In the global confrontation with the British Empire, Napoleonic France sooner or later had to solve the problem not only of Russia, but also of Spain and Portugal. Otherwise, the idea of a Continental Blockade, designed to bring proud Albion to its knees, lost all meaning. Russia, after the companies of 1805 and 1806-1807, after Austerlitz and Friedland, after the peace in Tilsit, seemed to be able to fit into the Napoleonic economic system. Next in line was Spain, where the dynastic crisis happened at the right time.
However, unlike Italy, where literally everyone was ready to recognize the power of the great Corsican, Spain did not rush to accept the rules of the game imposed by France. The most inconceivable proposals that Napoleon made to the Madrid court did not find understanding there. However, the emperor began with Portugal - this English bridgehead at the junction of Europe with Africa.
Prince Regent Juan, who ruled there instead of Murray Mad, had already been beaten by the French and the Spaniards in the 1801 war, dubbed Orange. At one time, he was fascinated by the future Napoleonic Marshal Lann, and began to maintain good relations with France, which, under Napoleon, parted with the revolutionary legacy that annoyed this representative of one of the oldest royal dynasties.
However, Lisbon did not refuse cooperation with London either - how can the sea routes connecting the metropolis with the colonies, primarily Brazil, be jeopardized? Even after a series of Napoleonic victories, the prince-regent refused to declare war on England, and Napoleon immediately offered the Spaniards an alliance to overthrow the Braganza dynasty and partition Portugal.
The corresponding secret treaty, back on October 27, 1807, was signed in Fontainebleau by the knight marshal Gerard Duroc and his Spanish colleague, the king's favorite, who had the experience of the secretary of state and first minister Manuel Godoy. 28 thousand French were sent to Lisbon together with the 8 thousandth Spanish corps, and another 40 thousand entered Spain to support the Portuguese expedition. Napoleon hoped to "exchange" the north of Portugal, already occupied by the French, for the province of Entre Duro, which was called the Kingdom of North Lusitania.
For the sake of complete confidence in success, the emperor was ready to make happy not only the Spanish monarch Charles IV, but also to make his favorite prince - the all-powerful Generalissimo Godoy, who, among other things, had the title of "prince of peace", whose main merit was called the fact that he was able to become the queen's lover Mary Louise. Godoy was due to the Portuguese provinces of Alentejo and Algarve, and for annexation to France, Napoleon outlined almost the entire north of Spain, up to the Ebro River. Here the emperor also planned a spectacular exchange - for the whole of Portugal at once.
His truly grandiose plans are not at all surprising - Napoleon then easily reshaped the borders of Europe, and seated his relatives on thrones, as if rearranging pieces on a chessboard. To make such a sacrifice as one of the "degenerate dynasties" was quite in the spirit of the Corsican. However, while Napoleon's entourage did not calculate the combinations with the coronation of brother Joseph in Madrid, especially since he felt quite well in Naples. Nevertheless, the precarious Spanish throne was certainly one of those factors that the French emperor was ready to use at any moment. “Spain has long been the object of my thoughts,” Napoleon said.
The 1st Gironde Corps was formed as an observation corps under the command of General Junot as early as August 1807, mainly from the new set of concripts. On October 17, he crossed the Spanish border and in mid-November was already near Salamanca. The target was Lisbon, and although the Spanish government did little to secure the march, Junot moved on a short road towards the Portuguese capital, where he faced great difficulties with supplies. But there, at Alcantara, an auxiliary Spanish corps was waiting for him. The campaign was well supported by information - the whole of Europe started talking about the campaign to Gibraltar.
With the addition of the Spaniards, the supply problem became even more acute. And although the invaders did not meet armed resistance on Portuguese soil, they suffered from the small local population. It responded to looting and robbery by attacking foragers and killing retarded soldiers. The Prince Regent hastened to express his readiness to fulfill all the requirements of Napoleon, but this could no longer change anything.
On November 24, the army of General Andos Junot, one of the few close friends of Napoleon, who never received the marshal's baton, hungry and badly battered, arrived in Abrantes (now Abrantes). In honor of this town, General Junot would later be awarded the ducal title, although in the end only Napoleon himself in his legendary bulletins could have named his campaign in Portugal successful. However, the first part of the Portuguese campaign was indeed more than successful.
From Abrantes, Junot informed the Portuguese government that he would be in Lisbon in four days. By this time, the British ships of Rear Admiral Sydney Smith, the one who managed to defend Acre in the confrontation with Bonaparte, had already dropped anchors there. The energetic Smith immediately declared Lisbon a state of siege and offered the royal family to evacuate to Brazil. Junot at that moment had no more than 6 thousand combat-ready soldiers and officers, and he boldly went to the capital itself with only four battalions. This was the case when the very appearance of the French troops was worth the victory.
Lisbon fell without a fight in the last days of November 1807. The French even managed to fire at Smith's ships from Belem, which were stuck in the roadstead due to strong headwinds. When up to 16 thousand Frenchmen were already drawn to the outskirts of the city, General Junot took seriously the establishment of a peaceful life. The regiments were stationed in cantonir apartments in and around the capital, the Spanish corps of the Marquis of Solano occupied Setubal, Elvas and the Algarve province, and the troops of General Taranco occupied the north of Portugal.
Junot simply disbanded part of the Portuguese army, about 6 thousand soldiers and officers joined the French divisions, and 12 thousand were sent to France. By this time, new French troops entered Spain - the 2nd Gironde Corps, also with the functions of an observation corps, under the command of General Dupont with a force of 25 thousand people, as well as the 24-thousandth coastal corps of Marshal Monsey. Monsey's troops were stationed in Vizcaya, and Dupont occupied Valladolid, advancing the vanguard to Salamanca. Napoleon, taking advantage of the peace in Europe, continued to build up his military presence in the Pyrenees.
The situation around the Spanish throne also pushed the emperor to this. The heir to the throne, Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, who feuded with Godoy, without hiding, sought the protection of Napoleon and even wooed one of his nieces. This request remained unanswered, but the aged king responded by arresting his son in the castle of Escorial, and Ferdinand was threatened with trial for insulting the supreme power. However, the arrest, organized at the suggestion of the same Godoy, did not last long.
At the turn of 1807 and 1808, French troops continued to accumulate in Spain. Monsey advanced as far as the Ebro River, and his troops replaced Marshal Bessière's West Pyrenean corps, which had placed garrisons in Pamplona and San Sebastian. Duhem's corps, having entered Catalonia, settled in Figueres and Barcelona, although this required a direct deception of the local authorities. 6 thousand guardsmen under the command of General Dorsenn arrived in Bayonne. The general leadership of the army, which occupied the entire north of Spain without a war, was entrusted to Murat.
However, so far there have been no signs of possible popular outrage, although among the entourage of King Charles IV it was increasingly said that the dynasty could face the same fate as the Braganza family. Moreover, the most enterprising people in the government began to prepare the departure of the royal family to Mexico. The first action against the French took place directly in Aranjuez, the location of the court. The rioters even managed to capture Minister Godoy himself, who was brutally beaten and saved only as a result of the intervention of Prince Ferdinand.
The frightened king hastened to abdicate in favor of his son, but everything that happened gave the French carte blanche to enter Madrid. Murat entered the capital on March 23 with the guard and part of Monsey's corps. All this time, the emperor himself remained, as it were, over the battle, besides, he was too busy organizing the blockade, into which, it would seem, it was already possible to draw the whole of continental Europe. However, the emperor ordered the troops of Bessieres to move to Burgos, and Dupont, in order to avoid excesses, to occupy El Escorial, Aranjuez and Segovia.
A day after Murat, Ferdinand arrived in Madrid, greeted with delight by the people. Despite the fact that the future Neapolitan king, and at that moment - only the Duke of Berg, Murat, in every possible way avoided intercourse with him, Ferdinand, already in fact a monarch, insisted on his desire to preserve the alliance with France. He also repeated his marriage proposal to Napoleon's niece. But at the same time, taking advantage of the fact that Murat ignored his son, Charles IV declared his abdication forced, and appealed for support, of course, to the French emperor.
The stalemate led to the fact that Napoleon finally decided to intervene in Spanish affairs personally, and went to Madrid. Ferdinand and his retinue rode out to meet him, following the advice of Murat and Savary, a diplomat and former chief of the secret police who found himself in the Pyrenees as corps commander. To rule in Madrid, this "almost king" entrusted the junta at the head of one of the most beloved relatives among the people - the uncle of the heir to the throne, Don Antonio.
Ferdinand, who arrived in Bayonne on the morning of April 20, was received with royal honors, but the time to implement the combination with Joseph seems to have come. In the evening of the same day, General Savary informed Ferdinand that Napoleon had decided to transfer the Spanish throne to one of the members of the Bonaparte dynasty. The emperor demanded abdication from Ferdinand and offered him Etruria and Portugal in return for Spain.
The most not yet crowned king was detained in Bayonne, in fact, in the position of a prisoner. The current situation was briefly but very succinctly described by Stendhal: “It was as difficult for Napoleon to keep Ferdinand in captivity as it was to return his freedom to him. It turned out that Napoleon had committed a crime and could not take advantage of its fruits. The denouement came thanks to the fact that Ferdinand's father Charles IV, no longer the king, arrived in Bayonne.
In Bayonne, Napoleon not only achieved a double abdication from the Spanish Bourbons, but also pushed through the representatives of the ruling junta a new constitution of the country and the election to the throne of his elder brother Joseph, King Joseph of Naples. On August 1, 1808, Joachim Murat, Duke of Berg and Cleve, Marshal of France, and concurrently the husband of Caroline, sister of the French Emperor Napoleon I Bonaparte, reigned in Naples.
It would seem that all the conditions were created to close the Spanish question, but the Spaniards managed to explode much earlier. On May 2, as soon as it became known for sure about the abdication of the popular Ferdinand, an uprising broke out in Madrid. There were more than enough reasons for indignation besides the abdication of the "almost king". To begin with, the French troops behaved in Spain like real occupiers, so they also freed the hated Godoy from custody, who, it seemed, was about to be condemned. Rumors of Ferdinand being arrested and facing exile only increased the resentment.
The riot was really terrible, the Spaniards managed to kill up to six hundred Frenchmen in half a day, many in the hospital, the pogroms spread to the suburbs, where several regiments were stationed. But this time the French managed to restore order in just one night and day. The shooting of the rebels, depicted in paints by the great Goya, is undeniably impressive, but among the rebels, the losses were four times less than those of the French - only 150 people. And nobody disputes these figures.
But indignation quickly spread throughout the country. In Zaragoza and Cadiz, in Valencia and Seville, in many small towns and villages, the population lynched French officers and Spanish officials, who were only suspected of loyalty to the occupiers. But formally, there was no occupation, and Napoleon did not declare war on Spain, which he later regretted more than once.
The Emperor again drove himself into a stalemate. Everywhere in Spain, ruling juntas were created, as a rule, supporting Ferdinand, and many of them, for example, Asturias, almost immediately asked for help from England. For the first time in history, Spain showed what an armed people is - in a matter of days more than 120 thousand people took up arms.
General Duhem's troops were cut off from France in Barcelona, and Napoleon made all the necessary orders to maintain communication between Bayonne and Madrid. For him, the main thing was to forestall the Spaniards in the concentration of large forces of regular troops, without the support of which, as he believed, "the crowd was worth nothing."
It is possible that if Napoleon had begun to deal with the Bourbons in Spain, directly declaring war on Charles IV, he would have avoided a popular uprising. It is even possible that the Spaniards, who hated Godoy and mocked the old monarch, would have greeted the French as liberators, following the example of the Italians. And yet it is difficult to believe those historians who, in this case, attribute to the emperor the usual desire to avoid bloodshed.
And for more specific reasons, let us pay attention, first of all, to the composition of the troops that first entered Spain - with the exception of the Guards, they were mostly recruits, and only Napoleon himself led the already tested warriors beyond the Pyrenees. However, the analysis of the reasons for the next, in our account - the third big failure of Napoleon Bonaparte is still ahead.
