Charles, notwithstanding his fears of Napoleon, had still delayed to acknowledge the usurper of half his brother Ferdinand’s kingdom; and when he understood that, in his negotiation with England, the emperor insisted upon Sicily likewise for Joseph, and proposed to dismember Spain of Minorca, Majorca, and Iviza, by way of compensation to the despoiled king of Naples, Charles’ indignation burst forth, and Godoy’s imperfectly appeased fears revived. A plan of future operations was concerted between the Prince of the Peace in person, and the Russian and Portuguese ambassadors, the secret of which was carefully kept even from the Spanish ministers. It was arranged that Spain and Portugal should arm under colour of hostilities against each other; and that, at the moment when Russia should take the field, their united armies, supported by the fleets of England, should invade the south of France.
Spain bitterly felt the consequences of war with England in the loss of her fleets, and the consequent interruption to her intercourse with her colonies. On June 27th, 1806, the English officer Popham seized Buenos Ayres. The enterprise was in every way rash and ill-advised. He had not troops sufficient to maintain his conquest, and it was recovered by the Spaniards. But the English, if driven out of Buenos Ayres, were not expelled from the country, and this alarmed the Spanish government for its transatlantic empire. Sympathising in the anger and terror awakened in Charles’ mind by the words Napoleon had uttered while stepping into his carriage to set off for the Prussian frontiers (“If Charles IV will not acknowledge my brother as king of the Two Sicilies, his successor shall”), and elated with the tidings of the new German war, Godoy lost sight of the secrecy and caution in which his hostile designs had hitherto been wrapped. Without waiting for the proposed co-operation of either England or Russia, he flung aside the mask. He did not, indeed, announce that France was the enemy with whom he contemplated a war, but he published a proclamation (October 5th, 1806) in which he summoned the nation to arms.
On the 14th of the same month Napoleon, in the terrible battle of Jena, completely routed, dispersed, and destroyed the Prussian army. In the palace at Berlin, Napoleon read the imprudent manifesto of the Prince of the Peace; and if the destiny of the Bourbon kings of Spain had been previously doubtful, it was thenceforward sealed. The news of Jena struck the Prince of the Peace and his infatuated sovereigns with affright proportionate to their recent presumption; and they strove to obviate the effects of their imprudence by various means, which, contradicting each other, proved the bad faith against the French emperor which they endeavoured to deny. The French and Spanish newspapers were filled with paragraphs, in some of which the manifesto was alleged to be a forgery by the enemies of the Prince of the Peace; whilst in others it was avowed as directed against either England or the emperor of Morocco. The decree for levying troops was immediately revoked, and a second circular ordered the governors to disregard the former. Godoy did not, however, rely upon the effects of these artifices. He is believed to have lavished his ill-gotten treasures upon the agents of French diplomacy, whilst he sent a private envoy of his own, distinct from the king’s, Don Eugenio Izquierdo, to Berlin, humbly to confess and implore forgiveness. Napoleon felt that this was not the season for engaging in a new war, and he suffered the hostile demonstration of the court of Madrid to pass unnoticed. But he sought yet further to weaken Spain by requiring that sixteen thousand of her best troops, under her best general, the marquis de la Romana, should be sent into Prussia as reinforcements of the northern army. It was at this period that the famous Berlin decree was published, declaring the British Islands in a state of blockade; and Spain was of course required fully to concur in the execution of this fantastic measure.
[1806-1807 A.D.]
Charles IV, overjoyed at his seeming escape from certain destruction, strove to express his gratitude to Godoy, to whose address he ascribed his supposed safety, by new honours and rewards. The favourite was appointed high admiral, when scarce a ship remained; he received the title of “most serene highness,” never before borne in Spain but by the two Don Johns, the illegitimate sons of Charles V and of Philip IV; and he was named protector of commerce and the colonies. Adorned with these new dignities, Godoy made a sort of triumphal entry into Madrid that offended the people, and both alarmed and irritated the prince of Asturias. Orders were given for the burning of all English manufactures, conformably to the injunctions of the Berlin decree; Joseph Bonaparte was acknowledged as king of the Two Sicilies, and Ferdinand IV’s name inserted in the court almanac merely as a prince of the blood, the eldest of the king’s brothers; and king, queen, and favourite remained satisfied that they had fully appeased and satisfied the master of the continent.
On the 7th of July, 1807, the treaty was signed at Tilsit, by which the czar Alexander ratified all Napoleon’s changes of European sovereigns. The French emperor, convinced that the czar was inalienably his friend, returned to Paris towards the end of July, and devoted his meditations to the punishment of Charles IV, and the subjugation of Spain and Portugal. One of the first steps in execution of his designs upon the peninsula was, in the month of August, to order the French and Spanish ambassadors conjointly to declare to the prince-regent of Portugal that he must concur in the Continental System—viz., shut his ports against English commerce, confiscate all English property, and imprison all English subjects to be found within his dominions, or they were instructed immediately to leave Lisbon.
Portugal’s hesitation at once to obey the imperious mandate afforded a sort of pretence for hostility which Napoleon eagerly seized, and submission came too late. Neither could Spain’s mediation be hoped. The fears or the ambition of Godoy had prevailed over the parental feelings of the now nearly imbecile Charles IV, and Spain was endeavouring to share in the spoil, not to protect the victim. A treaty, the shameless iniquity of which can be paralleled only by the treaties between Austria, Russia, and Prussia for the partition of Poland, had been signed at Fontainebleau, on the 27th of October. By this treaty Charles surrendered to Napoleon his infant grandson’s kingdom of Etruria (King Louis I had been dead some years), over which he had no right whatever, and bargained to receive for him in its stead the small northern provinces of Portugal, Entre-Minho-e-Douro and Tras-os-Montes, under the name of the kingdom of Northern Lusitania, which kingdom the young monarch was to hold in vassalage of the crown of Spain. The much larger southern provinces, Alemtejo and Algarve, were to constitute the principality of the Algarves, for Godoy, under a similar tenure. And the middle provinces were to be occupied by Napoleon until a general peace, when, in exchange for Gibraltar, Trinidad, and any other Spanish possession conquered by England, they might be restored to the family of Braganza, upon like terms of dependence. The Portuguese colonies were to be equally divided between France and Spain.
Neither Napoleon nor Godoy had waited for the actual signature of this treaty to commence their operations for carrying it into effect, so impatient were both to secure their prey. On the 18th of October, Junot, in obedience to his master’s orders, crossed the Pyrenees, and, being kindly received by the Spaniards, began his march towards the Portuguese frontiers, whilst the Spanish troops were equally put in motion towards their respective destinations.
As will be more fully described in the Portuguese history, the invaders met practically no resistance, and the royal family fled across the ocean to Brazil.
The first steps towards the execution of the Treaty of Fontainebleau being thus taken, the Prince of the Peace became impatient for its publication, and his own installation in his allotted dominions. But it is very doubtful whether Napoleon ever meant that treaty for more than a means of facilitating his ulterior designs; if he did, his purpose was now changed, and he no longer intended to admit of any partnership in his new acquisition. But even whilst he was negotiating the treaty with Godoy, his ambassador, Beauharnais, was artfully fomenting the dissensions existing in the Spanish royal family.[b]