#dos de mayo

[usergreenpixel]

Hey, Neighbors!

I have a very important request. Can anyone please help me out with finding reliable sources on the Peninsular War? Especially on the entire Dos de Mayo stuff that happened in Madrid.

I really need this information for a story set in Madrid during that period and I want to be as close to the truth as humanly possible.

Thanks in advance!

P. S. I am searching for resources in my university library already. For reference, I’m in Valencia.

[josefavomjaaga]

Napoleon worries (a little)

After having learned of the uprising in Madrid on “Dos de Mayo” 1808, Napoleon writes to Murat, who of course is in Madrid) among many orders on how to suppress the riots also the following line:

Je vous recommande de bien vous garder, et je vous défends expressément d’aller dans les rues.

I urge you to be on your guard, and I expressly forbid you to go into the streets.

Don’t go out, it’s dangerous out there! Awww.

[josefavomjaaga]

Very interesting story. I'm sure it would be highly interesting to try and get to the beginning of the legend. If only I could read Spanish 😢. What's the earliest mention of the story? From what date? Is there a grave? Any documents proving she died during the dos de Mayo uprisings? If there's really nothing known about her, how was it discovered, 100 years later, she was an orphan? Some documents about her then must exist, after all?

Who was Manuela Malasaña?

Good question indeed.

Among the many madrileños who died during the uprising against Napoleon’s troops the 2nd May 1808 was this young girl. We know very little about her. Her name was Manuela Malasaña Oñoro and she was fifteen years old. Other sources says seventeen. This portrait which hangs in the Hall of Heroines of the Museo del Ejército is an imaginary, idealized one, painted many years after her death. We don’t know how she looked. Manuela was just a humble seamstress, the kind of girl who nobody would have bothered to immortalize on a portrait.

There are many stories about Manuela and the way she died. The most known version is that she helped her father to fight against the French at the artillery park of Monteleón, until a French bullet killed her. Of all the myths that surround the young Malasaña, this is the most persistent.

During the rest of the 19th Century it was also the only one. A street of Madrid was named about her, and, little by little, the entire neighbourhood around the Plaza del Dos de Mayo was populary known as Barrio de Malasaña. The young seamstress became a symbol of resistance and the myth of her heroic death was an inspiration for painters, poets and novelists.

At the beggining of the 20th century a shocking discovery was made: Manuela was an orphan. So obviously she and her father never fought togheter against the French that day. Other versions of her death became known then. According to one, she had been fighting - this time alone - and was arrested and executed. In other versions, she was aborded by a group of French soldiers who tried to rape her. She resisted, so she was shot. And the last and probably, most close to facts: in the aftermath of the uprising, the young seamstress returned to her house. In her way home, she was intercepted, arrested and, since her scissors were considered as a weapon, executed on the spot. 

Probably we’ll never know the entire truth about Manuela Malasaña. She is now more a symbol of resistance more than a real person.

[pennyserenade]

i love being mexican. i know i say that a lot but its because i really fucking love that i'm mexican

[desorden-en-letras]

¿𝐀𝐥𝐠𝐮𝐧𝐚 𝐯𝐞𝐳 𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞 𝐞𝐧 𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐫 𝐜𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨 𝐭𝐮𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐠𝐨 𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐨? 𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐪𝐮𝐞 𝐲𝐨 𝐬𝐢𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐠𝐨.

𝐃𝐨 𝐈 𝐖𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰- 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐲𝐬

-𝒔𝒏𝒉𝒏𝒌𝒌𝒎𝒏

[manaosdeuwu]

does anyone know how to wake up without a headache/incoming migraine?

[loverboybrightsideghost]

they should invent a me that gets a period

[yutamayo]

🤨

[angeles-y-demonios-terrenales]

Esta rosa entendió que no eras la espina, propia para su tallo.

Villasmil

[usergreenpixel]

Actually, speaking of Dos de Mayo…

FOUND SOMETHING INTERESTING! It’s actually fascinating to see that a foreigner depicted Mamelukes.

Better quality here:

The painting is called “May 2nd, 1808 or The Charge of the Mamemlukes”. Painted by… Goya! Who coincidentally has his birthday today. Ironically close to Soult 😂

(Is it obvious that I’m interested in Goya too now? Probably yes. Will I ramble about him when opportunity arises? Definitely yes. Research him? Yes. Am I ashamed of this new interest? FUCK NO. Also it’s still technically Napoleonic 😜)

I’m also wondering if there is any Peninsular War fiction that includes Goya (to give that tidbit of his complicated pov) and that story of him having to redo that painting so many times. I think Spanish media is going to omit his (technically) neutral position or the fact that he accepted commissions from the French (artists have to eat). It’s a little known fact anyway so…

This is probably a bit impolite because I have not answered your question yet, but as you mentioned Joseph still being hated with a passion in Spain, I wondered if there were similar sentiments in Spain today for Murat (because of Dos de Mayo) and for Soult (because of his Murillo paintings). I have tried looking up Soult's name on Spanish websites and found that he was still accused of all sorts of crimes but as I do not speak the language I cannot tell how correct that perception is. Do you happen to know more? Thanks in advance, as always!

Pretty much everyone connected to Naps and Naps himself have a bad reputation but Murat doesn’t seem to pop up much. So probably no particularly strong hatred for him but bad attitude simply because he was involved.

Soult is hated too, but most marshals aren’t mentioned much. The hatred is more on Naps and Joseph, it seems.

[josefavomjaaga]

Napoleon’s fake letter to Murat

The first edition of Napoleon’s correspondence, published during the Second Empire, lists in Volume XVI on page 450 as No. 13696 a letter that Napoleon allegedly had written to Murat on 29 March 1808, while Murat was staying in Madrid, prior to the “dos de Mayo” uprising and the double abdication of Carlos and Ferdinand at Bayonne. The letter neither fits the content of Napoleon’s other verifiable letters that he did write to Murat, nor Napoleon’s usual writing style.

The historians and editors responsible for publishing the correspondence were probably quite aware that they were dealing with an apokryphe letter, judging from the long footnote they added to it:

This letter, of which no minute, original or authentic copy has ever been found, was first published in the Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (t. IV, p. 246 et seq., ed. 1823). It has since been given again by M. de Montholon in his Récits de la Captivité, etc. (t. II, p. 451 et seq., ed. 1847). Like M. de Las Cases, M. de Montholon claims to have been told about it by the Emperor Napoleon himself. The authenticity of this document was accepted by M. de Bausset (Mémoires sur l'intérieur du Palais, etc., t. I, p. 151 et seq., ed. 1827); by M. le Duc de Rovigo (Memoires, etc., t. III, p. 258 et seq., ed. 1828); by M. Thibaudeau [...]

And if so many bonapartists with an interest to falsify history in order to make Napoleon look better than he was on this occasion, all agree that this letter is authentic, it must be true. Right?

The letter in question is several pages long, contains endless musings about the situation in Spain and, most importantly, lays the responsibility for the uprising that is about to happen squarely ate Murat’s feet, as Murat he had acted on his own accord instead of on Napoleon’s orders:

I do not approve of the decision taken by Your Imperial Highness to seize Madrid so hastily. The army should have been kept ten leagues from the capital. [...] Your entry into Madrid, by worrying the Spaniards, has served Ferdinand immensely.

This assumption is directly opposed to several - authentic - letters in which Napoleon, of course, sends Murat to the Spanish capital, orders him to get a hold on anything and anybody of importance and to, of course, use violence in case the population revolts.

So, to sum up, apparently Napoleon did take the pain to dictate a fake letter to Las Cases and/or Montholon on Saint Helena, in order to exculpiate himself and pretend that the whole quagmire in Spain had, at least to a large degree, been caused by Murat. Considering that, at the time, Murat was long dead, this is a truly perfidious act from Napoleon, destroying the reputation of a dead former friend.

Or so I thought. And because I thought that, I would like to publicly apologize now. Because I’m convinced, whoever invented this letter, it was not Napoleon: This fake letter is not in the original manuscript of Las Cases. It only shows up in the edition of 1823. So either Las Cases invented it out og his own volition. Or somebody gave him the idea. In any case, before publishing the first volumes of his grand oeuvre, Las Cases had plenty of time to meet with all kind of people who may have uttered wishes or suggestions.

I could come up with at least one name of a former monarch in Spain who was known to not be a friend of Murat’s, whose scruples in telling lies seem to have been underdeveloped and who in certain aspects may have held pretty similar views as those expressed in the fake letter... But that is utter speculation on my part.

[seven-stars-in-his-palm]

im on that grind (papa’s sushiria)

[lacomandante]

I’m home now from Spain...so much happened and i don’t even know where to BEGIN when it comes to posting pictures.......

[filmsquehevisto]

El destino de la humanidad está en juego cuando dos razas de robots, los buenos Autobots y los villanos Decepticons, llevan su guerra a la Tierra. Los robots tienen la habilidad de transformarse en diferentes objetos mecánicos mientras buscan la clave del poder supremo. Sólo un joven humano, Sam Witwicky puede salvar al mundo de la destrucción total. (2007)

[chalcid]

Mermay days 1-3 (self portrait, upside down, twisted) and 5. (Cinco de mayo)

Mermaid lore: Out there, there is a mermaid wizard enchanting some mermaid paints to work under water. Mermaids are amphibious, so a mermaid painter could opt to live on the surface and spend less on paints. However, self-portrait mermaid does not want to do this because he got a really bad sunburn on the surface once and decided he hated it.

In many species of fish, the males are more colorful, so it would make more sense for male mermaids to be colorful and femme presenting, but any mermaid can be colorful and femme presenting b/c I say so.

In Cinco De Mayo, the mermaid is stabbing Napoleon III.

[caminandovoy]

En honor a todos nosotros, trabajadores

El Día 1 de Mayo nos dejan reinvidicar nuestros derechos en todo el mundo. Y al día siguiente... al día siguiente volvemos a trabajo: Cuando empezamos La Rebelión?

Foto tomada en Parque de Las Vistillas de Madrid, 1 de Mayo de 2023

El permiso para nuestra manifestación terminó a las 7pm en punto, como nuestras jornadas laborales... qué ironia