ct was short, but it was
sharp, for he lost several hundred soldiers, perhaps half as many as
the patriots, in whose ranks some eight hundred fell. The aspirant to
royal honors yielded with ostentatious grace to the first
representations of the junta, and promised a general amnesty; but he
also thought it best to make an example before the eyes of his future
subjects, and in spite of his plighted word two hundred of the
insurgent patriots were seized and shot. This very day, however, there
was pronounced a decree of rude disenchantment for him. It was on May
second that Napoleon definitely wrote to him that the kingdom of Spain
could not be his; he might have Naples or Portugal. The Emperor was
tired of Bayonne, and longed to be back in Paris, where he could be
active about the business of perpetuating his empire and his dynasty.
The stubborn Ferdinand was therefore summoned once more, and charged
with having instigated the upheaval of Madrid. He remained mute for
some minutes, and with downcast eyes. "If before midnight," came the
cold words of the Emperor, "you have not recognized your father as
legitimate king, and notified the fact at Madrid, you will be treated
as a rebel." Some declare that there was besides a menace of death.

This ended all resistance. Ferdinand resigned his rights as king into
his father's hands, his rights as heir into those of Napoleon. Charles
had already assigned his rights as king to the same suzerain.[23] The
complacent old man was actually cheerful and joyous, as his
entertainer desired he should be; but Ferdinand, in spite of the fact
that he was to have the chateau of Navarre with an income of a million
francs, in spite of promises that all the royal family would be
liberally pensioned, remained silent and gloomy. Napoleon was not
pleased by this behavior, and in commending him to the hospitality of
Talleyrand, at the splendid castle of Valencay, declared that his
whole character could be summed up in a single word--sullen. Poor
Talleyrand! he saw himself condemned to the "honorable mission" of
turnkey to a dispossessed monarch whose guard of honor was a troop of
eighty mounted police. By the Emperor's grace the young culprit was
not to be committed to jail, for he had voluntarily surrendered
himself; but Talleyrand was to watch and amuse him, and discover, if
possible, some charming and marriageable girl to entangle his
affections, so that in her society he might forget the delights o