The events leading up to the siege of Saragossa are a part of the history of Spain in her struggle for continued national existence against the encroachments of Napoleon. Although it was national warfare, each province and strong provincial city made its own individual stand. Therefore words like those quoted on a preceding page from Napier's "Peninsular War" have an especial significance. The English general's words are doubly striking when read in connection with these of Galdós, "Men of little sense--without any on occasion--the Spanish to-day, as ever, make a thousand blunders, stumbling and rising in the struggle of their inborn vices with the eminent qualities which they still preserve. Providence holds in store for this people great advancings and abasements, great terrors and surprises, apparent deaths and mighty resurrections." The threatened loss of her nationality was the terror which hung above Spain in the dark days of 1808. Her court was rent with factions; her royal house was divided against itself. Three parties had made dissension in the palace and among the people. One was the party of the King Carlos IV; one was that of his son, Prince Ferdinand; the third, of a most insidious power, was that of Don Manuel Godoy, whose ambitions and pretensions were supported by the queen. A corrupt court and an intriguing priesthood had promoted the troubles of Spain, causing king, prince, and favorite, each and separately, to make application to Napoleon for protection, and for the support of their various plans. The imbecility of the Spanish Bourbons at such an hour in European history was inevitable in its influence upon the Emperor of the French. His ambition grew with this new opportunity. Under the mask of operating with Spain against Portugal, Napoleon filled the Peninsula with French troops under generals like Junot and Moncey and Lannes. The Spanish king and prince were already in France, and practically in durance there, before the people realized the danger which was close upon their very existence as a nation. Popular insurrections at Toledo and Madrid followed immediately upon the appointment of Murat to a place in the government. The abdication at Bayonne of Carlos IV in favor of Napoleon, and the appointment of Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain, with the consent of ninety-one Spanish nobles, roused the Peninsula into a spontaneous and determined revolt. War against the French invaders was already raging in every province when King Joseph was crowned at Madrid on July 24. Thus in the virtue of her people began the long struggle of Spain for independence as a nation,--a struggle which was destined not to end until England came to her aid, and the Duke of Wellington delivered her from the power of France.