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Then march to Perigot, Medoc, and Elanes, taking wherever you come, without resistance, towns, castles, and forts; afterwards to Bayonne, St. John de Luc, to Fontarabia, where you shall seize upon all the ships, and coasting along Galicia and Portugal, shall pillage all the maritime places, even unto Lisbon, where you shall be supplied with all necessaries befitting a conqueror.
Instead of gaining control over Spain and the Indies, he had changed long-suffering allies into irreconcilable foes. He prepared to conquer Spain. While Joseph was escorted to his new capital by a small army, Napoleon from Bayonne directed the operations of his generals. Weighty words, which his lieutenants in Spain were often to disregard!
I thanked them, and explained that I was obliged to decline, as my agent was waiting for me at Bayonne, where I had purchased some real estate, and, having been recommended to their firm, I should feel obliged if they would cash my draft for £2,000 and indorse it on my letter of credit.
The Emperor immediately gave orders to send one of his physicians to attend upon him, with a valet de chambre and several other persons; for the prince had come to Bayonne without attendants, and incognito, attended only by a military service composed of a few soldiers of the garrison.
We have seen the disgust with which Alva turned from the wretched young King at Bayonne, when he expressed the opinion that to take arms against his own subjects was wholly out of the question, and could only be followed by general ruin. "'Tis easy to see that he has been tutored," wrote Alva to his master.
But when their eyes centered upon the manacled stranger who was then dazedly struggling to a sitting position, Paulson asked: "Who is this?" "This," answered Ashton-Kirk, "is M. Sagon, a fellow lodger of Antonio Spatola, formerly a very close friend of the late Mr. Hume, and once a resident of Bayonne, in France."
One flagrant instance of such abuse of privilege turned up at Leghorn, with a load of tropical produce; and the comments above quoted from an Havana letter doubtless depended upon that current acquaintance with facts which men in the midst of affairs pick up. It was against this class of traders specifically that Napoleon launched the Bayonne Decree, April 17, 1808.
But the people rose against this departure; Godoy, the object of public hatred, was in great risk of losing his life, and the prince of the Asturias was proclaimed king, under the title of Ferdinand VII. The emperor took advantage of this court revolution to bring about his own. The French entered Madrid, and he himself proceeded to Bayonne, whither he summoned the Spanish princes.
These transactions were coincident with the events in Spain and Bayonne before mentioned. After the snare laid at Bayonne the Emperor entered Paris on the 14th of August, the eve of his birthday.
The treaty ended with the seemingly innocent stipulation that a new French army of forty thousand men should be formed at Bayonne, to be in readiness should Great Britain land troops in Portugal. It was not, however, to enter Spain without the agreement of both contracting parties.
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