these policies sat well with the Spanish masses, who declared their loyalty to the deposed Ferdinand and revolted at the prospect of a foreign ruler. The uprising by the citizens of Madrid broke out on 2 May, slew 150 French soldiers, and was violently stamped out by Marshal Joachim Murat's elite Imperial Guards and Mamluk cavalry. Joseph's entry into his prospective kingdom was delayed as guerrillas poured down from the mountains and seized or threatened the main roads. On 26 May, Joseph Bonaparte, in absentia, was proclaimed King of Spain and the Indies in Madrid, his envoys receiving the acclamations of the Spanish notables. The madrileños, however, were indignant; Spanish soldiers quietly withdrew to insurgent-held villages and outposts outside the city, and only Murat's 20,000 bayonets kept the city in order. Outside the capital, the French strategic situation deteriorated rapidly. The bulk of the French army, 80,000 strong, could hold only a narrow strip of central Spain stretching from Pamplona and San Sebastián in the north through to Madrid and Toledo to the south. Murat, stricken in an outbreak of rheumatic colic which swept the French camp, quit his command and returned to France for treatment: "the Spanish priests would have rejoiced if the hand of God had been laid on him whom they called the butcher of the 2nd of May." General Anne Jean Marie René Savary, a man "more distinguished as Minister of Police than as any field commander", arrived to take command of the shaky French garrison at a critical hour. With much of Spain in open revolt, Napoleon established a headquarters at Bayonne on the Spanish frontier to reorganize his beleaguered forces and redress the situation. Having little respect for his Spanish opponents, the Emperor decided that a swift display of force would cow the insurgents and quickly consolidate his control of Spain. To this end, Napoleon dispatched a number of flying columns to throttle the rebellion by seizing and pacifying Spain's major cities: from Madrid, Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessières pushed northwest into Old Castile with 25,000 men and sent a detachment east into Aragón, aiming to capture Santander with one hand and Zaragoza with the other; Marshal Bon Adrien Jeannot de Moncey marched toward Valencia with 29,350 men; and General Guillaume Philibert Duhesme marshalled 12,710 troops in Catalonia and put Gerona under siege. Finally, General Pierre Dupont de l'Étang, a distinguished division commander, was to lead