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CHAPTER VII.

Invasion of 1823.

ON entering the Spanish territory, the Duc D'Angoulême issued a proclamation (2d April), which opens in these words:

"The King of France, in withdrawing his Ambassador from Madrid, hoped that the warning would have recalled the Spanish Government to more moderate sentiments. Two months and a half have passed, and His Majesty has awaited in vain to see an order of things established in Spain com-* patible with the security of its neighbours."

The Note of the French Government which had preceded the recall of the Ambassador contained the following passage: "The Government of His Majesty will not hesitate to seek guarantees in more efficacious dispositions for the protection. of the material interests of France, should they continue to be compromised, and should she lose the hopes of an amelioration, which, with pleasure, she awaits from the sentiments which have so long united the Spaniards to the French in a sage liberty."

Such were the hopes in which she awaited the two months and a half spent in active preparation for Invasion, in consequence of a provocation which she had tranquilly endured for two years, and which Invasion her King from the throne had the year before declared that "malevolence alone" could suspect.

The Duc D'Angoulême having with laconic vagueness explained the grounds of the Invasion, thus exposes the conduct he is about to pursue :

"Spaniards-everything will be done for you and with you. --The French are, and only will be your auxiliaries ;—your

own flag will alone wave over your cities;-the provinces that my soldiers shall traverse, will be administered in the name of Ferdinand, by Spanish authorities:-we do not pretend to impose upon you laws, we only desire to restore order."

to you

Three days before the date of the Duke's Proclamation, another had appeared, also issuing from the French territory; it contained these words :

"Spaniards, to you belongs the glory of exterminating the Revolutionary Hydra..

"The Provisional Junta of Government declares that sovereignty resides entirely in the King, and emanates from him.

"Spaniards, your Government declares that it does not recognise, and holds as null, all the public and administrative acts, as well as the measures of a Government established by Rebellion, and that consequently it temporarily re-establishes things in the state in which they were previous to the 7th March, 1820."

The place from which it was dated, and the concurrent transmission of the two Proclamations, prove the connivance. At a subsequent period the French Government attempted to exculpate itself by its inability to restrain the Party it had placed in power, without exposing its troops to the fury of a reaction. But of what further violence could it be guilty? The proclamation of the Duke was not his voluntary act, nor one to which he had assented, it was sent to him only at the moment that it was to be published, and with pressing orders that the publication should not be delayed an hour.*

* “The Duc d'Angoulême found at Toulouse the members of the ex-regency of Urgel. He received them very coldly, and only as private persons. He showed attention only to the Baron d'Eroles, but whether it was that his opinions had undergone a change, or that he had been overreached by some intrigue, it is certain that, in direct contradiction with his moderate ideas, a provisional junta made its appearance on the 6th of April at Bayonne, composed of Eguia, Erol, and Gomez Calderon, and which, without waiting to know whence its power came to it, or who it represented, com

The only course was the appointment of the Duc D'Angoulême as Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, until the close of the expedition. The political circumstances of the country rendered this imperative, and it presented no administrative difficulty even of detail, the municipal bodies having there the entire management, and standing distinct from the Cortes and their system. Whilst the issue remained uncertain, there was absolutely nothing for a general government legitimately to do.

Two savage factions stood in face of each other: how could France restore order if not by standing as a moderator between them? To announce that her armies shall advance as stalking horses, for the vengeance of a proscribed minority, was a device to accumulate obstacles in their van, to surround the march with dangers, and to mark their track with the desolation of a civil war. To tell the one party that the door of vengeance was open, was to shut against the other the hope of reconciliation, and to bring upon the army a fate similar to that with which it threatened Spain. Had the design been executed in the spirit in which it was planned, 100,000 Frenchmen would have marched to their graves; Spain would have been a chaos of convulsion, of which the counterpart would soon have appeared in France herself; and the Russian troops, which, as we learn from M. de Chateaubriand, were to be put in motion, would have found their concerted destination.

However, the Spaniards are not a reading people, and they had made up their minds upon the matter in a manner which Shakspeare has anticipated in the words, "A plague on both your houses.' The Duc d'Augoulême was hailed as a liberator; the French troops were everywhere received with menced from that day by declaring null every act since the 7th of March, 1820; and that declaration, although calculated seriously to injure the cause of restoration, and to produce the worst effects in France, was not the less sanctioned by the proclamation of the Prince-Generalissimo at Oyarzun on the 9th of April."-Mar. de Miraflores.

open arms; the Cortes fled without striking a blow; everything was remitted into the hands of France; everything expected from her neutrality, moderation, generosity, and wisdom. The accomplishment of those ardent desires for the well-being of Spain, of which France was the agent, but all Europe the source, was now at hand, and the Spanish people, while disarming by its bearing the suspicions of the Northern Powers, had given to itself irrefragible titles to the sympathies of the French people, and to the gratitude of the French Government, by the touching confidence with which they had remitted their destinies into her hands. At this moment, the field was bare; no cloud had come over the mind of the nation; the rapidity of events had carried attention away from the Junta, and shortness of time had not recalled it to their acts. But on the day before entering Madrid was issued the Proclamation of Alcóvendas, converting the Junta, with the addition of two imbecile and obnoxious names, into a REGENCY.

It is difficult for us to admit into our minds the value of this term. The character of inviolability belongs to a Sovereign precisely because of the higher sphere in which he moves, whence, himself uninfluenced by zeal of theory cr lust of profit, he moderates and restrains these passions, disturbers of communities. What is it to invest with such a quality persons taken from the midst, and in this case already rejected from the mass, by failure of their faculties, or abhorrence of their character? To these men are then given Ministers to countersign their acts, French armies to execute their decrees or guard their persons, and the heir of the French Crown to insult, as evidence of their dignity. A million of French bayonets are in the rear ready at their call, and the moral influence and physical arms of another million of Russians, if requisite, "to muzzle the Monster of Revolution, and to establish the Empire of the Laws and Order." Such a measure was never planned at Madrid--such a scheme never invented at Paris: its parentage belongs to a latitude more fertile in vigorous conceptions.

It was, of course, requisite, not only that the scheme should not come from Paris, but also that it should be beheld issuing from Spanish soil. This was still found to be impracticable. Some Institutions did survive the Constitution of 1812, and were extant even at Madrid itself: these were the two Councils of Castile and of the Indies, which had not taken to flight with the Cortes. On them was to be imposed by Instructions from Paris (how was Paris so well informed?) the duty of engendering the Regency. They positively had the hardihood to declare that they could find no precedent to authorise such a step, either in the laws or usages of the Spanish monarchy, or in the histories of the Regencies that had been established during minorities or interregnums." They do not, however, object to their Presidents being members of it when it is established. Upon this the French are obliged themselves to father the act, and a Decree issues, which, after naming the persons, declares the Regency constituted

"IN THE NAME OF HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF FRANCE, MY SOVEREIGN AND UNCLE."

It is signed LOUIS ANTOINE, and countersigned DE MARTIGNAC, the Ambassador of France.

The Regency speedily makes a declaration of principles, and announces (Proclamation of the 4th June) that it will not listen to the voice of passion, and "that it well knows how to use the power confided to it to prevent persecution and excess.' But events soon gave the interpretation of these words, and as their motives afforded nothing abstruse to public curiosity, that curiosity transferred itself to Paris, where the contradiction between words and deeds was at once interesting and enigmatic. The coincidence with the Court of Ferdinand VII, during the Conspiracy of the Isla de Leon, was not indeed recalled, however deserving of recollection; but as then, at Madrid, everything was referred to a "secret influence," so was now everything attributed to an "occult government" at Paris. In both cases the public instinct had been true, but in neither was the public reason exerted.