These decrees were dated on the 5th, a few hours only before Ferdinand was confronted with his parents, and exposed to those outrages and threats which extorted from him his renunciation. The messenger took a circuitous route, and travelled on foot, for the sake of security; he did not reach Madrid therefore till after Charles’s reassumption of the crown had been officially announced there; and the Junta gladly perceived that the instructions which enjoined them to obey the orders of the father, discharged them from the duty of obeying the son in this instance, Ferdinand being no longer King, and they no longer his servants. By proposing the questions they had gained time for events to take their course, and relieve them, as they vainly hoped, from responsibility and danger. Other hope or motive in proposing them they could have none: and having so far succeeded, they concealed the dispatches for a time, and afterwards destroyed them. To have acted upon them now, they alleged, would have endangered Ferdinand[37] as well as themselves. ♦ADDRESS FROM FERDINAND AND THE INFANTE, EXHORTING THE PEOPLE TO SUBMISSION.♦ The abdications both of the son and father had now been made public, and the people of Madrid, the blood of their townsmen still fresh in their streets, and the yoke upon their necks, read the address by which their late sovereign enjoined them to submit to the will of the Emperor Napoleon. That no colour of authority for the intended usurpation might be wanting, the names of Ferdinand, his brother Don Carlos, and the Infante Don Antonio, were affixed to a proclamation from Bourdeaux, condemning the spirit of resistance which had shown itself, absolving the people from all duties towards them, and exhorting them to obedience to France. In this address, the Infantes were made to say, that, “being deeply sensible of the attachment displayed towards them by the Spaniards, with the utmost grief they beheld them on the point of being plunged into anarchy, and threatened with all the dreadful calamities consequent thereupon. Aware that these might proceed from the ignorance in which the people were, both as to the principles of the conduct pursued by their highnesses, and the plans formed for the benefit of their country, they found themselves under the necessity of making an effort to open their eyes, by salutary counsel, in order to prevent any obstruction to the execution of those plans; and thus to give them the dearest proof of their affection. The circumstances under which the Prince assumed the government; the occupation of several provinces, and of all the frontier fortresses, by French troops; the actual presence of more than 60,000 of that nation in the capital and its environs; and many other circumstances known only to themselves, convinced them that, surrounded by difficulties, they had only chosen, among various expedients, that which was likely to produce the least