inter- in the affairs of Spain, he forced the weak-minded Bourbon king to resign to him, as his "dearly beloved friend and ally," his crown, which he bestowed at once upon his brother, Joseph Bonaparte (1808). The throne of Naples, which Joseph had been occupying,[1] was transferred to Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law. Thus did this audacious man make and unmake kings, and give away thrones and kingdoms.
But the high-spirited Spaniards were not the people to submit tamely to such an indignity. The entire nation, from the Pyrenees to the Straits of Gibraltar, flew to arms. Portugal also arose, and England sent to her aid a force under Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, and the hero of Waterloo. The French were soon driven out of Portugal, and pushed beyond the Ebro in Spain. Joseph fled in dismay from his throne, and Napoleon found it necessary to take the field himself, in order to restore the prestige of the French arms. He entered the Peninsula at the head of an army of 80,000 men, and scattering the Spaniards wherever he met them, entered Madrid in triumph, and reseated his brother upon the Spanish throne.
Threatening tidings from another quarter of Europe now caused Napoleon to hasten back to Paris.
Second Campaign against Austria (1809).—Taking advantage of Napoleon's troubles in the Peninsula, Francis I. of Austria, who had been watching for an opportunity to retrieve the disaster of Austerlitz, gathered an army of half a million of men, and declared war against the French emperor. But Austria was fated to suffer even a deeper humiliation than she had already endured. Napoleon swept across the Danube, and at the end of a short campaign, the most noted battles of which were those of Eckmiihl and Wagram, Austria was again at his feet, and a second time he entered Vienna in triumph. Austria was now still farther dismembered, large tracts of her possessions being ceded directly to Napoleon or given to the various neighboring states (1809).
- ↑ Napoleon dethroned the Bourbons in Naples in 1805.
