and VII.
(1807). The young King was then invited to meet the Emperor for
consultation at Bayonne. He found himself a prisoner in France, and to
Joseph Bonaparte, brother of the Emperor, was transferred the Crown of
Spain.

The nation seemed paralyzed by the swiftness and the audacity of these
overturnings. But soon popular indignation found expression. Juntas
were formed. The one at Seville, calling itself the Supreme Junta,
proclaimed an alliance with Great Britain; its purpose being the
expulsion of the French from their kingdom.

Spain was in a state of chaos. Joseph was not without Spanish
adherents, and there was no leader, no legitimate head to give
constitutional stamp to the acts of the protesting people, who without
the usual formalities convoked the Cortes. But while they were groping
after reforms, and while Lord Wellington was driving back the French,
Napoleon had met his reverse at Moscow, and a "War of Liberation" had
commenced in Germany.

The grasp upon the Spanish throne relaxed. The captive King had
permission to return, and the reign of Joseph was ended by his
ignominious flight from the kingdom, with one gold-piece in his pocket
(1814).

CHAPTER XXII.

The decade between 1804 and 1814 had been very barren in external
benefits to Spain, with her King held in "honorable captivity" in
France, and the obscure Joseph abjectly striving to please not his
subjects, but his august brother Napoleon. But in this time of chaos,
when there was no Bourbon King, no long-established despotism to
stifle popular sentiment, the unsuspected fact developed that Spain
had caught the infection of freedom.

[Illustration: From the painting by C. Alvarez Dumont.
Heroic Combat in the Pulpit of the Church of St.
Augustine, Saragossa, 1809.]

When, as we have seen, the Cortes assumed all the functions of a
government, that body (in 1812) drew up a new Constitution for Spain.
So completely did this remodel the whole administration, that the most
despotic monarchy in Europe was transformed into the one most severely
limited.

Great was the surprise of Ferdinand VII. when, in 1814, he came to the
throne of his ejected father Carlos IV., to find himself called upon
to reign under a Constitution which made Spain almost as free as a
republic. He promulgated a decree declaring the Cortes illegal and
rescinding all its acts, the Constitution of 1812 included. Then when
he had re-establ