eau, with the hope and the promise of an independent
sovereignty carved out of the Portuguese dominions, was pensioned off in
like manner, and ordered to partake the Italian exile of his patrons. A
few days afterwards, Ferdinand VII., being desired to choose at length
between compliance and death, followed the example of his father, and
executed a similar act of resignation. Napoleon congratulated himself on
having added Spain and the Indies to his empire, without any cost either
of blood or of treasure; and the French people, dazzled by the apparent
splendour of the acquisition, overlooked, if there be any faith in
public addresses and festivals, the enormous guilt by which it had been
achieved. But ere the ink with which the Spanish Bourbons signed away
their birthright was dry, there came tidings to Bayonne which might well
disturb the proud day-dreams of the spoliator, and the confidence of his
worshippers.

Not that Napoleon had failed to measure from the beginning the mighty
dangers which surrounded his audacious design. He had been warned of
them in the strongest manner by Talleyrand, and even by Fouche; nay, he
had himself written to rebuke the headlong haste of Murat in occupying
the Spanish capital--to urge on him the necessity of conciliating the
people, by preserving the show of respect for their national authorities
and institutions--to represent the imminent hazard of permitting the
Duke del Infantado to strengthen and extend his party in Madrid--and
concluding with those ominous words: _Remember, if war breaks out, all
is lost_.

Ferdinand, before he left Madrid, invested a council of regency with the
sovereign power, his uncle, Don Antonio, being president, and Murat one
of the members. Murat's assumption of the authority thus conferred, the
departure of Ferdinand, the liberation and departure of the detested
Godoy, the flight of the old King--these occurrences produced their
natural effects on the popular mind. A dark suspicion that France
meditated the destruction of the national independence, began to spread;
and, on the 2nd of May, when it transpired that preparations were making
for the journey of Don Antonio also, the general rage at last burst out.
A crowd collected round the carriage meant, as they concluded, to convey
the last of the royal family out of Spain; the traces were cut; the
imprecations against the French were furious. Colonel La Grange, Murat's
aide-de-camp, happening to appear on t