Tumult of Aranjuez

• 1. Introduction

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  The Tumult of Aranjuez began on the 17th of March 1808 in a royal town about 48 km south of Madrid, and within two days it had toppled a prime minister and forced a king off his throne. The royal family and its government had traveled to Aranjuez while bracing for a French invasion from the north. What erupted there was not a battlefield coup but something messier: soldiers, peasants, and ordinary members of the public all converging on the quarters of one deeply unpopular man. His name was Manuel Godoy, and he had accumulated more enemies than almost any other figure in Spain. How had a former member of the Royal Guard risen to become the most hated person in the kingdom? And why did removing him open a door that Napoleon Bonaparte was waiting just outside to walk through?

• 2. The Rise of Godoy

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  Manuel Godoy was born in poverty and obscurity, and that origin never left him in the eyes of those he would one day govern. As Charles IV's valido, a title roughly equivalent to prime minister, he wielded sweeping authority over a kingdom whose nobility considered him an interloper. The resentment was not purely snobbish. Godoy's conduct at court fueled hostility on multiple fronts. He was widely criticised for his pursuit of women of the court, and he drew moral outrage from the Spanish people for his willingness to align Catholic Spain with Napoleonic France against Britain, which, though Anglican, was still a Christian nation in popular estimation.

  Chief among Godoy's noble critics was the King's own son, Crown Prince Ferdinand. Months before the events of March 1808, Ferdinand had already acted against his father's minister by leading the El Escorial Conspiracy. That attempt failed, but it showed how deep the fractures inside the royal household had become. Ferdinand's supporters would prove to be essential to what followed at Aranjuez.

• 3. A Kingdom Under Strain

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  Spain's troubles in 1808 were not merely political; they were economic and strategic. The country had suffered serious losses to the Spanish Navy during its war with Britain, and those naval losses cascaded into civilian life. Trade with the United States was impaired, food shortages followed, and industrial production faltered.

  France compounded the crisis through the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which Charles IV and Godoy had signed. Under its terms, Napoleon's troops were permitted to cross Spanish territory on their way to attack Portugal. Most Spaniards experienced this not as a diplomatic arrangement but as an occupation in slow motion. French forces moved quickly to occupy San Sebastián, Pamplona, and Barcelona, three cities whose strategic importance was unmistakable. Each new garrison deepened popular anger, and Godoy bore the blame for having made it possible.

• 4. Three Days in March

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  On the 17th of March 1808, the uprising broke open. Soldiers, peasants, and ordinary citizens assaulted Godoy's quarters in Aranjuez and seized him. The mutineers then forced King Charles to dismiss his prime minister. Two days later, the pressure did not ease. The court turned on Charles himself and compelled him to abdicate in favor of Ferdinand, who took the throne as Ferdinand VII.

  The event is remembered today as the Tumult of Aranjuez, also called the Mutiny of Aranjuez. Aranjuez still commemorates it annually, though the celebrations fall in the first week of September rather than in March. When revived festivities began in 1988, they were built on top of pre-existing September festivals already rooted in the town's calendar, and the date never moved back to its historical March origin.

• 5. Bayonne and Its Consequences

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  In early May 1808, Napoleon moved to neutralize the dynastic change that Aranjuez had produced. He invited both the deposed Charles IV and the newly crowned Ferdinand VII to Bayonne, in France, claiming he wished to resolve the conflict between them. Both rulers were sufficiently wary of Napoleon's power that they accepted the invitation.

  Once in Bayonne, neither man had real leverage. Napoleon forced both Charles and Ferdinand to renounce the Spanish throne and transfer it to himself. He then named his brother Joseph Bonaparte king of Spain. This sequence is known as the Abdications of Bayonne, or the Abdicaciones de Bayona in Spanish. The uprising at Aranjuez had cleared away one unpopular minister and one hesitant king, and in doing so left a vacancy that an emperor was ready to fill with a member of his own family.