By the most astonishing series of duplicities and perfidies, Napoleon gathered into his snare at Bayonne _all_ the contending parties of the Spanish trouble,--King Charles, the Queen, Godoy, Ferdinand, and Don Carlos, Ferdinand’s younger brother. These Bourbons washed their dirty family linen in his presence, appealing to him against each other. Ferdinand’s royal father shook a cane over his head and cursed him; Ferdinand’s royal mother reviled him, and told him that the king, her husband, was not his father; and Godoy, the paramour of the wife and mother, sat down to meat with King and Queen, indispensably necessary to both. Charles IV., fond of pleasure and ease, resigned the crown of Spain to Napoleon; Ferdinand was asked to do likewise. He refused, and it was not till there had been an uprising in Madrid, cruelly suppressed by Murat, who lost nearly a thousand men, that he yielded. The revolt had been laid at his door, and Napoleon had threatened to treat him as a rebel. Charles and Ferdinand became grandees of France, with princely revenues; in return Napoleon received Spain and its magnificent dependencies (May, 1808). Calling Joseph Bonaparte from Naples to wear this new crown, Napoleon wished to give to the transfer some show of national consent. He summoned an assembly of Spanish prelates and grandees to Bayonne (June, 1808). They came, but as they came the ground upon which they walked was hot with revolt. All Spain was spontaneously and furiously running to arms. The assembly at Bayonne accepted Joseph and the constitution which Napoleon had prepared. In all courts and cabinets Napoleon’s conduct was hotly discussed; in most of them it was furiously condemned. True, he had not used Spain much more unscrupulously than he had treated Venice; nor, indeed, more perfidiously than England had dealt with India, Russia with Poland, Prussia with Silesia. But there were two considerations which weighed heavily against Napoleon: he was not a legitimate king, and he was getting more than his share. The small men began to ask, one the other, concerning the meat upon which this our Cæsar fed; and to say, one to the other, that they, the small men, might, by union and patience and perseverance, pull the big man down.