notables were summoned to
Bayonne, they could not well refuse, and a hundred and fifty of them
responded. On June sixth, 1808, the crown of Spain was offered to
Joseph by this strange Cortes, and he accepted it. At the same time
the new constitution, destined by Napoleon to regenerate the country,
was laid before the same body, which discussed and adopted it. In the
following month his Catholic Majesty presented himself, with this
document and a cabinet of able ministers, to the people of Madrid.
Charles IV and his followers found Compiegne too cold, and soon moved,
first to Marseilles, then to Italy. Murat became King of Naples.
Ferdinand remained contentedly in France, licking the hand which had
struck him down. Napoleon returned to Paris, uneasy at the attitude of
the Spanish nation, but hoping that local discontent could be
smothered by the strong hand, as he had seen it smothered in France,
Italy, and the Orient. In this, however, he was to find himself sadly
mistaken.

In the story of Spanish degradation at its worst two names must stand
together as partners in political crime--those of Godoy and Escoiquiz,
who sought to mask their own base ambitions behind the acts of their
feeble creatures, the King and Ferdinand respectively. Throughout the
whole vile complot moves also the figure of the Queen, whose
counterpart must be sought in the annals of witches, furies, and
hetaerae. But there were still left uncontaminated eleven millions of
the Spanish people. They were indolent by nature, had been fettered
both by tradition and by worn-out institutions, and had long groaned
in the chains of corrupt administration. With the removal of the
Bourbons all these paraphernalia were swept away. The brothers
Napoleon believed, and no doubt honestly, that pure and capable
administration under a modern system would soon produce order,
industry, prosperity, and peace, and that a grateful nation would
before long acclaim its preservers, and enroll itself as a devoted
ally against the "perfidious and tyrannical" supremacy of Great
Britain. It is useless to speculate how far this dream would have been
realized but for the utter rottenness of the instruments with which
the reformers worked. The King's senility, the Queen's lust, Godoy's
greed, Escoiquiz's self-seeking, Ferdinand's unreliability, Murat's
ambition, made a poor armory of weapons wherewith to accomplish a
beneficent revolution. But the one vital blunder was, after all,