It seems impossible that such daring movements should not have awakened the darkest suspicions at Madrid; yet the royal family, overlooking the common danger about to overwhelm them and their country, continued, during three eventful months, to waste what energies they possessed in petty conspiracies, domestic broils, and, incredible as the tale will hereafter appear, in the meanest diplomatic intrigues with the court of France.  The Prince of Asturias solicited the honour of a wife from the House of Napoleon.  The old King, or rather Godoy, invoked anew the assistance of the Emperor against the treasonable, nay (for to such extremities went their mutual accusations), the parricidal plots of the heir-apparent.  Buonaparte listened to both parties, vouchsafed no direct answer to either, and continued to direct the onward movement of those stern arbiters, who were ere long to decide the question.  A sudden panic at length seized the King or his minister, and the court, then at Aranjuez, prepared to retire to Seville, and, sailing from thence to America, seek safety, after the example of the House of Braganza, in the work of whose European ruin they had so lately been accomplices.  The servants of the Prince of Asturias, on perceiving the preparations for this flight, commenced a tumult, in which the populace of Aranjuez readily joined, and which was only pacified (for the moment) by a royal declaration that no flight was contemplated.  On the 18th of March, 1808, the day following, a scene of like violence took place in the capital itself.  The house of Godoy in Madrid was sacked.  The favourite himself was assaulted at Aranjuez, on the 19th; with great difficulty saved his life by the intervention of the royal guards; and was placed under arrest.  Terrified by what he saw at Aranjuez, and heard from Madrid, Charles IV. abdicated the throne; and on the 20th, Ferdinand, his son, was proclaimed King of Madrid, amidst a tumult of popular applause.  Murat, Grand Duke of Berg, had before this assumed the chief command of all the French troops in Spain; and hearing of the extremities to which the court factions had gone, he now moved rapidly on Madrid, surrounded that capital with 30,000 men, and took possession of it in person, at the head of 10,000 more, on the 23rd of March.  Charles IV. meantime despatched messengers both to Napoleon and Murat, asserting that his abdication had been involuntary, and invoking their assistance against his son.  Ferdinand, entering Madrid on the 24th, found the French general in possession of the capital, and in vain claimed his recognition as king.  Murat accepted the sword of Francis I., which, amidst other adulations, Ferdinand offered to him; but pertinaciously declined taking any part in the decision of the great question, which demanded, as he said, the fiat of Napoleon.