FORE:And truly the prospects of the reign before him were such as might have daunted a much bolder and wiser man than Joseph. The people of Madrid had watched with increasing resentment the spiriting away of the different members of the royal family to Bayonne. They were wrathful that Godoy had been carried beyond the reach of their vengeance, and every day they were on the look-out for news from Bayonne as to the cause of Ferdinand, and this news grew even more unfavourable. On the evening of the 30th of April the populace had retired in gloomy discontent, because no courier had arrived bringing intelligence of Buonaparte's intentions towards Ferdinand. On the morning of the 1st of May numbers of men assembled about the gate of the inn and the post-office, with dark looks, and having, as was supposed, arms under their long cloaks. The French mustered strongly in the streets, and the day passed over quietly. But the next morning, the 2nd of May, the same ominous-looking crowds, as they assembled, were agitated by reports that the only remaining members of the royal family, the widowed Queen of Etruria and her children, and the youngest son of King Charles, Don Francisco, were about to be sent off also to Bayonne. They presently saw these royal personages conducted to their carriages; Don Francisco, a youth of only fourteen, weeping bitterly, and the sight roused the people to instant fury. They fell on the French, chiefly with their long knives, massacred seven hundred soldiers of the line, and wounded upwards of twenty of the Imperial Guard. The French, in return, fired on the people, and killed a hundred and twenty of them. Murat poured in troops to suppress the riot, but could not disperse them till after several volleys of grape-shot and repeated charges of cavalry. Unprepared as the country was, the people felt by no means daunted. The Alcalde of Mostoles, about ten miles south of Madrid, hearing the firing, and understanding the cause, sent a bulletin to the south in these words, "The country is in danger: Madrid is perishing through the perfidy of the French: all Spaniards come to deliver it!" That was all that was necessary. The fact of being in possession of[554] Madrid was a very different thing to being in possession of Paris, Spain consisting of various provinces, having their separate capitals, and everywhere was a martial people, just as ready and able to maintain a struggle against an invader as if Madrid were free. At Valencia, the populace, headed by a priest, fell on the French, and massacred two hundred of them. Solano, the governor of Cadiz, suspected of favouring the French, was dragged out of his house and murdered. Even before the insurrection at Madrid there had been one at Toledo, and the French had been menaced with destruction.
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