MONTREAL.- The War of Independence against Napoleon has begun. There is no turning back. Francisco de Goya was the war correspondent and the witness to all of the aberrations committed, transmitting them to us through his impressive engravings and paintings.
"There has never been a good war, nor has there been a bad peace." (Baltasar Gracián. 1601- 1658. Jesuit, philosopher and writer).
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
On February 28, 1808, Napoleon invades Spain and under the pretext of reinforcing his army on the Portuguese front, he begins his incursion by sending in tens of thousands of well supplied soldiers.
Soon thereafter, on the night of March 17 to 18, 1808, the Mutiny of Aranjuez begins, led by Prince Fernando and his followers. They had often met in Uncle Malayerba's tavern with the objective of conspiring to dethrone King Carlos IV, his father.
"That canon bastard," the queen would always say, referring to the cleric Escoiquiz, whom she had appointed as the heir's tutor, "who has poisoned Fernando's heart with so many insidious acts against me and Manuel (Godoy)".
On March 24, prince Fernando, along with his followers makes his official entry into Madrid and takes the throne as Fernando VII, the new King of Spain. Unbeknownst to him, the great Marshal Murat had preceded him the previous day, on March 23, with his imperial army and had broken into the Villa and Court of Spain, to secure command. Napoleon, however, does not want any problems with the new King Fernando, whom he, nevertheless, detests as incompetent and a traitor to his father.
Although he did not look for problems, Spain was going to be his ulcer and the haemorrhage to follow would be Russia. According to the most accepted historical versions, Napoleon would have died, paradoxically, of a cancerous complication of a gastric ulcer when he was exiled in Santa Elena.
Goya knows first-hand the details of what happened in Madrid in May of 1808, including the patriotic insurrection that immediately follows throughout Spain against the invasion of France, a former ally, and against the ruling Bourbon dynasty. Goya is captivated with the events in Spain and the exile of the Bourbons to France.
With a game of “magic” and a “Houdini-like sleight of hand”, Napoleon succeeds to lure the Spanish kings, father and son, to the palace of Marraq in Bayonne. The “magic” is that the Crown of Spain and the West Indies passes in minutes by three royal heads, finally resting on that of Napoleon’s brother José Bonaparte, who was but Napoleon’s proxy in Spain. In fact, Napoleon was ruling Spain without being crowned. The “sleight of hand” is that none of the Spanish kings and princes had ever met and nor would they ever meet Napoleon in their lifetime. Meanwhile, his brother-in-law, Marshal Joachim Murat, consolidates his power by devastating the insurrection with blood and fire, in a defenceless Madrid.
Napoleon applied the famous maxim to the letter: "Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer!” He manages to lure to Bayonne, a French town bordering Spain, Fernando VlI, King of Spain; his father, King Emeritus Carlos IV and the Queen María Luisa de Parma, thus ending, in one fell swoop, all ties of the Bourbon dynasty with Spain and taking complete control of the Spanish crown. He then completes this covert kidnapping by sending Fernando VII, his brothers and uncles into exile and prison to the Valençay Castle, owned by the mastermind of the operation, Maurice de Talleyrand. As a final decapitation of the kingdom of Spain, he sends Carlos IV, María Luisa and their dear friend Godoy to Compiègne, near Paris. The governance of Spain thus remains in the hands of Marshal Joachim Murat (Napoleon's brother-in-law).
Fig. 2. - Crown and sceptre of Fernando VII in a portrait by Goya
Neither the proud Spanish kings, heirs to a world empire, nor the Emperor Napoleon, nor his arrogant and vain French marshals and generals, all of them temporary owners of Europe, had paid any attention to the famous maxim of a great enlightened king of the time.
"A crown is just a hat that lets the rain through." (Frederick II, the Great, King of Prussia)
Murat wanted to make it very clear who had control of the military. He does not hesitate to launch his powerful imperial army against the defenceless population, which rises against him and revolts on May 2 in the Plaza del Palacio Real and orders an exemplary punishment, mowing down the patriots of Madrid on May 3, 1808. In response, José I Bonaparte wrote to his brother Napoleon: “I have as my enemy a nation of twelve million souls, unspeakably enraged. Everything that was done here on May 2 was hateful. No, sire, you are wrong, your glory will sink in Spain." The actors are: Napoleon, the boss; Carlos, the fool; José, the Freemason; Fernando, the felon; Murat, the absent suitor and the Duke of San Carlos, rosette of the Crown.
Goya, a fervent libertarian, defender of citizens’ rights and enlightened scholar with an impressive encyclopaedic knowledge, is an exceptional spectator of the May 2 and 3 massacres in Madrid. He will later translate his observations of the facts and the memory of all the intrigues in his famous paintings and in particular, ‘The Pilgrimage of San Isidro’ which he paints in his later years. Goya waits, but does not forget.
In the centre of this black painting and in the centre of the group with Napoleon, the figure of José I stands out, then the mute Carlos IV (Goya hides his mouth) and embedded in the Crown, Fernando VII and his royal butler, the Duke of San Carlos (who did not put a pike in Flanders but several pikes in the castle-prison of Valençay, in the absence or presence of our prince Talleyrand)
Fig.3 - The Three Kings. Figure by Mariano Candial
In this chapter, Antonio Muñoz-Casayús, focuses on the character: José I Bonaparte
José I Bonaparte
Goya portrays José Bonaparte in the centre of the base of the “pyramid” of characters, as king of Spain by the grace of his brother Napoleon. He paints him not as a San Isidro festival reveller, but as a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. From the kingdom of Naples to the kingdom of Spain; from peace to war. Herein lies therefore, the meaning of the title of this famous painting.
Napoleon, who did not want his bipolar brother-in-law, marshal Murat, on the throne of Spain, forces his brother José, then king of tranquil Naples, to make a difficult and dangerous "pilgrimage" to Madrid to take possession of the Spanish Crown in June of 1808. It took five minutes for Fernando VII to dethrone his father Carlos IV and it took José five days to consider and accept the Crown of Spain from his brother Napoleon which he then wore for five years like a concrete slab on his head.
Among the historical types of pilgrims was that of the so-called “bordonero”: the person or proxy, who made the journey and who carried the cane, or staff on behalf of a third party. So, we could say that Jose I was Napoleon’s “bordonero”.
Fig 4. - Jose I Bonaparte. Photograph by Mariano Candial
Goya adds other compelling clues to better identify José I in the painting.
1. His stylish, revolutionary Corsican phrygian cap leaves no room for doubt. These Phrygian caps were woven by the famous ‘tricoteuses’ between decapitations at the gallows of Paris.
2. The French tricolored cockade on the left side of the said cap, is an unequivocal sign of his notoriety as one of the leaders of the French revolution.
3. His spectacular scarf (maxi foulard), knotted with several turns, in the style of the revolutionary icon Nachete de Louis-Léopold Boilly, is equally revealing.
4.- His Compostela pilgrim staff represents by Goya's work and grace, the command staff of Napoleonic Spain with one major difference: the pilgrim's staff must exceed the height of the character, whereas we clearly see that the said staff in José I’s hand, is much shorter.
5.- That walking stick, conjugated with the expression of fury and anger in his face, inclines us to think that Goya wants us to remember the numerous occasions in which the mellifluous José I Bonaparte ran from the Royal Palace of Madrid when events became too dangerous. His brother Napoleon strongly reproached him for such conduct.
In the lower part of the cane appears a metal piece that if it were in the upper part, could have been a war hatchet: The head of the weapon consisted of an axe with the heel suitable for use as a war hammer. The handle was made of wood with a metal end cap. They were in use from 1809 to 1812.
Goya, a passionate fan of bullfighting, places the profile of the head of a bull, to the left at the top of the cane, undoubtedly in recognition of his love of bullfights that the commoners called "the josefinas”.
José I, the enlightened king par excellence, did not like bullfights, but nevertheless did not prohibit them as had both the enlightened Carlos III and his 'good-natured' son, Carlos IV.
The three fundamental elements of the Compostela pilgrim are: the pilgrim's hat, the staff and the shell.
Goya portrays José I therefore, with the three fundamental elements, but paints them differently: the hat is not a typical pilgrim hat, but rather a French revolutionary hat; the staff is not a staff, but a baton given to him by his brother Napoleon and his pilgrim's shell did not identify him as a reveler, rather denotes a fallacy that hides the secret truth of the character.
6. The pilgrim's shell is a gilded metal element and not a pilgrim's scallop shell. It is a colonel's gorget, an emblem of the colonel chief of the royal guard which all the royal houses of Europe had for the protection and security of their kings and family. When José I attended official acts and walked through Madrid, he dressed in the uniform of a colonel of the royal guard.
7. Under the pilgrim’s neo-habit of the Pilgrimage of San Isidro’s, José I Bonaparte hides his real status as king of Spain, with the aforementioned attributes.
8. Goya draws José I with a fierce, aggressive, violent face, exactly the opposite of what Napoleon's brother was like: a fearful man, who ran away from the palace whenever there were, or he sensed impending problems. He also ran away from the front line of battle, or simply did not approach it.
His wife however, "the sweet" Marie Julie Clary, never set foot in Madrid. Her job was to receive all the treasures, jewels and works of art from the Spanish crown, to curate the various possessions that her husband sent to Paris and to build up a rich, personal heritage.
Goya had already expressed, in Los Disparates, the profile of these characters with the following words:
"The rosette and the stick make this halfwit believe that he is of a superior nature and abuses the command entrusted to him to annoy those who know him: considered arrogant, insolent and vain by those that were inferior to him and considered dejected and vile by those who can be greater than him”.
Goya observes everything that happens and reveals it to us centuries later, through abstract pictorial expressions: The black painting of “The Pilgrimage of San Isidro”, 1808, the one that was never celebrated.
FINAL NOTE:
The attribution of the rest of the characters in this 4th chapter: Carlos IV slightly hidden behind the Corsican Phrygian cap of José Bonaparte, Fernando VII slightly hidden behind his father’s Crown, the Duke of San Carlos against the neck of Fernando VII, Napoleon Emperor, the Marquis of Ayerbe and Marshal Murat - also a pretender to the throne of Spain.
Above Napoleon's head, there is a triple set of female faces: The Empress Josefina, Carolina Bonaparte and Queen María Luisa of Austria. All of them will be included in a separate chapter or will be referred to in the book in preparation, with citations and references.
ALBERTO BLECUA (1941-2020) "In memoriam"
Alberto Blecua, with his elegant but forceful prose, encouraged my investigations in which I unravel and discover the mysteries hidden in the works of Francisco de Goya. He bestowed the highest praise on my work on Goya, in which I passionately describe unexpected (and never previously revealed) perspectives that I now bring to light.
Thank you, professor. Antonio
