When Captain Marbot, bearing despatches from Murat announcing the riot in Madrid, reached the chÂteau of Marrac, he found the Emperor in the park, taking his after-dinner walk, with the Queen of Spain on his arm and Charles IV. beside him, followed by the Empress Josephine, Prince Ferdinand, Don Carlos, Marshal Duroc, and some ladies.

“What news from Madrid?” cried Napoleon, as Marbot, covered with dust, drew near. The despatches were delivered in silence, and Napoleon drew to one side to read them, and to overwhelm the officer with questions. In vivid terms, Marbot described the despair of the Spanish people, the fury with which they had fought, the threatening aspect of the populace even after the revolt had been put down.

“Bah!” exclaimed Napoleon, cutting him short; “they will calm down and will bless me as soon as they see their country freed from the discredit and disorder into which it has been thrown by the weakest and most corrupt administration that ever existed!”

When the Emperor had explained to the King and Queen of Spain what had occurred in Madrid, they turned upon Ferdinand with an outburst of rage. “Wretch!” cried the old King, “you may now be satisfied. Madrid has been bathed in the blood of my subjects shed in consequence of your rebellion against your father; their blood be on your head!” The Queen was no less bitter, and even offered to strike her son. Napoleon put a stop to the painful scene.

“Bah! they will soon calm down.” So Napoleon thought, having no fear whatever that a tumultuous rising of peasants would make head against his troops. What his army had done in Italy and in Egypt, it could do in Spain. It only annoyed him, and somewhat puzzled him, to see that the people should reject his liberal constitution, and devote themselves with such frantic zeal to the most worthless of Bourbon kings. That Joseph would soon be in peaceful possession of the peninsula, that his generals would soon sweep the peasant bands out of the field, he did not doubt. Had he lacked faith as to this, he would probably not have given the crown to Joseph,—the placid, self-satisfied, comprehensively incapable Joseph. Had he dreamed of the long years of war that were to follow, he might have hearkened to the pleadings of Murat, and left that brilliant soldier to defend the crown which he so ardently coveted.

Amid ovations the Emperor and Josephine toured the provinces, on the return trip to Paris, everywhere welcomed with joy and admiration, while in the peninsula the great storm was muttering. Throughout Spain, in the highways and byways, from pulpit to market-place, Napoleon was denounced, defied, and resisted. Priests led the crusade, cursing the man of the Concordat as anti-Christ, minister of the devil, worthy of death and damnation. Committees of defence, juntas, sprang up everywhere; armies mustered almost at the stamp of the foot. Wherever a Frenchman could be stabbed, shot from ambush, or taken and sawn asunder, it was done. Roads were lined with ambuscades, stragglers and detached parties cut off, and the French generals were soon thrown on the defensive by this despised uprising of the people. At Saragossa and Valencia the French troops were repulsed; in Andalusia hordes of Spaniards surrounded Dupont’s army of twenty thousand, beat it in battle, and forced it to capitulate (Baylen, July, 1808).

In August the English landed troops in Portugal; and Junot, whose forces were scattered, fought with only thirteen thousand men against Wellington with sixteen thousand, was worsted at Vimeiro (August 21, 1808) and by the convention of Cintra (August 30, 1808) agreed to evacuate Portugal. He, too, had wanted to become a king; he, too, had thought of himself rather than of his master; he, too, had wrecked a splendid plan by sheer mismanagement and monstrous rapacity.

The disaster in Spain and Portugal came upon Napoleon like a thunderbolt; his grief and indignation knew no bounds; cries of rage and pain were wrung from him; pointing to his uniform, he said, “There is a stain here.” At Aboukir, Brueys had at least fought and died like a soldier; at Trafalgar Frenchmen had shown desperate valor; but at Baylen an army of twenty thousand imperial troops had laid down their arms to gangs of insurgents! Oh, the shame of it! Who could estimate its effect in Europe? When the Emperor spoke of Baylen to his council of state, his voice trembled, and his eyes were full of tears.

Conscious of the peril which menaced his supremacy, Napoleon determined to go in person and put down the Spanish revolt. But before doing so it was necessary that he and the Czar should have another conference, smooth over certain points of difference which had arisen, and come to a better understanding—hence the famous gathering at Erfurth (October, 1808). This time Alexander was Napoleon’s guest, and very royally was he entertained. A more brilliant assembly was never seen in Europe. Subject kings, vassals, lords of the Empire, civil and military dignitaries, courtiers, ambassadors, diplomats, eminent men of letters, surrounded the two great Emperors, and rendered homage. Business and pleasure intermingled; and while frontiers of empire were being arranged, there were banquets, balls, grand hunts, orchestral music, and the drama. Actors brought from Paris played to the Emperors and their trains, and the Czar stood up one night and took Napoleon’s hand at the line “the friendship of a great man is a gift from the gods.” Davoust used to say that Napoleon had been nodding till the Czar improvised this little by-play.

If Napoleon was anxious for the future of his power, he concealed it well; his face showed nothing but serenity, good nature, and confidence. He found time to converse at length with Goethe and Wieland; he found time to act the suave host to lords and ladies; he was as firm with Alexander as he had been at Tilsit; and when the conference broke up, he had arranged everything as completely to his satisfaction.

In the Memoirs of Marshal Oudinot, we find the following anecdote of the Erfurth meeting:—

“Napoleon had occasional fits of forgetfulness which prevented him from displaying, in his relations with the sovereigns, all the forethought expected in a host. “One day we were riding into the country, the two Emperors, Napoleon and Alexander, riding side by side. At a given moment, the former, carried away by his thoughts, took the lead, whistling, and seeming to forget those he was leaving behind. I shall always remember Alexander, turning stiffly toward his neighbor, and asking, ‘Are we to follow?’ ‘Yes, sire.’ I rejoined Napoleon and told him of this little scene. He fell back, offered an explanation, and that was the end of it.”

So Marshal Oudinot thought, but as the compiler of the Memoirs asks, who knows what influence this trifling incident may have had upon the proud, sensitive, suspicious, and wavering Czar?

By the terms of the new agreement, Alexander was to have a free hand on the Danube to take Moldavia and Wallachia; that much had been understood at Tilsit, perhaps, but “Constantinople, never! That is the empire of the world!” In return for the liberty to seize the Danubian provinces, the Czar was to keep central Europe quiet, while Napoleon conquered Spain and Portugal. Prussia was notified by the Czar that she must remain quiet, bow to Napoleon’s will, and agree to his demands, one of which was that Stein should be dismissed.

To Germans, generally, the heavy hand of the Czar, coming down upon Frederick William in this imperative fashion, must have suggested the thought that it was high time the Lord’s Anointed autocrat of Russia was being sworn to friendship to Prussia, once more, at the tomb of the great Frederick. The two oaths already taken seemed to have slipped their hold.

Suppose that Napoleon had solemnly gone in state to the Escorial and there, at night, had taken in his own the hand of the Spanish king, and had, over the bones of dead Spanish monarchs, sworn eternal friendship to Spain; suppose he had broken this vow as soon as made; suppose he had gone the second time and sworn it all over again; suppose he had violated his oath a second time:—would royalist and clerical authors ever have found ink black enough to fill their righteously indignant pens?

If we would correctly judge Napoleon, let us keep our equilibrium and our standards of comparison; let us throw him into contrast, not with the ideal man, but with other rulers of his own time. By so doing we may hope to come, in the humblest spirit and manner, to know the great Corsican as he actually was.

Once more an effort was made to put an end to war. The two Emperors sent couriers,—one French and the other Russian,—to England, bearing offers of peace. These couriers were treated almost as spies by the English, were kept under surveillance, and were finally sent back with a note which gave no encouragement to the monarchs who sent them.

King Joseph had been driven out of Madrid, was now at Vittoria, and the insurgents controlled the country with the exception of the soil occupied by the French armies.

Losing no time after the Erfurth interview, Napoleon hastened to Spain, took command of the troops at Vittoria (November 5, 1808), and moved forward. In a few days the entire military situation was changed. The Spaniards were out-generalled, beaten at all points, and escaped complete annihilation by the too great haste of some of the French generals. Within four weeks after the commencement of the campaign, Madrid was retaken, and once more put into the possession of the feeble Joseph. On his march to the Spanish capital, Napoleon found his road blocked at the mountain pass of Sommo-Sierra. The insurgents had fortified the heights, their cannon completely controlling the defile. So strong was the position that a handful of veterans there might have checked an army.

But the impudence of these Spanish bands in presuming to resist his march threw Napoleon into a fury. He would not wait till his infantry could advance upon either side, turn the enemy, and almost certainly secure a bloodless victory. He raged and stormed, “What! my army stopped by armed bands, wretched peasants!”

“Patience, sire, I pray,” pleaded General Walthour, who assured him that in a few minutes the pass would be cleared by infantry, which was even then advancing on either side. But no; the enemy must be charged with cavalry—a bristling battery, on the crest of a mountain gorge, must be swept out of the way by a cavalry dash.

“Go, SÉgur! Go at once; make my Poles charge, make them take everything!”

There was astonishment—but the order had to be obeyed. At full speed the splendid soldiers of the Polish squadron dashed up the pass, to melt away in an awful fire from the battery above. Historians say that the cavalry charge succeeded. SÉgur, who led the dash and was shot down in it, relates that the flanking infantry columns did the work.

“Does anybody know how SÉgur came to be hurt? Was he carrying an order?” Napoleon asked, after the battle.

When reminded that he had himself given SÉgur the order, he was silent, and “fell into a very thoughtful mood.” An English army under Sir John Moore had entered Spain and was advancing toward Madrid. When it learned that Napoleon was in the field, it began a retreat to the coast, which is famous in military history. The French, led by the Emperor, set out in hot pursuit; and it would be hard to say with certainty which party suffered the more frightful hardships,—the pursuers or the pursued. The weather was bitterly cold, with cutting winds, chilly rains, blinding snowstorms. In crossing the Gaudamara Mountains the storm was so fierce, the cold and the snow so terrible, that the advance guard of Napoleon actually began to retreat. It required all the Emperor’s personal influence and example to encourage the men onwards. Dismounting, he trudged along on foot, Lannes and Duroc on either side, and hour after hour he plodded thus through the snow, up the mountain, at the head of his men. Near the summit, on account of the jackboots the officers wore, they could go no farther. Napoleon was lifted on to a gun carriage, and riding on a cannon, he reached the top, his generals similarly mounted. By forced marches the French were pushed on in the hope of cutting off the English retreat, but it could not be done. Horribly as they suffered, the English were not wholly demoralized. There were always some gallant thousands who would turn and fight when the French pressed them too hard. In this way the pursuers met bloody repulses. Many frightful scenes took place among the English; but General Marbot relates an incident of the French pursuit which throws a vivid light over the hideous character of this whole campaign. He saw three French grenadiers kill themselves because they were tired out, could no longer keep up, and chose death rather than the tortures which awaited them if they fell into the hands of the Spanish peasants.

Napoleon was so deeply impressed by the suicide of his grenadiers that in spite of the drenching rain and bitter cold he went the rounds of the bivouac that night, speaking to the wretched soldiers and trying to restore their courage.

At Astorga a courier arrived, bringing despatches from Paris which warned Napoleon that Austria was ready now “to begin again.” She had completely reorganized her army, had patiently waited for the right moment, and was sure that it had come. The veteran troops of France were scattered over the Spanish peninsula; England had made good her grip on Portugal; Austria had about five hundred thousand soldiers ready, and now was the time to strike. The pursuit of the English was turned over to Soult, and the race for the seacoast continued as before. When the French could overtake the English at all, it was with an advance guard too small to crush the English rear-guard. If there was a clash, the French were repulsed. If the French came up in force, the English continued the retreat. At last the coast was made. There was a bloody fight, the battle of Corunna. Sir John Moore was killed, but his army, or what remained of it, got on board the English ships and sailed away.

As to Napoleon, he returned to Valladolid, where he busied himself for several days regulating the affairs of Spain, and in sending off innumerable despatches. Then springing upon his horse, he spurred away for Bayonne, in perhaps the wildest ride an emperor ever made. His escort clattered after him, strung out behind, and the wondering peasants of Spain long remembered that meteoric vision. They heard in the distance a faint noise as of frantic racing; there burst into view a breathless cavalcade; it came on like a wind-driven cloud; there was a rush, and a noise like thunder, a fleeting glimpse of bent riders and straining steeds; there was, perhaps, a shout in passing; then it went as it came, and in a moment it was gone.

General ThiÉbault, on his way to Vittoria, was in the road, with carriage, aides, escort, and servants, when one of his attendants said, “Here comes the Emperor, I think.” The General was about to alight from the carriage when he heard some one call:—

“Who is in that carriage?”

The servant hardly had time to answer “General ThiÉbault” before the imperial party tore by. “Savary was first, after him the Emperor, lashing Savary’s horse, and digging the spurs into his own.... A good minute afterward Duroc and the Emperor’s Mameluke galloped by, and at a like distance from them came a guide, exhausted with his efforts to make up lost ground, and four more brought up the rear as best they could.”

From Valladolid to Burgos, some seventy-five miles, Napoleon rode in three hours and a half (January, 1809).