Dos de Mayo — the Madrid uprising — 2 mai 1808

Madrid rose against the French occupation; Murat crushed the riot and had the insurgents shot during the night, a scene immortalised by Goya. The rising spread to the provinces and turned a dynastic operation into a national war. It was the start of the Spanish war of independence and of the guerrilla that would bleed the Empire for six years.

Madrid under occupation

Since February 1808 the French troops who had entered Spain under the terms of the alliance had occupied Madrid and the northern strongholds. Murat commanded there. The royal family, torn between Charles IV and his son Ferdinand, had been summoned to Bayonne; only a few royal children remained in the palace.

On the morning of 2 May the word spread that the infante Francisco de Paula was being taken away. A crowd gathered before the palace and blocked the carriage; the first shots were fired, and within hours the riot had spread across the city.

The repression

Murat launched the cavalry into the streets; the charge of the Mamelukes of the Guard at the Puerta del Sol would remain the image of the day. Artillery cleared the crossroads. During the night of 2 to 3 May the insurgents taken with weapons in hand were shot, notably on the hill of Príncipe Pío.

Goya, who was living in Madrid, would draw from it six years later the two canvases of the Dos de Mayo and the Tres de Mayo. The second, with its lantern and its man with outflung arms, has become the image of all political executions.

From a riot to a national war

The repression achieved the opposite of what was sought. The mayor of Móstoles called the provinces to arms; within weeks juntas formed at Seville, Valencia, Oviedo and in Galicia, and proclaimed war in the name of Ferdinand VII.

What was to have been a dynastic substitution carried out without a fight became a war of independence. Two months later the capitulation of Bailén showed Europe that a French army could be beaten; the guerrilla, for its part, would bleed the Empire for six years.