Many strange historical events have taken place in the Palace of San Ildefonso since Philip V. declared before the Baño de Diana that it had cost him three million pesetas and had amused him for three minutes. It was here, in 1783, that the great king, Charles III., received the Count d’Artois when he started upon his fruitless mission to wrest Gibraltar from the English. Here, in 1796, Godoy, the notorious favourite of Charles IV. and the paramour of his wife--who in the previous year had earned the title of Prince of the Peace by negotiating the shameful surrender by which the war between Spain and France was concluded--signed the famous and fatal treaty by which Spain was dragged at the tail of France until such time as the French Emperor chose to annex it. In 1830, when Ferdinand VII. lay ill at La Granja, and his heir and brother, Don Carlos, was holding himself in readiness to assume the responsibility of sovereignty, Queen Cristina, anxious for her three-year-old daughter’s interest, induced the king to abolish the Salic law and declare his daughter Isabel to be his successor. Three years afterwards, Ferdinand died, and three years later the king’s abrogation of the constitution was revoked by a mob of common soldiers, led by Sergeant Garcia, who compelled the queen to renounce her royal rights and proclaim the Cadiz constitution of 1812. George Borrow, who was in Madrid at the time these events were taking place, had the story of the revolution of La Granja from eye-witnesses, and it is related here in his words. ‘Early one morning,’ he writes--‘it was the morning of 12th August 1836--a party of these soldiers, headed by a certain Sergeant Garcia, entered her apartment, and proposed that she should subscribe her hand to this constitution, and swear solemnly to abide by it. Cristina, however, who was a woman of considerable spirit, refused to comply with this proposal, and ordered them to withdraw. A scene of violence and tumult ensued, but the Regent still continuing firm, the soldiers at length led her down to one of the courts of the palace, where stood her well-known paramour, Muñoz, bound and blindfolded. “Swear to the constitution, you she-rogue,” shouted the swarthy sergeant. “Never!” said the spirited daughter of the Neapolitan Bourbons. “Then your _cortejo_ (lover)--he was in reality her husband--shall die!” replied the sergeant. “Ho! ho! my lads; get ready your arms and send four bullets through the fellow’s brain.” Muñoz was forthwith led to the wall and compelled to kneel down, the soldiers levelled their muskets, and another moment would have consigned the unfortunate wight to eternity, when Cristina, forgetting everything but the feelings of her woman’s heart, suddenly started forward with a shriek, exclaiming, “Hold! hold! I sign! I sign!”’