Murat had quickly moved the majority of his troops into the city and there was heavy fighting around the Puerta del Sol and the Puerta de Toledo. What followed was street fighting in different areas of Madrid as the poorly armed population confronted the French troops. The latter opened fire on the assembled crowd, and the rebellion began to spread to other parts of the city. Marshal Murat sent a battalion of grenadiers from the Imperial Guard to the palace along with artillery detachments. Those gathered entered the palace grounds in an attempt to prevent the removal of Francisco de Paula. On 2 May a crowd began to gather in front of the Royal Palace in Madrid. The two most senior uniformed leaders involved in the Dos de Mayo, Daoíz and Velarde y Santillán, were caught unprepared by the actions of the laboring poor: Velarde, a 28-year-old artillery captain, was secretly plotting a campaign elsewhere in the country, but considered a direct attack on the Spanish capital impractical – drawn to the sound of gunfire, he joined the fighting contrary to his own military instinct, and would perish leading the defense of the Monteleón artillery barracks. While elements within the Spanish military and state bureaucracy did envision military action to expel the French from the country, Murat's hold on Madrid was held to be unassailable in the short term. The Dos de Mayo was among the few spontaneous popular uprisings of the war, launched without significant fore-planning, funding, or leadership by government elites.

An attempt by the French general Joachim Murat to move their daughter and her children along with the youngest son of Charles IV to Bayonne sparked a rebellion.

King Charles IV had been forced by the Spanish people during the Tumult of Aranjuez to abdicate in favor of his son Ferdinand VII, and at the time of the uprising both were in the French city of Bayonne at the insistence of Napoleon. The city had been under the occupation of Napoleon's army since 23 March of the same year. Second of May 1808: Pedro Velarde takes his last stand.

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