Dos de Mayo Uprising

The Dos de Mayo uprising broke out in Madrid on 2nd May 1808 against the French army of occupation, after Napoleon had forced the Spanish royal family to renounce their throne and installed his brother Joseph. As news spread that the last members of the family were being taken to France, crowds attacked French soldiers and carriages in the centre of the city. Murat's garrison of more than twenty thousand, among the best troops in Spain, answered with cavalry charges through the streets and methodical clearing of the quarters; several hundred Madrileños died in the fighting, and prisoners taken were shot the following morning on the Príncipe Pío hill, scenes Goya later recorded in his Second and Third of May 1808. The rising was crushed in a day, but it ignited the Peninsular War, and within weeks similar juntas rose across Spain. The executions of the second of May turned Madrid into a symbol of resistance, and guerrillas made the name of the war itself.