This declaration was answered by a counter declaration from João, the prince of Brazil; but for a while both parties seemed to rest content with this paper war; and there can be no doubt that during their constrained hostilities a perfectly good understanding existed between the unwilling belligerents. The first consul was not to be thus deceived, and he informed his ally that if Spain were not prepared to invade Portugal, French troops should be sent to her assistance. To avoid receiving such aid, if possible, the Prince of the Peace took the field at the head of between thirty and forty thousand men, and entered the Portuguese province of Alemtejo. The prince of Brazil thereupon summoned the whole population of Portugal to arm in defence of the country, and in person led an army against the invaders, but offered scarcely any opposition to their progress. In little more than a fortnight the Spanish reduced several fortified towns, and drove the Portuguese beyond the Tagus. England afforded her faithful ally little succour, therefore, beyond a subsidy of £300,000, and her permission and advice to make peace upon the best terms obtainable. The plan of operations laid down by the first consul had been that Spain should invade the southern and France the northern provinces of Portugal; and a French army was now advancing to execute its allotted task.
On the 28th of June, General Leclerc, having traversed Spain, crossed the frontiers at the head of thirty thousand men, and laid siege to Almeida; St. Cyr followed him with another corps. This was an invasion of a different character from the last, and the Portuguese regent made more vigorous efforts for defence. He now earnestly solicited the help of England, and her troops took possession of the island of Madeira to hold for him. But his best resource was another treaty of peace, negotiated at Madrid between France and Portugal by the French and Portuguese ambassadors to Spain, the consul’s brother, Lucien Bonaparte, and Cipriano Ribeiro Freire. By this treaty, Dom João submitted to pay £1,000,000 to France, and to surrender a considerable district in the north of Brazil, the province called Portuguese Guiana, as far as the mouth of the Amazon, in order to give extent and compactness to French Guiana or Cayenne. No mention was made of the fortresses which had been the pretext for this last French invasion.
By the treaties of Amiens (1802) and Lunéville (1801), the king of Spain recovered Minorca, and saw the Parma branch of his family raised from the ducal to the royal rank; the future heritage of his eldest daughter’s children, Portugal, was redeemed from impending subjugation at the price of some little spoliation, in which he himself shared. But the greatest advantage the restoration of peace afforded him was the cessation of the enormous drain upon his resources, naval, military, and above all financial, which had lately reduced his dominions to a state of lamentable exhaustion. The expenditure during the war had amounted to four times the revenue; and only a long period of peace, together with the most judicious system of economy and fiscal regulation, could have reinstated Spain in anything like prosperity. Of this there could be no hope, under the sway of Charles IV, or rather of his favourite Godoy.
THE AUTOCRACY OF GODOY
[1797-1803 A.D.]
The king’s attachment to his wife’s paramour bore almost as much the character of passion as the queen’s. Godoy’s influence over the former was not to be shaken by representations of his incapacity, or by court cabal;[108] and over the queen it remained undiminished either by jealousy or infidelity on either side, to the end of her life. To her jealousy he owed an alliance with the royal family. He had formed a criminal connection with a young lady of noble birth; and the queen, to prevent his marrying her rival, persuaded the king to give him a princess for his wife. For this purpose an illegal marriage, contracted by the king’s uncle, Don Luis, a cardinal and archbishop of Toledo, with a lady of the name of Vallabriga, was sanctioned, and its issue, a son and two daughters, were recognised as infantes of Spain. The son succeeded his father as archbishop of Toledo, and was made a cardinal; and the eldest daughter was bestowed, as an infanta, upon the Prince of the Peace.
Queen Maria Louisa, Wife of Charles IV
So splendid a marriage had no more effect than his intrigue with the queen in restraining Godoy’s libertinism. It equalled his rapacity; and the latter vice being almost glutted by the profusion of the royal pair, his favour was most surely propitiated by those who had a handsome sister, wife, or daughter to sacrifice to his appetite. The queen, finding it impossible to rid herself of these innumerable rivals, sought consolation in emulating his inconstancy. But it never required more than a word from Godoy to have his rivals overthrown, and his political opponents entangled in their own snares.
Such scenes of licentiousness could not be daily exhibited at court, without producing the most noxious effect upon all who came within the poisonous sphere of their influence. The higher orders were well-nigh demoralised, and a shameless system of corruption pervaded every branch of the administration, from the highest to the lowest throughout Spain; evils compared with which the good really done by the Prince of the Peace was but as dust in the balance.