was contemplated. On the 18th of March, 1808,
the day following, a scene of like violence took place in the capital
itself. The house of Godoy in Madrid was sacked. The favourite himself