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continued unabated. Told by one regimental commander that only Ferdinand would enjoy the loyalty of the troops, Charles and Maria Luisa caved in, and on the morning of 19 March they abdicated the crown into the hands of their son. Driven from his hiding place by thirst, Godoy narrowly escaped a lynching, and was placed under close arrest. Sent to rescue him by Murat, a French officer discovered a pitiful figure: ‘Two leagues from the suburbs I came upon Godoy. Although this unhappy man was terribly wounded and covered with blood, the guards who escorted him had been cruel enough to put irons on his hands and feet, and to tie him to a rough open cart where he was exposed to the scorching rays of the sun, and to thousands of flies attracted by his wounds, which were scarcely covered with coarse linen rags. I was indignant at the sight.’44

For all its popular aspect, there is no doubt as to what the so-called motín de Aranjuez represented. Inspired by elements from outside its ranks though it may have been, a section of the army - in this case the royal guard - had sought to impose its views by ‘pronouncing’ against the regime. Challenged by this call to arms, Godoy and his royal patrons found that they had few defenders. The officer corps as a whole was disgruntled and rebellious; much of the upper nobility and the Church was hostile; reformist circles had long since lost all faith in Godoy’s political credentials; and the common people were in a state of open revolt. As for Ferdinand, he was seen as a saviour, the reception that he received when he rode into Madrid on 24 March being captured by Alcalá Galiano:

In truth, in all the different scenes of popular enthusiasm that I have witnessed, nothing . . . has ever equalled those which I now describe. The cheers were loud, repeated and delivered with . . . eyes full of tears of pleasure, kerchiefs were waved . . . from balconies with hands trembling with pleasure . . . and not for a moment did the passion . . . or the thunderous noise of the joyful crowd diminish.45

Popular though the new king was, his security was far from assured. Murat had occupied the city only the day before and, despite increasingly abject attempts to win France’s favour, refused to recognize Ferdinand; still worse, indeed, Charles IV was persuaded to protest against his abdication and appeal to Napoleon for assistance. With the two rivals openly craving his mediation, the emperor was ideally placed to recast the kingdom as he wanted. Charles, Maria Luisa and Ferdinand were all summoned to meet him for a conference at Bayonne while, as a sop to the former king and queen, Godoy was rescued from captivity and whisked to safety in France. With all the protagonists in the drama united in his presence, Napoleon announced that the rival kings were both to renounce the throne and hand it to the emperor. To this demand Charles made no resistance, and on 5 May, after some days of unedifying squabbles, such feeble defiance as Ferdinand was willing to offer was also overcome in exchange for guarantees of Spain’s territorial and religious integrity.

In the eyes of Napoleon, the ‘heaviest part of the work’ had now been done.46 But even as the Bourbons departed to a decorous exile - Charles, Maria Luisa and Godoy to Italy, and Ferdinand to Talleyrand’s chateau at Valençay - the Peninsula was astir. Indeed, more than that, the flames of rebellion were spreading on all sides. Why had the emperor acted as he had? For answer we might begin by turning to Napoleon himself:

The old king and queen . . . had become the object of the hatred and scorn of their subjects. The Prince of Asturias was conspiring against them . . . and had become . . . the hope of the nation. At the same time [Spain] was ready for great changes . . . whilst I myself was very popular there. With matters in this state . . . I resolved to make use of this unique opportunity to rid myself of a branch of the Bourbons, continue the family system of Louis XIV in my own dynasty, and chain Spain to the destinies of France.47

The preoccupation