Napoleon, as Emperor, had little time for social pleasures. His personal friends were few; his days were given to labour, and his nights to study. If he was not with his army in the field, he traversed the provinces, examining with his own eyes into the minutest details of local arrangement; and even from the centre of his camp he was continually issuing edicts which showed the accuracy of his observation during these journeys, and his anxiety to promote by any means, consistent with his great purpose, the welfare of some French district, town, or even village.
The manners of the Court were at least decent. Napoleon occasionally indulged himself in amours unworthy of his character and tormenting to his wife; but he never suffered any other female to possess influence over his mind, nor insulted public opinion by any approach to that system of unveiled debauchery which had, during whole ages, disgraced the Bourbon Court, and undermined their throne.
CHAPTER XXIII
Relations of Napoleon with Spain—Treaty of Fontainebleau—Junot marches to Portugal—Flight of the Braganzas to Brazil—French troops proceed into Spain—Dissensions in the Court—Both parties appeal to Napoleon—Murat occupies Madrid—Charles and Ferdinand abdicate at Bayonne—Joseph Buonaparte crowned King of Spain.
After the ratification of the treaty of Tilsit, Napoleon, returning as we have seen to Paris, devoted all his energies to the perfect establishment of "the continental system." Something has already been said as to the difficulties which this attempt involved: in truth it was a contest between the despotic will of Buonaparte, and the interests and habits, not only of every sovereign in his alliance, but of every private individual on the continent; and it was therefore actually impossible that the imperial policy should not be baffled. The Russian government was never, probably, friendly to a system which, from the nature of the national produce and resources, must, if persisted in for any considerable time, have inflicted irreparable injury on the finances of the landholders, reduced the public establishments, and sunk the effective power of the state. In that quarter, therefore, Napoleon soon found that, notwithstanding all the professions of personal devotion which the young Czar continued, perhaps sincerely, to make, his favourite scheme was systematically violated: but the distance and strength of Russia prevented him from, for the present, pushing his complaints to extremity. The Spanish peninsula lay nearer him, and the vast extent to which the prohibited manufactures and colonial produce of England found their way into every district of that country, and especially of Portugal, and thence through the hands of whole legions of audacious smugglers, into France itself, ere long fixed his attention and resentment. In truth, a proclamation, issued at Madrid shortly before the battle of Jena, and suddenly recalled on the intelligence of that great victory, had prepared the Emperor to regard with keen suspicion the conduct of the Spanish Court, and to trace every violation of his system to its deliberate and hostile connivance.
The court presented in itself the lively image of a divided and degraded nation. The King, old and almost incredibly imbecile, was ruled absolutely by his Queen, a woman audaciously unprincipled, whose strong and wicked passions again were entirely under the influence of Manuel Godoy, "Prince of the Peace," raised, by her guilty love, from the station of a private guardsman, to precedence above all the grandees of Spain, a matrimonial connection with the royal house, and the supreme conduct of affairs. She, her paramour, and the degraded King, were held in contempt and hatred by a powerful party, at the head of whom were the Canon Escoiquiz, the Duke del Infantado, and Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, heir of the throne. The scenes of dissension which filled the palace and court were scandalous beyond all contemporary example: and, the strength of the two parties vibrating in the scale, according as corrupt calculators looked to the extent of Godoy's present power, or to the probability of Ferdinand's accession, the eyes of both were turned to the hazardous facility of striking a balance by calling in support from the Tuileries. Napoleon, on his part, regarding the rival factions with equal scorn, flattered himself that, in their common fears and baseness, he should find the means of ultimately reducing the whole Peninsula to complete submission under his own yoke.
The secret history of the intrigues of 1807, between the French Court and the rival parties in Spain, has not yet been clearly exposed; nor is it likely to be so while most of the chief agents survive. According to Napoleon the first proposal for conquering Portugal by the united arms of France and Spain, and dividing that monarchy into three separate prizes, of which one should fall to the disposition of France, a second to the Spanish King, and a third reward the personal exertions of Godoy, came not from him, but from the Spanish minister. It was unlikely that Napoleon should have given any other account of the matter. The suggestion has been attributed, by every Spanish authority, to the Emperor; and it is difficult to doubt that such was the fact. The treaty, in which the unprincipled design took complete form, was ratified at Fontainebleau on the 29th October, 1807, and accompanied by a convention, which provided for the immediate invasion of Portugal by a force of 28,000 French soldiers, under the orders of Junot, and of 27,000 Spaniards; while a reserve of 40,000 French troops were to be assembled at Bayonne, ready to take the field by the end of November, in case England should land an army for the defence of Portugal, or the people of that devoted country presume to meet Junot by a national insurrection.
Junot forthwith commenced his march through Spain, where the French soldiery were received everywhere with coldness and suspicion, but nowhere by any hostile movement of the people. He would have halted at Salamanca to organise his army, which consisted mostly of young conscripts, but Napoleon's policy outmarched his General's schemes, and the troops were, in consequence of a peremptory order from Paris, poured into Portugal in the latter part of November. Godoy's contingent of Spaniards appeared there also, and placed themselves under Junot's command. Their numbers overawed the population, and they advanced, unopposed, towards the capital—Junot's most eager desire being to secure the persons of the Prince Regent and the royal family. The feeble government, meantime, having made, one by one, every degrading submission which France dictated, having expelled the British factory and the British minister, confiscated all English property, and shut the ports against all English vessels, became convinced at length that no measures of subserviency could avert the doom which Napoleon had fulminated. A Moniteur, proclaiming that "the House of Braganza had ceased to reign," reached Lisbon. The Prince Regent re-opened his communication with the English admiral off the Tagus (Sir Sydney Smith) and the lately expelled ambassador (Lord Strangford), and being assured of their protection, embarked on the 27th of November, and sailed for the Brazils on the 29th, only a few hours before Junot made his appearance at the gates of Lisbon. The disgust with which the Portuguese people regarded his flight, the cowardly termination, as they might not unnaturally regard it, of a long course of meanness, was eminently useful to the invader. With the exception of one trivial insurrection, when the insolent conqueror took down the Portuguese arms and set up those of Napoleon in their place, several months passed in apparent tranquillity; and these were skilfully employed by the General in perfecting the discipline of his conscripts, improving the fortifications of the coast, and making such a disposal of his force as might best guard the country from any military demonstration on the part of England.