The inhabitants of Madrid have just celebrated with much pomp and pride the two hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the "intifada" against the French occupiers of their country. Although the uprising first started in Madrid on May 2, 1808, it soon spread like wildfire to other parts of Spain and then evolved into a full-fledged war of independence in which Napoleon's imperial army, the most powerful military machine of its time, was pitted against bands of ill-armed and loosely organised Spanish peasants and workers.
The history of this popular uprising could be of interest to the Bangladeshis because, in spite of the huge difference in time and geography, some may find certain similarities between our own struggle for independence in the late twentieth century and the Spanish war of independence of the early nineteenth century.
At the beginning of 1808, both politically and economically, Spain was in a difficult situation. A weak but amiable man called Charles IV sat on its throne. As he had neither the capability nor the inclination to govern the country, an inept aristocrat called Godoy ruled it despotically.
Godoy had many enemies among the Spanish nobility who considered him as an upstart. Even the king's own son, Ferdinand, who was the heir to the throne disliked him so much that he and his friends spent most of their time plotting against the king and Godoy with the objective of forcing the king to abdicate, which would also have meant the end of Godoy's rule.
Because of continuous warfare, the state treasury had reached a near-bankrupt situation. Inflation and unemployment were high. There were frequent food shortages. No wonder, all this caused widespread discontent among the ordinary people. Godoy had also alienated the powerful church authorities because of his attempts to raise cash by selling church properties.
In short, Godoy had become extremely unpopular with every sector of the Spanish society. In order to get out of this desperate situation, Godoy devised a plan which ultimately was going to be his undoing.
While all this was going on in Spain, on the other side of the border, in France, Napoleon was watching and waiting for an opportunity to fulfil his ambition of conquering Spain and Portugal. That opportunity was unwittingly provided by Godoy.
In 1807, Napoleon and Godoy signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau in which they agreed to conquer Portugal and divide it between France and Spain. The Spanish government authorised French troops to cross Spanish territories on their way to Portugal. Godoy was naïve enough to think that Napoleon's troops would help him conquer Portugal and then withdraw. Napoleon, of course, had other ideas.
Because of this grave misjudgement of Napoleon's real intentions, by the end of March 1808, a large part of Spanish territory found itself under effective military occupation by French forces. Then the French, together with the discontented elements of the Spanish society, engineered a plot to create a power vacuum in Spain so that they could neutralise the Spanish administration and directly take charge of the country and its government.
On March 17, 1808 Prince Ferdinand, the king's son and heir to the throne staged a coup d'etat against his father and forced the king to abdicate the throne in his favour. Godoy was dismissed and taken into custody.
Ferdinand did not, of course, know that Napoleon had other plans. Ferdinand was allowed to rule only for a short while. He was soon deposed and sent to exile, together with his father, by Napoleon and the crown was given to Napoleon's brother Joseph. Napoleon put his brother-in-law Marshall Murat in command of all French troops in Spain. Many members of the Spanish aristocracy and the intelligentsia accepted the arrangement because of their own personal interests.
But it was the ordinary people like bakers, masons, blacksmiths and grooms who had become sick and tired of seeing French troops strut around Madrid and misbehave with complete impunity. Anger had been simmering for weeks under the surface, and it needed a spark to ignite it into a full-fledged fury.
On the morning of May 2, 1808 crowds of men, women and children armed with knives, blunderbusses, scythes and sickles started gathering in front of the royal palace in anticipation of the forced exile of the rest of the royal family. As one of the princes came out of the palace and got into the waiting carriage, the crowd started attacking the French gendarmes stationed in front of the palace.
Marshall Murat, who was observing all this from the window of a palace just across the street, ordered his troops to fire on the crowd, and that was the spark that ignited the fire. Thousands of ordinary people across the city rose up in arms against the occupiers in a completely spontaneous and disorganised manner. For the first time in Spanish history women took part in actual fighting and many of them died. "They fought alone, abandoned by their king, their government and the well-to-do," because the Spanish army had received orders from the king's regent not to intervene.
This was intifada in the real sense of the term. Hundreds of those ordinary citizens were massacred by French troops. True, one aristocrat and two artillery officers called Daoiz and Velarde also fought and died but they did so out of a personal sense of honour, and not as part of the official military establishment.
Today, in memory of those artillery officers, there are two huge bronze lions called Daoiz and Velarde, who guard the entrance to the Spanish Parliament.
During the night of May 2, hundreds of suspects were rounded up, and in the morning of May 3 they were executed without any trial. The Madrid uprising was put down with extreme cruelty, but its spirit travelled far and wide across the country. In 1809, Napoleon himself invaded Spain with an even bigger army.
The Spaniards adopted guerrilla tactics to fight the French. Provincial juntas were set up for the purpose of cutting off or intercepting supply lines to French troops. The Spanish regular army also fought valiantly. Even though it lost battle after battle, it did not surrender.
In 1808, the British government had already sent a large contingent of soldiers under Duke of Wellington to Portugal to fight the invading French troops. In 1809, he was asked to participate in the Spanish War of Independence. Although he won important victories over the French, the war dragged on until 1814 when Napoleon was forced to abdicate. Thus the Spanish War of Independence came to a successful end.
Like most Bangladeshis who acknowledge the enormous contribution made by the Indian army in our war efforts against the occupying Pakistani army, the Spaniards also acknowledge the sacrifice made by the British army to win their independence.
This is where the similarities between these two wars of independence end. We should consider ourselves very fortunate that the Bangladeshi War of Independence gave birth to a free democratic nation where sovereignty belongs to the people.
Unfortunately, in Spain, the end of the war meant the restoration of an infamous character like King Ferdinand VII to the throne as an absolute monarch who completely disregarded the sacrifices made by his people during those long years of struggle.
One of first things he did was to abolish all constitutional rights granted by the Constitution of 1812. It also meant the return to power of the most conservative elements of the society and exile for many of its most liberal minds. It took many more years to restore democracy and full constitutional rights to the Spaniards, but that is another story.
Chaklader Mahboob-ul Alam is a columnist for The Daily Star.