A curious parallel for the fortune of Godoy, and for the popular hatred which he excited, is to be found in Horace:--
_Ibericis_ peruste funibus latus, Licèt superbus ambules pecuniâ, Fortuna non mutat genus. Videsne, sacram metiente te viam, Cum bis ter ulnarum togâ, Ut ora vertat huc et huc euntium Liberrima indignatio? “Arat Falerni mille fundi jugera, “Et Appiam mannis terit; “Sedilibusque magnus in primis eques, “Othone contempto, sedet!” _Epod._ iv.
Menas, Pompey’s freedman, and Augustus’s Tribune, a double and impartial traitor, to whom this ode was addressed, was the Godoy of ancient Rome.
The Massacre of Madrid on the memorable Second of May did not happily involve so much bloodshed as for a long period had been imagined. The exaggeration common to all countries in commemorating their patriotic struggles, and especially so in the Peninsula, had fully quadrupled the number of martyrs who fell upon that occasion. Recent minute inquiries have confirmed the statement of Napier that the entire number of the Madrid population slain in this massacre did not exceed 200. The real name of the “Daïz” in the text was Daoiz. The shootings subsequent to the street massacre took place, as I have recorded them, under circumstances which in Spain were necessarily regarded as of excessive atrocity, the denial of the assistance of clergy, which by Frenchmen was lightly considered, being in Spanish eyes the acmé of horrors. The supposed miraculous appearances in the Northern provinces are derived from Foy’s _History_.
For the circumstances of the rising which followed throughout Spain the reader is referred to Napier and to Southey, whose description of the Siege of Zaragoza I have followed because it is the more poetical, although I cannot refrain from remarking that it is disfigured by occasional passages of exaggeration and bombast not altogether worthy of an historical work.
The state of political knowledge in Spain at the period of the French invasion may be inferred from the character of the questions treated by their publicists. An old Spanish political writer, held in the greatest esteem down to that period, D. Diego Saavedra Faxardo, formally discusses this thesis: Whether is it better for a prince to delegate his authority to one or many? and concludes in favour of delegation to a single person, for the following reason, stated in his own words: “That the King is the image of the sun, and when the sun disappears from the horizon, he leaves to one only, the moon, and not to several, the care of presiding over the night!” The political work from which this morçeau is extracted was composed for the instruction of the Prince of the Asturias, who afterwards became Carlos II. It was long the French system to keep Spain in this state of pupillage. Choiseul, the ablest minister of France during the 18th century, said that he was more certain of his preponderance in the cabinet of Madrid than in that of Versailles! He said this in the reign of Carlos III., the ablest of the Spanish Bourbons. Up to the end of the last century, France was the planet, and Spain the satellite.