n at Aranjuez, March 17-19, 1808, when Charles IV.
abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand VII., Godoy was only preserved
from the fury of the populace by a timely imprisonment. In the following
May, by which time Ferdinand himself was a prisoner in France, he was
released at the instance of Murat, and ordered to accompany Charles to
Bayonne, for the express purpose of cajoling his master into a second
abdication in favour of Napoleon. The remainder of his long life was
passed, first at Rome, and afterwards at Paris, in exile and dependence.
The execration of Godoy, "who was really a mild, good-natured man,"
must, in Napier's judgment, be attributed to Spanish venom and Spanish
prejudice. The betrayal of Spain was, he thinks, the outcome of
Ferdinand's intrigues no less than of Godoy's unpatriotic ambition.
Another and perhaps truer explanation of popular odium is to be found in
his supposed atheism and well-known indifference to the rites of the
Church, which many years before had attracted the attention of the Holy
Office. The peasants cursed Godoy because the priests triumphed over his
downfall (Napier's _History of the War in the Peninsula_, i. 8;
Southey's _Peninsular War_, i. 85 note, 93, 215, 280).]

9.

Bears in his cap the badge of crimson hue,
Which tells you whom to shun and whom to greet.
Stanza l. lines 2 and 3.

The red cockade, with "Fernando Septimo" in the centre.

10.

The ball-piled pyramid, the ever-blazing match.
Stanza li. line 9.

All who have seen a battery will recollect the pyramidal form in which
shot and shells are piled. The Sierra Morena was fortified in every
defile through which I passed in my way to Seville.

11.

Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall.
Stanza lvi. line 9.

Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza, who by her valour
elevated herself to the highest rank of heroines. When the author was at
Seville, she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and
orders, by command of the Junta.

[The story, as told by Southey (who seems to have derived his
information from _The Narrative of the Siege of Zaragoza_, by Charles
Richard Vaughan, M.B., 1809), is that "Augustina Zaragoza (_sic_), a
handsome