Napoleon: A Biography

from local notables and commanders, since Ferdinand had instructed his
junta in Madrid to cultivate the French at all costs. It was only much
later, when the rising was in full swing, that Ferdinand rescinded his
orders to the Madrid junta.
Historians differ on the nature of the Spanish rising. Some say the
revolt was led by those implicated in the plot against Godoy and was thus
a continuation of the Tumult of Aranjuez. Others hold that the tumult
and the revolt are distinct - with the latter a mindless outburst of
fanatical xenophobia led by the regular clergy, especially monks and
friars. The second is the interpretation Napoleon himself always
promoted, fo r obvious propagandist reasons - to portray the rising as
benighted reaction against reform and the Enlightenment and to mask his
own blunder at Bayonne - but it is not thereby fallacious.
One thing is certain: the rising initially fo und Spain as divided as ever
it had been under Godoy. The middle and upper classes were
circumspect, since they saw clearly that the price of defeating the French
might be power to the people; having observed the French Revolution,
they realized it might then be their turn to be overthrown. Also, the fact
that Charles and Ferdinand had abdicated legally placed them in a
quandary, since the only non-circular way to challenge Joseph's accession
would be by appealing to popular sovereignty, with the same possible
horrific outcome. There was therefore nothing for it but that judges,
magistrates and officials should cooperate with the invaders, who formed
the military arm of a legally constituted monarch.
In the occupied parts of Spain the propertied classes collaborated with
the French, but in the unoccupied areas the xenophobic mob swept all
before it, including vacillating local bureaucrats. Peasants, students and
religious raided arsenals, erected gallows and instituted a reign of terror
that made the propertied fear for their own skins; in panic they joined in
and declared war on the French. Seeing that if they remained aloof, the
result might be peasant anarchy, local notables and military officers
joined the 'revolution' so as to control it. Napoleon, absurdly complacent,
meanwhile basked in the illusion that the propertied would be bound to
rally to him out of fear of the mob and that his only important task was to
win over the Captains-General of the localities.
This was just one of a plethora of errors the increasingly accident­
prone Emperor made in Spain. To an extent he was unlucky in that,
having squared the Iberian bourgeoisie, he encountered wholly unex­
pected opposition from the Church, the peasantry and the urban
proletariat. This was not so much patriotism (though often rationalized as
such) but rather a twofold reaction against the economic depression